Joe Adams, president for energy and industry at MWH Global, the lead firm in the canal's design consortium, points out that GUPC's bid on the design-build job was scored on both technical features and price. GUPC and its subconsultant CICP Consultores Internationales, which also includes California-based Tetra Tech and Netherlands-based Iv Groep, scored highest based on both technical merit and low price. GUPC's cost estimate was for a different design than other bidders on the project, Adams observes. "Some of the work we did on the alignment of where the canal would go allowed us to reduce the amount of materials to be excavated, and as a result, the scope was different than the scope that others were bidding," Adams says, adding that MWH will continue to support the contractor on the testing and commissioning ahead.

"We've come a long way," says Ilya R. Espinosa de Marotta, executive vice president for engineering and program management for the expansion project. The project started with dredging contracts. While the dredging was not "a piece of cake" due to running multiple contracts at one time, Marotta says this was a type of work "we were used to, compared to the locks. It went pretty much without hiccups." But the scope is vast. The original canal excavation dug out 200 million cu meters of soil, and this one is excavating 150 million cu m (ENR 7/23/12 p. 18). The new lane is using more concrete than the original: 4.4 million cu m compared to the original's 3.6 million cu m.

Marotta says the challenges ahead include completing a 2.3-kilometer-long, clay-core dam in the Pacific Access Channel by a consortium of ICA, FCC and MECO, which had problems grouting the foundation and dealing with the five or six different filters that had to be placed. "We are finally moving ahead with that one. It's looking good," she says. And in the locks, "we now have the big challenge of installing all the valves" for the lateral filling and emptying system, she adds. Korea's Hyundai is manufacturing the 152 valves. "These are huge steel structures," she says. Conduit valves, about 4 x 4 m, release water from the water-saving basins into the chamber. Culvert valves are used in the tunnels, allowing water to fill the chambers; between the two lock heads, valves equalize the water between the two gates. The valves are 6 x 8 m or 8 x 8 m to seal the tunnels, which are the same sizes.

Lessons Learned

Marotta also spoke about the lessons learned over the course of the program. "With engineering, there is always a solution. People are the challenge," she says. She recommends a formalized partnering kickoff and carrying over people who worked on the procurement to work on the project. "If people who came to work have never read the contract, that's not good," she notes. She believes consortium members should have "worked on at least one other project together." Marotta also recommends that the design team in a design-build venture have "skin in the game," rather than act as a subconsultant. "One of the headaches of our contractors is that they think we are too paper-oriented," she says, adding that proper documentation from Day One pays off. "Contractors think they will change our minds, but why would I put something in the contract if it wasn't want I wanted to do?" She notes that ACP is a public entity, trained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and working on a project with high visibility. "Transparency is of the utmost importance," she adds.

Cazares agrees that spending more time on partnering up front is a key takeaway. "I would say that the greatest challenges I had on this project were the cultural differences—making sure everybody worked as a team, given the company cultures and the country cultures. Just because you are communicating with someone does not mean they understand you." He adds, "We did work through things, but we could have eliminated a lot of pain in the process."

Quijano flags safety as an area with "room for improvement." The project had seven fatalities. "When you start, you want to have zero fatalities, zero accidents," he says, adding that, here, the project "could have done better." He notes that employees must be fully trained so they don't expose themselves to hazards and that training should continue as new employees come into the workforce. He adds, "Even though we don't control the contractors in regard to safety, when we find a situation that could result in an accident, we tell them, so they can improve their safety record. Safety is always on top of our minds."