Editor’s Award

Bam Mott MacDonald JV
Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme

The Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme demonstrates geotechnical innovation and value engineering, consideration of sustainability and safety and provides resilience to existing infrastructure and new developments in the city for the next 100 years. The project combines many different solutions including moveable weirs that generate water storage capacity when lowered the day before a storm, dredging of river constrictions, a Temporary Storage Reservoir, low height walls in the city with glass panels to maintain aesthetics, earth levees in the rural suburbs, strengthening of buildings included listed structures, raising bridges, passive seepage drains and a pumping station and Natural Flood Management measures. These solutions all contribute to the flood protection and provide overall enhancement of 19km of riverside to the public and ecology. This project also ‘enables’ 300 acres of development land in ‘South Bank’, one of Europe’s biggest regeneration programmes, to generate £500M investment, 35,000 new jobs and 8,000 new homes.