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It鈥檚 an obvious pun, but our winner really has built its success on strong foundations. But not just any foundations 鈥� at its Bankside 123 project in central London it installed the highest load-bearing foundations in existence anywhere in the UK using its own unique Cemloc system. In doing so it slashed 拢1m and three months鈥� construction time from the overall 1.2million ft2 office project. Cementation is keen to spread the word of what is possible and is a key member of an EU-wide team examining the potential for the re-use of existing foundations. As part of this it installed fibre-optic devices in the new foundations at its Bankside scheme to see how they perform over time.

Cementation Foundations Skanska shows how it鈥檚 done on the Bankside 123 scheme in London

Runners-up

Haran Glass

It all began with a phone call to an industrial estate in Glasgow and ended with the installation of the world鈥檚 largest glass sculpture at the headquarters of General Motors in Detroit, USA. Arup had said that Haran was the 鈥渙nly company in the world鈥� capable of designing and building the 15m-long and 7.4m-high sculpture, but the challenges were immense. How to transport a 50-tonne load of glass safely from Glasgow to Detroit? How to deal with an unexpected moving wall once it arrived there? Haran dealt with it all and has since been awarded a $3.5m contract to build an entirely glass public amphitheatre in Times Square, New York.

Lakesmere

By now most construction companies have realised that the road to profitability is only going to be built if you are first prepared to pay for it. Seems obvious enough perhaps, but roofing and cladding contractor Lakesmere has absorbed this to such an extent that a quarter of its 151 staff are CAD designers and its training budget has grown 55% to 拢310,000 since 2003. As a result Lakesmere has worked on some of the most high-profile projects in recent times: the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth and the impressive curved aluminium-clad Liverpool South Parkway Interchange.

Mivan

As luxury projects go, this scheme in London鈥檚 Knightsbridge would be up there with the fit-out of an exclusive ocean liner. It鈥檚 just as well then that Mivan has that sort of nautical installation experience because it was called on to co-ordinate the delivery and installation of bespoke limestone shower trays from Italy, Spain and Turkey, then perfectly fit 2500 specially finished sheets of wall panelling, and manage 328 subcontracting staff over two years. Not an easy job, but as the project architect has raved about Mivan鈥檚 鈥渢op-class manufacturing skills鈥�, it鈥檚 safe to assume that it kept the whole project ship-shape.