Panama Canal update: Everybody Panic!

[Rockstar]

A concrete sample was pulled from the Cocoli Locks which recently sprang a leak in one its sills, and it doesnt look good.

Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), the main contractor for the Third Set of Locks project, issued a statement last Friday acknowledging the leaks, but has since gone quiet.

http://gcaptain.com/a-concrete-sampl...2#.VeBTnMT3arU

[Oberon]

Sheesh...that is not a good looking bit of concrete there.

GUPC is a consortium made up of Sacyr Vallehermoso of Spain as its head, with Impregilo of Italy, Jan De Nul of Belgium and Constructura Urbana, SA (CUSA) of Panama.

This explains a lot...Spain and Italy...not really known for their construction and engineering projects post 500AD.

Still...could be worse, the Three Gorges Dam has been long suspected of having hairline cracks, and of being on top of a faultline. If that thing goes, it'd be like dropping a nuke on China.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

A concrete sample was pulled from the Cocoli Locks which recently sprang a leak in one its sills, and it doesnt look good.






http://gcaptain.com/a-concrete-sampl...2#.VeBTnMT3arU

The concrete evidence is....it's shoddy!" GUPC was one of three pre-qualified international consortiums bidding on the tender for the design and construction of the Third Set of Locks, a tender process that involved a thorough technical and pricing evaluation. The contract winner was selected based on the “non-negotiated best value proposal”, i.e. the one that obtained the highest combined score for their Price Proposal and Technical Proposal using a weighted model where the Technical Proposal was assigned 55 percent of the total score and the Price Proposal was assigned 45 percent of the total score.
Ultimately, GUPC was selected as the winner with the highest technical score and lowest total (fixed) price proposal at $3.221 billion." < all that BS adds up to:Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave!