There is no shortage of ITprofessionals that have laboured through an implementation and felt worthy of an award after investing months in a large scale project.

And the 2006 Consensus IT Professional Awards did just that last December by awarding seven talented tech executives for outstanding IT projects.

Endorsed by Hudson IT&T and the Australian Computer Society (ACS), Hewlett Packard's Asia Pacific vice president Steve McWhirter won the coveted IT Professional of the Year award for his efforts spanning a 21-year IT career.

McWhirter began his career at telco provider Olivetti Systems before tackling several high profile roles at IBM Australia. This included taking charge of the Lotus development team before becoming Red Hat Asia Pacific vice president.

Now at HP, McWhirter won the award for his contribution to the IT industry for more than two decades.

Richard Deck, the CIO for eyewear manufacturer Luxotti, won the Major Project award for restructuring major backbone systems at energy provider AGL.

Deck was charged with integrating and separating eight mission-critical billing systems, covering more than 3 million customers, from disparate customer and common data models.

He implemented an immediate short term fix, while formulating an extended strategy to minimize unnecessary costs in AGL's back-office and call centres.

Another Major Project award winner was Financial Network Services retail systems manager Cecilia Gagarin, who set a world record in the BANCS benchmark project for banking systems performance.

Her success in the project bestowed the bank with the world's fastest core-banking system and set a new standard in the field.

The ITP Service to the Industry award went to academic and prolific writer Bhuvan Unhelkar for his work on topics ranging from mobile computing to software development.

Unhelkar, who is also an ACS fellow, has written more than 10 books on the IT industry.

Software Metrics founder Pam Morris and Software Quality Association executive member Ted Smillie took out the ITP Lifetime Achievement award for their "lifetime contribution to the IT industry".

While Morris was commended for her internationally recognized promotion and application of software measurement, Smille was awarded for his "countless hours" invested into bolstering the quality of the software industry through committees, article writing and forum contribution.

Simon Malian was presented with the ITP Community Award for his contribution to charity organization the Malian Foundation.

The foundation offers free management and open-source software tools assisting. Malian has provided volunteer management, fundraising, strategic planning and donor relations to non-profit organizations across the globe.