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Waterways Excellence Awards winner announced

24th Sep 2008

The team in charge of repairs to the Drakeholes Tunnel on the Chesterfield Canal has been crowned winner in British Waterways’ annual Waterways Excellence Awards which highlight individuals and small groups who demonstrate extraordinary levels of ingenuity, innovation, commitment and hard work.

BW chief executive Robin Evans says: "This project required extensive liaison within BW to get the engineering, heritage and environmental issues properly aligned. It then required great skill to re-point the tunnel facade and the team received on-site training from external specialists.

"The end result is a repaired tunnel portal that will last for another 200 years, but such is the skill with which the work has been undertaken, the casual observer would only notice we had been there by the excellent clearance of vegetation from around the site."

There were almost 100 entries to the awards across British Waterways, and in addition to the Drakehole Tunnel project, other work commended included the BW vegetation team's clearance of Cowley Cutting on the Shropshire Union Canal and the introduction of handheld technology (Q1s) for length inspections.

Pictured (l-r): Tony Clarke, Tom woodcock, Stuart Gadsby, Rachel Harris, John Shimwell, Alan Lane, Fred Smith, Deanne Gow, Colin Storey, Iain Forsythe and Jeremy Leach and (not pictured) Julian Rasen and Steve D’Arcy.

Last updated: 22/10/2008