To provide firms additional time to prepare their submissions, we've extended the submission deadline for ENR Northwest's Best Projects Competition to August 3. As readers may know, the annual program honors outstanding achievements in design and construction in categories ranging from health care, higher education and highways to water, energy and industrial plants.

For newcomers, here's how the competition works: Projects first compete in one of 10 regional contests, with an expert panel of design and construction professionals evaluating projects on the basis of teamwork, quality, safety, innovation and community impact. Winning projects for each of the competition's 20 categories will be profiled in regional editions of ENR. One project in each region also will be named Project of the Year and receive extensive feature coverage in the same issue.

ENR Northwest will honor winners in its Nov. 23 edition. Winning projects in all 10 regions also will be recognized at awards events this fall.

And that's just the beginning.

Winners of regional competitions then will compete against one another in ENR's national Best of the Best Projects 2014 competition. There’s no need to re-enter. Winners will be profiled in the national edition of ENR in early 2016.

To get started, click here.

You can view last year's honorees by clicking here.