Sener will design the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal

The Panama Cuarto Puente Consortium (CPCP) has awarded Sener and Greisch, in collaboration with the Highway Planning and Design Institute (HDPI), the project to design and build the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal.

The project covers the design and construction of a six-lane bridge that will cross the canal between Panama West and Panama City, thus alleviating traffic in these areas. This will improve the quality of life of more than one million Panamanians living in these areas, by shortening their travel times. This connection will thus contribute to more sustainable mobility.

The main elements of the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal include the two highly complex interchanges at either side of the canal, East (Albrook) and West (connection with the Pan-American Highway), as well as their respective double-decker access viaducts, with a total length of 2,450 meters, and the main cable-stayed bridge with a total length of 965 meters, a main span of 485 meters and a vertical clearance for passing ships of 75 meters.

The structure of the main bridge will be designed by HPDI, in close collaboration with Sener and Greisch, who are responsible for their special studies and supplementary projects. Sener will also design the interchanges and access viaducts.

After signing the contract, Ricardo Sardinha, Global Highways Business Director at Sener, said: “It’s an honor to be part of this ambitious CPCP project, which will improve the lives of Panamanians with a unique structure that poses an engineering challenge. This is a comprehensive mega-project that will require the multidisciplinary capacity that characterizes Sener.” He went on to say: “We are very pleased that the customer, CPCP, opted for our proposal following an exhaustive analysis subject to rigorous technical and ethical criteria. CPCP’s goal at all times was to find balanced solutions that satisfied the demanding technical, financial and aesthetic requirements, which our proposal does.”

Sener has experience designing similar structures, including the cable-stayed-bridge of the Cebu Cordova Link Expressway, in the Philippines, awarded the 2022 CEMEX Construction Award. For that project, Sener carried out, in a consortium with another company, the comprehensive design, and provided technical construction assistance.