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A four-year project to upgrade air quality control and improve plant efficiency at Alliant Energy’s Ottumwa Generating Station accomplished all objectives during the same 76-day outage, with results that exceeded expectations.

Wisconsin Power & Light Co.’s largest coal-fired powerplant, Columbia Energy Center, with two subcritical units over 500 MW, was required to bring its air emissions into compliance with federal standards.

To replicate the natural habitat of Japanese macaques, Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo built an 850-gallon hot spring, 1,250-gallon flowing stream and live and artificial trees in a 7,400-sq-ft exhibit enclosed in stainless-steel, woven-wire mesh.

Despite a damaging tornado that rocked the construction site, the $62-million “Airport Experience” renovation project restored Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, a historic mid-century aviation icon designed in 1956 by architect Minoru Yamasaki, to its original splendor.

A 19-story, 350,000-sq-ft hotel designed to achieve LEED Gold certification was built adjacent to the Potawatomi Casino, linked with a pedestrian connector.

Chicago’s financial and construction markets were devastated in the Great Recession, so the completion of work on one of its prominent victims is reason enough to celebrate.

ENR Midwest’s 2015 Best Projects awards display the vast range, creativity, ingenuity and skill of the engineering and construction industry.

Rural proposals do particularly well, accounting for a record 43% of the successful projects.