THE EXPANSION
According to the terms of the fixed- price contract, the consortium has 1,883 days (269 weeks) to deliver the project from the commencement date, August 25, 2009. If GUPC delivers the project ahead of time, the ACP is committed to pay the consortium a bonus of $215,000 per day, up to $50m. On the other hand, the ACP will deduct $300,000 per day up to $54m (roughly six months) if GUPC incurs any delays. If the project runs late, which is neither in the ACP’s nor in the consortium’s plans, the contractor will lose the opportunity to make this money [$50m].
On both the Atlantic and Pacific side, the lock construction sites are changing by the day with trucks roaming and huge cranes sitting at the bottom of the future locks’ chambers. The gigantic cranes at peak season [mid 2012] will multiply to 27 cranes on each site with the task of being the conductors for placing concrete at the same time in the three chambers.
In October 2010, a team comprising ACP and GUPC representatives travelled to Lyon, France, to visit the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône, which has built and tested a model of the locks’ hydraulic systems. ‘The results were excellent and the designer has incorporated the improvements in the lock design,’ says Aleman.
The expansion programme still has a few minor contracts to call to tender in the coming months to complete its suit of contracts.
That includes calling a tender for new submersible hydraulic cylinders for Gatun Locks upper level gates and Pedro Miguel Lock gates. These will replace the present cylinders, which were not built for submerged operation
A 1.8km long backfilled cellular cofferdam water barrier will create the farthest part of the access channel’s eastern bank and separate Miraflores Lake from the new channel.
and will be subject to this condition when the level of Gatun Lake is raised by 45cm. ‘There will be other small contracts to be tendered, but that of the hydraulic cylinders’ is the most important to come,’ says Quijano. To support the raising of the level of Gatun Lake there is other work that needs to be accomplished in the present locks, such as the sealing of the upper hinging mechanism and the gates upper skirt that supports the walkways. Two taller maintenance caissons for the Gatun spillway were fabricated in Canada to accommodate the higher lake operating level.
These are required to perform maintenance in the dry to the taller gate bodies once they are all modified to operate at 45cm higher Gatun Lake. The extension of the spillway gates will be done mostly in-house, by the ACP’s industrial facilty, explains Quijano. Because of the new elevation of Gatun Lake, the spillway will operate 45cm
above its present level of 26.7mtr. Gatun Lake will be at fullest level of 27.1mtr by the end of 2014.
GUPC is required to excavate around 40m cu mtr for the construction of the Atlantic and Pacific locks, almost as much as the total dry excavations of nearly 47m cu mtr needed for the Pacific access channel. The ACP has awarded four dry excavations contracts totalling $371m to dig the approach to the future Pacific lock complex. The first three were awarded to Constructora Urbana, CUSA (PAC 1), the Mexican-Panamanian Cilsa Minera (PAC 2) and Costa Rica’s Meco (PAC 3). The first three of four dry excavations contracts have been completed.
The final and largest dry excavation contract (PAC 4), was awarded to the Mexican, Spanish and Costa Rican joint venture ICA- FCC-MECO. The $267m PAC 4 is the second-largest and most complex project after the new locks – representing a key portion of the expansion’s new access channel linking the new Pacific locks with Gaillard Cut, the narrowest stretch of the Panama Canal. This contract calls for the installation of a 1.8km long backfilled cellular cofferdam water barrier, which along with the 2.3km Borinquen dam, will create the farthest part of the access channel’s eastern bank and separate Miraflores Lake from the new channel.
PAC 4 had been slow in starting, thus falling slightly behind the base programme, but has made tremendous progress and is now at 44% of its execution, achieving record excavation production and completing the cofferdam,‘ says Quijano. The consortium in charge of PAC 4 has already excavated 10m cu mtr and [its] companies had been very efficient,
Cofferdam water barrier
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