Two Environmental Scientists Receive Inaugural IHS DPC Innovations Awards in Dredging

The Central Dredging Association (CEDA) Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Anders Jensen of Danish Hydraulic Institute by CEDA’s General Man-ager Anna Csiti. Jensen was past president of CEDA. (photo credit: Dean O’Brien).

At a gala dinner on November 10 2016 in London’s Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square in England the first IHS DPC Innovations Awards were presented to a variety of people and companies for outstanding contributions to the dredging and maritime construction industries. According to the organizers more than one hundred entries were received from across a wide swath of the industry. Often unnoticed and certainly underestimated the dredging community took time out on this evening to honor some of its own. Among the recipients were two members of the World Dredging Association (WODA) one from the Western Dredging Association (WEDA) the other from the Central Dredging Association (CEDA) both known for their work with environment and dredging.

The awards were adjudicated by a group of four esteemed dredging experts: Anna Csiti general manager of CEDA; Bert Visser cost estimator at the Netherlands Rijkswaterstaat; David Padman chair of the Eastern Dredging Association and Jurgen Sorgenfrei director of consulting IHS Mari-time and Trade.

Craig Vogt a long-time member of WEDA was singled out for his “Service to the Industry.” Vogt has been a staunch supporter and leader of WEDA with tackling the sometimes difficult areas where environment and dredging coexist. With a Master’s degree in environmental engineering Vogt has worked for and with the United States’ National Dredging Team the U.S. Environment Protection Agency the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers the International Maritime Organization and Environment Canada. He chaired the scientific group of the London Convention for four years and was able to bring between 30 and 40 countries together to control waste deposition at sea. He presently is a consultant and heads the WEDA Environment Commission. Vogt is the first recipient of the IHS Maritime & Trade “Com-mendation for Services to the Dredging and Port Construction Industry.” 

In his acceptance speech delivered via video Vogt expressed his deep appreciation for this recognition. But he laughed as he elaborated his thanks saying “An award for Service to the Industry? For 37 years I worked at the EPA [US Environmental Protection Agency] protecting our waterways and oceans. What will my colleagues at EPA think has Craig gone over to the dark side?”. He is of course referring to the sometimes frayed nerves of combining dredging projects with the strict U.S. environmental regulations. “But no” he continued “my EPA colleagues know that what I try to do is get things done in a rational environmentally protective efficient manner. In my position at the National Dredging Team which I chaired for 15 years I tried to bring all the federal agencies together to cooperate also with the state regulators.” He remarked with some satisfaction “We’ve come a long way since the deadlocked mudlocked days in the 1980s and 90s. Over the last 20 years we’ve made great progress in communicating. Bringing in the regulators the academics the industry the port the consultants the stakeholders. Certainly this has made things better. I believe you can get dredging projects accomplished in a timely efficient manner and also meet environmental goals. I think the lessons to be learned are the importance of communication collaboration building relation-ships and not to forget the science of technology.”

Another recipient well known in the dredg-ing community and associations was Anders Jensen. Jensen is group manager of Survey and Monitoring Coastal and Estuarine at the Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) in Copenhagen Den-mark. During his 31-year-career Jensen has made numerous contributions to the dredging industry and to CEDA including serving as CEDA’s president for eight years from 2007 to 2015. For this reason he was presented with the first “CEDA Lifetime Achievement Award” for his services to CEDA and the industry. 

According to current CEDA President Polite Laboyrie the CEDA Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual who has had a significant long-term impact on the field of dredging in his or her professional career. The winner has also made an important contribution to the advancement of CEDA and continues to be professionally active. The CEDA Board of Di-rectors had the honor of choosing Anders Jensen as the winner and as Laboyrie acknowledged “with many eminent members the choice was a difficult one.” 

Anna Csiti general manager of CEDA had the privilege of presenting the award on behalf of the CEDA Board. In doing this she acknowledged that ”the board valued Jensen’s outstanding and enthusiastic contribution to CEDA’s work the vast amount of knowledge and extensive experience he brought to the organization on all aspects of dredging and the commitment and motivation he has shown during his long-term involvement in CEDA.”

 Jensen himself thanked the group for the award and expressed his commitment to CEDA: “As a truly independent association for the broad-based dredging community and associated stake-holders CEDA has an essential role as provider of objective dredging knowledge… I will certainly remain involved in CEDA and will do my best to help in its important work.” 

Jensen is credited with playing a key role in the development and implementation of ‘feed-back monitoring’ for the Øresund Fixed Link project in the 1990s a bridge-tunnel construction that links Denmark and Sweden took seven years to build and has had a positive impact on the economies of both countries. It continues today to be a model project for environmentally friendly dredging. The principles developed during this game-changing project are now used worldwide. Jensen added “I am very grateful for this award. My work for CEDA since 2001 has been very rewarding in itself. I thank all the fantastic CEDA colleagues and friends from all over Europe and abroad with whom I have worked to collect and promote high quality knowledge of dredging and the environment.”