Rehabilitation of the Panamerican Highway

Client: Ministry of Public Works
Designer: Ministry of Public works

Pan- American highway was built in the late 1950´s and for the past four decades served as the only continuous artery for vehicular traffic between most cities and towns in the country, as well as the link between the Isthmus of Panama and the North and South American Continents

Features:

  • Removal and replacement of 32,550 m2 of concrete pavements slabs.
  • Installation of 231,000m2 of asphalt pavement.
  • Rehabilitation of three highway bridges, including repair and replacement of structural steel members, repair and or replacement of bearings, and sandblasting and painting of structural steel.
  • Construction of 3.5Km of new passing lanes.

San Pablo Bridge

Client: Ministry of Public Works
Designer: Ministry of Public works/ Parsons Brickenhoff

The original cable suspension bridge over the San Pablo River was built in 1913 and, long before the end of century, had become a bottleneck on the vital road link between Soná and Santiago, the capital of the important cattle raising province of Veraguas. It was not until 1997, however, that the Ministry of Public works contracted its replacement: a 170 m long by 12 m wide, variable cross-section posttensioned trapezoidal concrete box girder with an 80m long center span, constructed by the cast –in-place balanced cantilever method, with the use of traveling forms.

Principal construction features included:

  • Reinforced mass concrete pier footing on steel H piles, resting several meters below low water level, and requiring the construction of temporary sheet pile cofferdams.
  • Installation and operation of a concrete batch plant to produce the 1,850 m3 of high performance concrete required for this projectts.
  • Installation of 74,000 kg of pre-stressing steel, using 400 T multistrand tensioning jacks
  • Four 200 T load test to ASTM D1143 standards
  • 70,500 m3 of embankment construction at new bridge approaches plus 2km of new asphalt approach roads
  • Disassembly, removal and storage of the 85 year old, 200 m long steel suspension bridge

Santa Maria Bridge

Client: Ministry of Public Works
Designer: Ministry of Public works

The Santa Maria river is one of the largest in the country, with fast currents and unpredictable powerful surges. We were contracted to replace the 70 year old steel and timber, single-lane suspension bridge, with a modern, imposing box girder structure.
The new bridge is a 130m long by 9 m wide constant cross section postensioned trapezoidal concrete box girder, constructed by the cast-in-place balanced cantilever method with the use of traveling forms. The center span is 60m long and the two end spans are 35 long

The project included:

  • Reinforced mass concrete footings cast 7m into rock, below the river bed. Their construction required the temporary installation of sheet pile cofferdams.
  • Installation and operation of a concrete batch plant at the jobsite to produce the 1,450 m3 of high performance concrete required for this project.
  • Installation of 29,000 kg of pre-stressing steel with the use of up to 400 ton multistrand posttensioning jacks
  • 27,000 m3 of embankment construction for the bridge approach plus 1.2 km of asphalt approach roads.
  • Dissasembly and removal of the existing 70 year old, 150 m long steel suspension bridge

Civil works for the combined cycle thermoelectric plant.

Location: Bahia Las Minas Colon, Panama
Client: National Institute of Hydraulic and Electric Resources
Prime Contractor: Ansaldo Energia Panama, S.A.
Designer: ICA/Flour Daniel, Inc.

To improve the efficiency of one of the country´s few thermoelectric plants, the national power agency contracted Ansaldo Energia de Panama to construct a combined cycle power plant at the Nueve de Enero generating station, located on the Atlantic coast. We were contracted to complete the civil works associated with this upgrade. In addition to foundations and other concrete structures, we were later asked to transport and erect most of the heavy mechanical items, including steel chimneys over 85m high and the setting of 140 metric ton heat exchangers

Principal construction features included:

  • Construction of 40m x 25m cofferdam to provide work area for pumphouse
  • Dredging of fresh water intake channel
  • Designing methodology to slide 120 m boilers into position
  • The setting of chimney stack units 85m above grade