Er. Madhav C Bhide
Founder & Hon. Director General IIBE
One of the missions of I.I.B E. is the dissemination of knowledge to hundreds & thousands of bridge engineers spread throughout India. India being sub-continent I had observed that even in one Railway like Central Railway, an engineer in Solapur would not be aware of technological developments, projects completed with problems & challenges in Bhusaval or Jhansi. Further many bridge engineers at lower supervisory levels had mastered expertise in many aspects of Bridge Engineering due to their long experience in the field. I, therefore, started organizing International & National Seminars on various aspects & facets of Bridge Engineering. I.I.B.E. has organized so far 12 International & 28 National Seminars in various cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Kochi, Shillong, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Guwahati etc.Thus I.I.B.E. has published total 29,200 pages of Technical Literature dedicated to various facets & aspects of Bridge Engineering.
I approached L&T and other companies to give a donation. Two great engineers late S.B. Joshi and late J.G. Bodhe who can be called DOYENS OF INDIAN BRIDGE ENGINEERING were Hon. Fellows of I.I.B.E. and we wanted to do something in their memory. We, therefore, made those Awards in their & L&T name. The awards were big trophies in brass depicting Bridge Foundation, Pier, Bridge Girder and a Circular plaque on top containing the circular LOGO OF I.I.B.E We had three sizes (I) 16 inches high, (II) 14 inches and (III) 12 inches high ). Our Jt. Secretary since the founding of I.I.B.E., young engineer Atul Bhobe greatly helped me in finalizing the details of the trophies.
Each year I wrote hundreds of D.O. letters to top-level authorities, engineers of Zonal Railways, State PWDs, Municipal Corporations, Bridge Construction & Consulting companies to send their entries with all relevant details. There was no fee for the entry. We went on increasing/changing the categories to reward good work in various types of bridges.
It was a herculean task for me to follow up with several reminders, personal meetings, telephone calls to get adequate entries from all over India. We held 10 Competitions from 1994 to 2009. Each award function was attended by hundreds of Engineers and I used to make it as glittering as possible followed by Cocktail-Dinner used to bring out a special issue of "BRIDGE ENGINEERING" CONTAINING FULL PAGE 4 Colour photograph of all rewarded bridges and their technical legend on a full page opposite the photo all printed on Art Paper. I used to send and distribute hundreds of copies of this magazine in my visits in India and abroad and thus spread the GLORY & ROMANCE OF INDIAN BRIDGE ENGINEERING.