A Balfour Beatty employee has won the 'Most Inspiring Innovation Leader' prize at the National Engineering Foundation (NEF) annual awards which recognise the best of UK innovation in science, engineering and technology.

Engineering Manager for Balfour Beatty on the M25 'smart motorway' projects, Calvin Blacker, has developed and led a team which has produced more than 300 innovations including de-scoping a railway underbridge, slip forming a large retaining wall without the need for reinforcement and the use of Infrared illumination in conjunction with enhanced CCTV coverage of the motorway. These are examples of best practice, used across the highways construction and maintenance sector. The 2013 awards were recently presented in three categories to the winners who were selected by a panel of industry experts.

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Balfour Beatty has a unique internal innovations and knowledge sharing network designed to foster and develop bright ideas. This provided the entries which were put forward for the NEF awards, with four ideas selected to enter into the national competition.

Meanwhile, Catherine Crespin, Balfour Beatty Head of Customer Experience for the Construction Services UK business, received the highly commended prize under the ‘Most Innovative Business Process’ category. Catherine and her team have developed a customer collaboration tool aimed at aligning business processes and priorities between client and contractor to build and maintain longer lasting relationships.

Professor Sa'ad Medhat, Chief Executive Officer of the National Engineering Foundation, said: "The winners were chosen due to their clarity of intended purpose, uniqueness of approach, potential impact and whether they stimulated and galvanised others. They demonstrated economic value and social benefit, which will help promote sustainable growth in the UK.”

Nicholas Pollard, Chief Executive Officer, Construction Services UK, Balfour Beatty, said: "I am very pleased for Calvin and Catherine and all the other leaders we have who took part in these awards.

"Both finalists were already involved in our innovation and knowledge sharing network which has been created to share any best practice ideas between projects and across the company and the recognition they provide is a strong endorsement of the way which we continue to place great store in developing and furthering our people’s talents at Balfour Beatty."

(CD/MH)