The Chinese certainly know how to build among many things bridges, and I am glad to see that  Panama has awarded more contracts to them.

After two proposals were disqualified and another participant withdrew, the consortium formed by two Chinese state construction companies won the tender to design and build the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal.

After Dragados Sucursal Panama, the company that had obtained the best qualification decided to withdraw from the contest, the road was paved for the consortium made up of the companies China State Construction Engineering Corporation LTD and China Railway Group Limited, to win the contest with a economic proposal of $1.42 billion and a score of 69,9%.

See details of the offers submitted.

According to the Price Report (Technical and Economic), published last Friday on the Panamacompra website, Consorcio Cuarto Puente CSCEC-CREC was disqualified from the process beforehand.

See also “Public works planned in Central America“

For its part, Consortium Astaldi – Daelim obtained a score of 46.6% in the evaluation of the technical proposal, but its economic proposal of $1.211 billion was disqualified for being “risky”, because it is outside the range of acceptance in relation to the reference price.

See information about the tender.

According to the Environmental Impact Study for the work, “… the project consists of the design and construction of a bridge that crosses the Panama Canal and its accesses and connections with the existing roads east and west of the Canal, located towards the North side of the existing Las Americas bridge. The main section of the bridge, which crosses the Canal, will be bow type made of steel with a slope of 4%.”

“… The length of the bridge abutments will be 840 meters, with a center span of 540 meters in length and the approach segments will measure 150 meters each (300 m). The clearance of the bridge over the water level of the canal is 75 meters. It will have three lanes of 3.65 meters in each direction (six lanes in total) for transit vehicles, and on the south side it will cross the tracks and facilities of the Metro Line 3 for which a 16 m wide strip has been reserved.“

See more details about the project here.