Panama

Between 2009 and 2016 Sacyr led the carrying out of one of the largest engineering projects in history, the Third Set of Locks on the Panama Canal. This new transit way, parallel to the old Canal, has exceeded the expectations for it and is capable of moving some 2,000 ships a year.

The new locks project is complex not only for of its spectacular dimensions: three chambers on each side of the locks, each 427 metres long, 55 metres wide and 18.3 metres deep, with 4.5 million m³ of structural concrete poured, 220,000 tons of steel reinforcement used... More than 10,000 workers of 40 different nationalities worked on this mega-works, with great expertise at all levels.

The challenges presented by the location, from a technical, orographic, geological and climatic point of view, were also enormous. It was necessary to set great challenges in the models of response to seismic reactions, the selection of the best materials and their combination, and the most suitable, efficient and sustainable structural design.

Equally complex was the design, manufacture, transfer and installation of the gates (16 in total), of enormous dimensions and requiring millimetric precision in their placement. A project of tremendous technical complexity owing to its enormous dimensions and the great amounts of innovation required to design and execute the best solution.