Autodesk AEC Excellence Awards Celebrates a Decade of Design and Construction Innovation

We have a big milestone to celebrate. The AEC Excellence Awards turns 10 this year!

Over the past decade, we’ve seen more than 1,100 entries from over 60 countries. More than 80 awards have been given to celebrate and honor the people and achievements for the best building and infrastructure design or construction projects—large and small.

We’re proud of the AEC Excellence Awards community and every project submitted. Last year we honored 11 incredible projects demonstrating adaptability and resilience amid the uncertainty of the global COVID-19 pandemic, including the design for a sustainable, self-sufficient biodiverse human-made island in Norway, a new mental health building adapted for emergency COVID-19 support in two weeks, and New Zealand’s first completely underground railway line.

Ten years ago, building information modeling (BIM) was still in an adoption phase—used mostly by building design teams. Today, we see BIM used across the entire project lifecycle—from design to construction to operations. It’s the digital foundation for the structures we create and the most efficient path to creating an accurate, high-value digital twin.

As the industry embraced BIM, many other emerging technologies have become integral to the way AEC firms work. Remember when virtual reality seemed so futuristic? Now it’s being used in the office, in meetings, and on the construction site to collaborate and visualize project details in context.

Technology sparked many breakthroughs in the AEC industry over the years. BIM evolved to become a process to realize the value of data across the full project lifecycle with more innovative workflows, cloud-based platforms, sustainable outcomes, multi-discipline collaboration, and more. The new opportunities unlocked by data and a common data environment are driving even better outcomes for your projects and your firms from the very beginning. There has never been a more exciting time to be a part of the AEC industry and we’re honored to partner with so many of you on this journey.

The rapid evolution taking place in the industry is the reason why we’ve decided to advance the AEC Excellence Awards program. This year, rather than accepting new applications, we intend to celebrate many of the amazing people and projects we’ve seen over the years. From some of the world’s most iconic buildings to complex civil infrastructure projects, many of the innovators and projects honored continue to digitally transform and be best-in-class examples of how firms around the globe drive the AEC industry forward. We look forward to sharing these stories with you again and to spotlight new stories as well.

The AEC Excellence Awards will be back in 2022 and bigger than ever! We look forward to sharing the details with you soon. In the meantime, join us as we look back and celebrate the innovators – our customers. Meet the people, projects, and companies in AEC who transformed the decade. Stay tuned for more from us throughout the year.