Panama: Repairments for Widening the Panama Canal to End in January


News from Panama / Tuesday, December 1st, 2015

leaks

The construction consortium now working on repairs to the recent problems detected in the Panama Canal expansion project, said they should be resolved in January 2016, informed Grupo Unidos por el Canal, SA (GUPC).
The leaks in the doorways of the locks by fissures are inspected and investigated separately and, similarly, their solution is designed for, once concluded that work, to continue with the electromechanical system tests emptying and filling said Authority Panama Canal (ACP).

In a joint meeting of ACP and contractor GUPC could not establish yet the date of official opening to commercial traffic of the extension of the inter-oceanic route, which will allow the crossing of merchant of larger size, called PostPanamax and carrying three times more containers compared with the current ones.

The manufacturer company informed that it maintains conversations with the subcontractors in charge of the design, who confirmed January as a finishing date for the reinforcement of the areas where the filtrations were detected, and it reiterated that the global advance of the work, is of 95 percent.

As this was found, they decided to reinforce six of the eight frames that has the project, works that consist on perforations to insert steel bars, said to the press Ilya Thorn, executive vice-president of Engineering and Administration of Programs of the ACP.

Although GUPC did not give its verdict of the causes of the problem, Thorn thinks that the flaw obeys a design error because it was necessary reinforcement steel in that specific area.

Disputes among the parts for the I mount to pay they elevated to three thousand 400 million dollars the birdcall of the building consortium for the design and execution of the sluices whose total value of contract was initially of three thousand 118 dollars. The technological originality of the Channel of Panama took it to figure among the seven marvels of the world civil engineering, a recognition to the result of who for more than 100 years they make to ascend and to lower the ships until or from the Lake Gatún that is to 27 meters above the level of the sea.

Under similar engineering principles of 1914, the new locks will add some varying attached only to modern techniques, mainly sliding doors, tubs of water recycling and crossing ships with the help of tugboats, without the use of locomotives pull from the ground.

In the floodgates, and a more flexible mechanism for opening and closing are maintenance facilities, in a sort of dry dock inside the niche where “saved” to give way to craft a mechanism tried anywhere in the world.
Source: Prensa Latina