Hillsborough's Riverwalk Greenway designers receive engineering award

Hillsborough's recent efforts to promote green, sustainable spaces have not gone unnoticed.

Summit Design and Engineering Services, which helped design the Riverwalk Greenway project in Hillsborough, was awarded an ACEC/NC Engineering Excellence Award.

Applicants for this award must demonstrate innovative application of new or existing technologies; a future value to the engineering profession; social, economic and sustainable design considerations; complexity; and must exceed both the client’s and owner's needs, according to the award's call for entries. 

Selected projects have the chance to receive one of the following awards at the gala: an honors award, a grand award or a grand conceptor, the highest award. 

The company and town will receive the award at ACEC/NC’s Engineering Excellence Awards Gala Nov. 13. They do not yet know which of the three awards they will receive. 

Jim Parker Jr., principal of Summit Design, said the company was ecstatic when it learned it had won the award. 

“We’ve always wanted to submit a project to be considered," he said. 

"And this year we thought we had a winning project, because the town of Hillsborough is excited about the work that we’ve done."

This is the first time that a recreational resource in Hillsborough has won an award like this, said Stephanie Trueblood, a city planner with the Hillsborough Planning Department. 

“Sometimes a project that might impress me does not necessarily impress the other judges, but this one was kind of unique,” said Jim Smith, executive director of ACEC/NC.

“I think it fits the geography and the atmosphere of that area along the river.” 

Smith said what made the project unique was the utilization of the raised walkways in order to keep out of the environmentally sensitive areas.

Summit also used a top-down construction approach, resulting in a stronger boardwalk system that will require less maintenance in the future. This technique saved the town $30,000 and three months of construction time.

“The piece that makes it truly award-worthy is that Summit played an integral role all the way from the very conception of the project through construction — including design, engineering and permitting, which took years,” Trueblood said.

Trueblood said that the award was well deserved.

“It is very context- and site-sensitive in terms of preserving the natural landscape and tree canopy while paying attention to things like storm water systems and, of course, water quality,” Trueblood said.

The aesthetically pleasing looks, the location and the environmental considerations of the walk made the Riverwalk project unique, Parker said.

“The success of our efforts would not have been possible without the cooperation and the coordination of the town of Hillsborough,” he said.

Parker said that the town of Hillsborough, contractor The Hurley Group, LLC, and sub-consultants The Catena Group, Alpha & Omega Group and Environmental Services, Inc., were great partners in this project. 

Parker, along with town of Hillsborough representatives and Summit engineers who worked on Riverwalk, will attend the awards gala in November.