Post-Sandy Berkeley Park Project Up For National Award

BERKELEY, NJ — The engineering firm that built the restored John C. Bartlett Jr. County Park is up for a national award. T&M Associates earned the Best Small Project Award in Engineering News-Record for the park's construction after Superstorm Sandy.

The Berkeley Island project will compete in the national Best of the Best projects competition later this year.

The ENR Regional Best Projects Awards program honors the best construction projects and the companies that designed and built them in the United States, including Puerto Rico. Projects compete in 20 specialized categories, from airports to sports and entertainment.

The New York region is open to contractors, designers and project owners in New York and New Jersey. An independent jury of industry leaders in design and construction review and judge entries using five criteria including safety, innovation and teamwork.

The park was devastated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and sustained significant damage to its infrastructure and amenities. There was a great loss of shoreline and severe erosion.

The park has many new amenities, including Ocean County's first spray park. Other features include a revitalized 100-foot fishing/crabbing pier, bait cutting stations with water service, restrooms, gazebos, a covered pavilion, a playground, horseshoe pits, shuffleboard courts and a boardwalk.

The project team endured several major challenges, including reacquiring eroded land from the state, a tedious permitting process, developing innovative designs to reduce erosion and damage from future storms, and a construction schedule hampered by a long, cold winter with four Nor'easters. But the park was able to open in time for Memorial Day Weekend in 2018, as planned.

T&M Associates received the Grand Honor Award in the Non-Transportation Project category by the American Council of Engineering Companies of New Jersey (ACEC-NJ) earlier this year. Read more: Firm Earns Award For Post-Sandy Berkeley Island Park Project

Correction: T&M Associates is an engineering firm that does construction management, but not a construction firm.

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