The Panamanian Ministry of Public Works has awarded FCC Construcción Centroamérica the contract to repair the east access to Centennial Bridge by building an entirely new access bridge. The east access repair work and the construction of the new bridge will be done wholly by FCC, and the contract is worth over 20 million euro.
The bridge will be made of reinforced concrete and will be about 175 metres long with five spans, resting on pile caps 1.50 metres in diameter. In addition, the project includes bridge safety devices and lighting, plus traffic management for the entire section of the road affected by the landslide.

Centennial Bridge Repair Work Is 63% Complete

Since December last FCC Construcción has been working hard to repair the damage caused by heavy rains in late 2010, which caused the embankment under the three northbound lanes of the eastern access to Centennial Bridge to collapse in a landslide.

To avoid the collapse of the southbound half and therefore the entire road, emergency reinforcement and containing work was done to enable the new bridge to be built on the embankment site at a later time. This reinforcement work consisted of bringing in about 200,000 cubic metres of armour stone and digging drainage ditches to stabilize the area at the foot of the landslide. At the same time, shotcrete was applied to the slip plane, and ductile iron micropiles were driven into the weakest area, near the Centennial Bridge's abutment.

To contain the southbound side of the road, a retaining wall is being built of piles anchored on the central reserve. This wall is made up of a total of 141 bored piles a meter in diameter and an average of 35 metres long, anchored at two different heights. Once the anchoring is done, the excavation of the new bridge's bed will commence.