EVERETT, MA : The American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) has named Howard Stein Hudson (HSH) as a winner of their 2020 Bronze Engineering Excellence Award for their work on the Traffic Mitigation Project at the Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, MA.

The 2020 Engineering Excellence Awards were recently announced and will be celebrated at the 2021 ACEC/MA Engineering Excellence and Awards Gala. The awards celebrate innovation, ingenuity, and excellence in engineering achievement.

Encore Boston Harbor is a $2.4 billion project that includes a five-star resort featuring a casino floor, luxury hotel rooms, and retail, restaurant, and meeting spaces. Situated on 33 acres along the Mystic River, the project was built on a former chemical plant site after extensive environmental cleanup led by Wynn, MA LLC.

HSH designed mitigation at Sullivan Square that improved bus operations and connectivity. The design enhanced station access, provided additional bus operational capacity by adding a third curb of bus berths, and improved safety and accessibility for MBTA customers.

Other transportation improvements included significant improvements to sidewalks, accessibility, and bicycle infrastructure, such as separated bike lanes in several locations.

HSH planned and designed a menu of traffic mitigation solutions to combat the anxiety as to how traffic would move into, out of, and around Encore Boston Harbor that allows for public enjoyment of the waterfront with paths that provide access to the harbor. HSH had a true partnership amongst the local, state, and Encore team that allowed a bold multimodal approach; traffic has been more than manageable with patrons taking advantage of bus shuttles, ferries, and bicycles, lessening impacts on the roads and ensuring public safety is never compromised.

HSH is a firm that provided transportation engineering and planning, construction services and land development and permitting. Headquartered in Boston they have offices in Chelmsford and Worcester.

“The Engineering Excellence Awards program recognizes engineering firms for projects that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value and ingenuity,” said Jenn Howe, President of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts and Principal and Vice President at SMMA, Symmes Maini & McKee Associates. “Entrants are rated by an independent panel of judges from the architectural community, the construction industry, academia, the media, and the public sector on the basis of uniqueness and originality; future value to the profession and perception by the public; social, economic and sustainable development considerations; complexity; and successful fulfillment of the client/owner’s need, including schedule and budget. We congratulate them and thank them for their contributions to improving the quality of our everyday lives.”