ADVERSITY often brings out the best in us, and contractors are no different in that respect. While 2010 was again challenging for them, builders and civil engineers have continued to show the worth of their contribution to everyone’s lives.

The most prominent example is the second Tyne Tunnel, which is ready to accept the first traffic through by February – a job delivered on time, improving travel times for commuters and truckers, and boosting economies on both sides of the river.

The £35m investment to improve Tyne and Wear Metro – phase one of a £385m spend over the next decade – will further benefit our industry, taking in not only rolling stock but also track, power lines, signalling and stations.

Often, achievements are hidden from sight. In South Shields, the sinking of a precast concrete tank 25m (82ft) in diameter and 12m (39ft) deep has uplifted spirits in homes on the old Harton Colliery site.

Gone is the likelihood of further flooding up to a metre deep from a failed sewerage system.

Then there’s the flyover junction removing a notorious accident blackspot from the A66 near Durham Tees Valley Airport. There, over 15 years, about 13% of the many accidents had brought death or serious injury.

Sustainability brings pleasure too – as with the award-winning Saltholme Visitor Centre at Port Clarence, Middlesbrough. There, 1,000 acres of former industrial land have been transformed into the North of England’s largest created wetland, visited by 100,000 nature lovers – treble the number expected.

These widely varied benefits to our society were provided by three firms – Seymour of Hartlepool, Interserve Project Services of Stockton, and Lumsden and Carroll of Bowburn, Durham.

They brought the firms honours in the recent Project of the Year Awards run by the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North East), whose members seek to advance industry excellence.

Such projects need outstanding engineering skills. To help perpetuate these, the association sponsors young apprentices, having done so even before the present and previous governments’ schemes.

Former professional footballer Rob Herbert is the association’s North East Trainee of the Year and Trainee Civil Engineer of the Year. He changed career for better long-term prospects, and became a trainee site engineer with Volker Stevin at Gateshead.

Then there’s Ben Luther and Danny Davison. Ben, 21, of West Allotment, Newcastle, was Apprentice of the Year for his stoneworking at Classic Masonry of North Shields.

Dan, 24, from Ponteland, and working for Balfour Beatty in Newcastle, is the region’s Most Promising Trainee Quantity Surveyor.

Admirable firms, admirable skills, admirable young people. And, given the Government’s recognition now of the economic value that infrastructure development brings, we hope all these talents will be in greater demand during 2011.

Douglas Kell is director of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (North East)