Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Prix Can-Am Amity Award

Don Hayley  

This award was established by the ASCE in 1972 by the initiative and endowment of James A. Vance. The objective of the Can-Am Amity award is to give recognition to those civil engineers who have made outstanding and unusual contribution toward the advancement of professional relationships between the civil engineers of the United States and Canada.

For his many years of exemplary Geotechnical Engineering in the north-country and the presentation and publication of many papers on Cold Regions Engineering for foundations, pipelines, railroads and mine development in the northern USA and Canada, Don Hayley is the recipient of the 2011 Can-Am Amity Award.

Don Hayley is a founding partner of EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd., now a Tetra Tech Company, where he has been a consulting engineer for 43 years with the firm. His focus throughout this period has been developing design and construction practice for northern regions where permafrost, snow and ice are particular challenges. His work has focused on northern infrastructure, oil and gas exploration and mining. He has applied his technical knowledge across  the entire northern hemisphere by active participation in major projects in Canada and Alaska, mining at Svalbard, Norway, oil fields in Siberia and exploration platforms in the Beaufort Sea.

Don received his B.Eng. (Civil) from Carleton University in 1966, followed by an M.Sc. (Civil-Geotechnical) in 1968 from University of Alberta. He was appointed a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 2002 and received the 2005 Julian C. Smith Medal from the EIC for contributions to the development of Canada. He has played an active role in support of permafrost research in Canada as Chairman of the Canadian National Committee for the International Permafrost Association and subsequently was a member of the Executive of the International Permafrost Association from 2003 to 2008. He has presented keynote papers on northern engineering at a number of international and national conferences. He spent five years as a Director of the Canadian Geotechnical Society and assisted with organizing the Cold Regions Division. Mr. Hayley received the Roger Brown Memorial Award from CGS for contributions to permafrost science and engineering in 1991, and delivered the R.M. Hardy lecture at the annual conference in 1998 and the Cross Canada Lecture Tour in April, 2010.

More recently, Don has developed recognized expertise in design and construction of winter roads and roads over floating ice. He is frequently called upon to develop improved procedures for managing the hazard of working on ice and directed the technical content for a new guideline published in Alberta in 2009. He has contributed his expertise to improving worker safety on floating ice by assessing the causes of ice failure incidents in Manitoba, Alberta and Northwest Territories.