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“I take my hat off to those who built the original canal. The projects are comparable in some ways but the times are so different. They didn’t have the technology; they had to overcome huge sanitation problems; people were buried by slides; the explosives they used weren’t stable,’’ Quijano said. “And there really wasn’t any infrastructure in Panama at the time — just a small port and a railway built in the 1850s.’’
This time around, there’s a lot more equipment and far fewer people involved and more water-saving features are built into the design, said Ilya Espino de Marotta, engineering and programs management executive vice president for the expansion.
Each day late equals $300K fine
The canal authority had hoped all work on the expansion, including six months of testing of the new locks, would be done by October 2014, the 100th anniversary of the canal opening. But the consortium building the $3.2 billion locks says a 2015 delivery date is more likely, de Marotta said.
Still, Quijano expects water will begin flowing into the new locks in September 2014, with testing beginning a month later.
Now, the onus is on the consortium building the locks, which is led by companies from Belgium and Spain. Each day the project is late will result in a $300,000 penalty for the consortium with a cap of $54 million.
“It hasn’t been an easy task, but we may recover some of the lost time,’’ Quijano said.
The good news is that the expansion, which has involved 228 contractors to date, is still on budget.
Although the canal is nearing its centennial, scheduled renovations have meant the same gates and locks built near the turn of the last century are still in good working order.
“So long as we have continuous rounds of renovation,’’ Quijano said, “we’ll have these locks for the next 100 years.’’
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