United piled on the pressure after the break, but were unable to make a breakthrough.
"It takes us one step nearer to our dream of championship football," said Adkins.
"It has been a great day for this club playing in front of a capacity crowd in a league game for the first time since we moved to Glanford Park nearly 20 years ago.
"I was a bit disappointed with our first-half performance but we changed one or two things round during the break.
"It was important to get back on level terms so early in the second half and we could then well have gone on and won it - with Sharp missing the sort of header he usually puts away.
"It was a good point for us against one of our main rivals, and we have just got to make sure we stay focused and take one game at a time to try and realise our promotion dream."
Forest still trail the Iron by 10 points, but although there are just nine games to play Colin Calderwood insists his side can still catch Scunthorpe.
"We were the better team in the first half and deserved our lead," he said.
"It was disappointing to concede an equaliser so soon in the second half and then we did have to weather a bit of a storm.
"But at least we have come here and stopped Scunthorpe's winning runs I still believe that we can catch them.
"To do that though we have to start putting together some wins ourselves to put them under pressure."