The Panama Canal consists of two lock lanes at both the Atlantic and Pacific entrances to the canal. The Third Set of Locks of the Panama Canal Expansion project involves the construction of two new sets of locks - one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic side of the canal.

Each lock will have three chambers and each chamber will have three water reutilization basins. The new locks will be connected to the existing canal system.

The Third Set of Locks will provide the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) significant expansion in capacity by allowing larger vessels to travel through the canal, which handles about 5 percent of all global trade. When the Third Set of Locks of the Panama Canal Expansion is completed, it will double the capacity of the Canal providing significant benefits to local, regional and global economies.

MWH Global has worked on this project for more than 10 years as it evolved from a concept to a project under construction. MWH is currently the lead technical designer in the design joint venture CICP Consultores Internacionales, LLC (CICP) for the Third Set of Locks, the largest portion of the estimated $5.25 billion project. MWH lock design specialists are delivering a system that will enable high throughput, efficient operation and maintenance, with minimal water consumption, all within stringent technical requirements and specifications established by ACP.

Design Challenge

The Third Set of Locks project is a large-scale infrastructure scheme. The project includes the largest water-saving basins ever designed or built and the most stringent design standards MWH have come across as international designers for lock projects. Specifically, MWH is designing for major earthquakes, and the seismic requirements are extremely high. MWH have been advancing the design state-of-practice, specifically for the lock walls and lock gates. The lock gates are massive steel structures, and will require nearly 50,000 tons of steel. The design team has used advanced finite element modeling tools to meet the design standards.

Examples of the design solutions include:

• Lock walls: The cost-effective lock wall designs incorporate foundation drains that reduce the hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loads, enabling more efficient structures that achieve the performance goals for strength and durability.
• Seismic design: Using state-of-the-art seismic analysis techniques, MWH is developing lock wall configurations that meet stringent seismic criteria at minimum cost.
• Water consumption: Water saving basins – the largest in the world – are designed to reuse 60 percent of the fresh water consumed for lockages, with an optimized filling and emptying system that meets aggressive performance criteria for system efficiency and throughput.
• Integrated operations and controls: Through optimum design of operational features and control systems, lock operations will be seamless and efficient. Design of the lock operating gates for rapid opening and closing, coupled with an efficient filling and emptying system based on innovative hydraulic design and state-of-practice control technologies, ensures that system safety, efficiency and throughput are maximized.

Integration of BIM into the design delivery

This project is one of the first large-scale civil works projects to deploy Building Information Modeling (BIM), done at the request of ACP. The BIM process has supported the design team’s efforts to advance the state-of-practice on many components on the project. The BIM process allows for improved quality of design, increases productivity by efficiently managing design changes, and helps facilitate communication with clients and builders through visualizations.

BIM modeling has been used in several ways on this project, including: building intelligent databases of key project components and systems; overlay of electrical, mechanical, architectural and civil/structural elements to identify and eliminate conflicts (clash detection), and production of civil/structural backgrounds for use by electrical and mechanical designers to lay out their systems. Virtual clash detection eliminates field construction changes that can be costly and challenging to project schedules. Twodimensional construction drawings are extracted from the BIM model, which is developed with all of these factors in mind, for use by the contractor.

As the lead technical designer, MWH collaborates with design teams in five design offices around the world. The use of intelligent 3D models has allowed this diverse team of engineers to collaborate efficiently, helping them to resolve design conflicts prior to construction, allowing for better coordination, ultimately saving time and money.

On the Third Set of Locks design-build project, MWH needed to advance many design elements in parallel, and BIM allowed changes to be integrated rapidly and confidently. An example of how MWH are using BIM effectively is to manage the layout of complex electrical and mechanical systems in concert with civil and structural features - which has been accomplished readily with BIM. The layouts were visually demonstrated to the contractor and designers, an efficient and powerful communication tool.

Specifically, MWH is utilizing Autodesk BIM solutions to address the following tasks:

• Autodesk 3ds Max Design: Used for conceptual and detailed design and was used to produce design visualizations to help the client evaluate multiple design options.
• Autodesk Revit Architecture, Autodesk Revit Structure and Autodesk Revit MEP: Used for detailed design of the canal’s new lock structures and a multitude of supporting facilities
• AutoCAD Civil 3D: Used to help create more efficient and accurate site designs.
• Autodesk Navisworks Manage: Used for improved multidiscipline coordination and collaboration, helping resolve design conflicts prior to construction, increasing the quality of the project and helping to prevent costly field changes.
• AutoCAD Electrical: Used by the electrical designers for the electrical schematics and panel layouts.
• Maintenance Data: For project handover to the Panama Canal Authority, the team is capitalizing on its use of a BIM workflow to capture asset information such as equipment identification tags for inclusion in a master maintenance manual incorporating project models and data.

During the tender design, MWH modelled several design options using Autodesk 3ds Max Design and produced design visualizations which helped the client better understand these designs and make more informed decisions.

In final design, MWH used the Autodesk Revit family of products for detailed design of the Canal’s new lock and dam structures, site features, and supporting utilities. MWH also used AutoCAD Civil 3D for the site design. Intelligent 3D models gave the design team an insight into very large and complex designs, and were instrumental for keeping design and documentation coordinated, saving both time and money. The team combined the design models to improve the cross-discipline coordination and resolve design conflicts prior to construction – thereby increasing the quality of the deliverables and preventing costly field changes.

As the design-build project of the Third Set of Locks of the Panama Canal Expansion project progresses, the design team is advancing many design elements in parallel, with BIM providing the mechanism to integrate design changes as necessary to keep the project on track.

Looking forward

As one of the first applications of BIM to a project of this magnitude, there have been some “lessons learned” along the way. The design-build team ultimately guides the pace of the project and, at times, a more conventional approach is needed to adhere to schedule and timely delivery of work products. As the application of BIM progresses in project delivery, it is important for project teams to be flexible. MWH has found that BIM structural models must be customized to be useful for largescale, unique structures such as dams and navigation locks. While the software tool is a key component of BIM, embracing the integrated design process that it enables will allow project teams to achieve the full benefits available.

BIM has brought significant value in all phases of the project lifecycle, but especially after project handover further advantages can be gained. The owners will be given a robust operations and maintenance tool for their long-term facility’s needs. BIM will become the vital link between asset creation and asset management, driving efficiencies throughout the lifecycle to better use resources for critical infrastructure needs throughout the world. MWH has made a significant step forward in our design process by adopting BIM – but it is still the early days and we’ve only just begun to unleash its potential on major wet infrastructure projects.

Having made the investment to adapt the BIM workflow and application of the software on this world-class project, MWH now has a template for similarly complex projects going forward.