eThekwini Municipality shines at the 2025 Municipal Engineering Excellence Awards
The eThekwini Municipality received several awards at the municipal engineering excellence awards.
Image: Leon Lestrade / Independent Newspapers
The eThekwini Municipality has walked away with top honours at the 2025 Municipal Engineering Excellence Awards, earning recognition for three major infrastructure projects that improve access, safety, and climate resilience in communities across Durban.
The awards, co-hosted by the Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa (IMESA) and Consulting Engineers South Africa (CESA), were presented in East London on Wednesday at the opening of the annual IMESA Conference and Exhibition. More than 700 engineers and municipal officials attended the event, which celebrates innovation in municipal infrastructure every two years.
EThekwini’s Engineering Unit won the Community Upliftment and Job Creation category for constructing four reinforced concrete pedestrian bridges in the Amaoti area of Inanda.
IMESA president Geoff Tooley said the project was born from the devastation of the April 2022 floods. “The Amaoti community has suffered repeated devastation from flooding,” he said. “One major challenge was that during the floods, the river widened and destroyed the existing 12-metre steel pedestrian bridge, leaving residents vulnerable and cut off from essential services.”
Tooley said the municipality’s “Building Back Better” strategy guided the construction of the new bridges, each designed to withstand future extreme weather events. “These new structures ensure safe and permanent access for the community,” he said.
In the Environment and Climate Change category, EThekwini and the City of Cape Town shared first place for their joint “Climate Resilient Sanitation Demonstration Project”, which provides non-sewered sanitation systems in informal settlements.
Tooley described it as “an innovative approach to water-efficient sanitation systems… designed to recover water, energy and nutrients while reducing environmental contamination.” The project is supported by the Gates Foundation, the Water Research Commission, and the Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation.
EThekwini also won the Engineering Excellence in Structures and Civils category for the Shallcross/Blundell Road Bridge, Africa’s first fully integral bridge with a partial curved layout.
Tooley said it “successfully balanced the economic needs of the local community with environmental considerations, delivering sustainable, low-maintenance and elegant infrastructure.”
Tooley said this year’s awards continued IMESA’s more than 40-year tradition of celebrating “innovation, design and our profession’s contribution to community upliftment, sustainability and the engineering field.”