A product specifically
designed to go unnoticed has been brought very much to the attention
of the public.
CINTEC International based in Newport, Wales, UK, with
offices in Newcastle Australia, Ottawa Canada, India and Washington
DC USA, is a winner at this year's prestigious Queen's Award for
Innovation. Specializing in Bridge and Building reinforcements,
CINTEC has developed an anchor system which is installed
entirely within the fabric of the structure, leaving no visible
change to the outward appearance, a feature particularly liked by
heritage authorities. Royal endorsement for CINTEC goes back
beyond the most recent accolade, as CINTEC was previously
used in both Windsor Castle, following the fire of 1992, and also
for restoration work to Buckingham Palace. CINTEC has also
been used in the original Australian Parliament building, Blair
House, part of the White House complex in Washington DC, a former
President of the USA's ancestral home, the Canadian Parliament
buildings and Rideau Hall, Ottawa, the Canadian Vice Regal
Residence.
The Queen's Award is in recognition of CINTEC's highly innovative
bridge strengthening system known as Archtec. It allows masonry arch
bridges to be quickly upgraded to the desired load bearing
capability and in a manner that often requires no closure of the
bridge to traffic.
Since the first Archtec project in 1998, the system has become
highly popular with state and local authority bridge engineers. To
date some seventy bridges have been upgraded with Archtec in the
United States of America, Australia and Europe. CINTEC has
already won four coveted awards: The Australian Engineering
Excellence award for the conservation of Red Bridge Tasmania and in
Great Britain two Historic Bridge awards to encourage excellence and
innovation in historic bridge conservation and the Engineering
Council's award for environmental advantages using the Archtec
method to rehabilitate masonry bridges.
