23 March 2016 - A new accolade for the Hydraulic Tunnel of Lake Mead comes from the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) finalist amongst the 2016 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award.

In previous editions the same award went to the Hoover dam and the World Trade Center. Every year since 1960 the American Society of Civil Engineers has given this prestigious award to projects deemed to be excellent in terms of technology and innovation.

"We are honored to be considered for this award, which represents the pinnacle of modern civil engineering achievement," Marcus Jensen, Director of Engineering for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), said on news of the Lake Mead Intake No. 3 project being among the six nominees for the Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award. "During the course of the project, our team focus was singularly on the task at hand. However, once the work was done, we had the opportunity to step back and consider the challenges we overcame and the magnitude of what we accomplished," Jensen said. Jensen furthermore praised the construction team of Salini Impregilo and S.A. Healy.

The project involved excavating a tunnel under the lake located some 30 kilometres from Las Vegas to draw water from the bottom and guarantee the supply of approximately 4.5 million cum of water per day  for domestic consumption.  The project, already recognized as the Global Tunnelling Project of the Year 2015 by NCE Tunnelling, marked an important milestone in the history of tunneling: the tunnel-boring machine (TBM) that worked on the project worked at a record maximum pressure of 15 bars.