Global teams keep Panama Metro Line 3 on track with advanced coordination tools

In Panama City, a large-scale railway infrastructure project, Panama Metro Line 3, is being developed as a solution to the chronic road congestion in the metropolitan area, where approximately 30% of the population is concentrated. Currently under construction, the 34-km Line 3 will cross the Panama Canal, connecting the east and west sides of the country, and will use a monorail system to pass through an area with extreme variations in elevation. This $2.5 billion project will be the country’s largest since the expansion of the Panama Canal, helping alleviate traffic congestion in the Arraiján region and creating an estimated 5,000 new jobs during its development.

The project, 60% complete as of June 2024, is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2026. The main contractor, appointed in October 2020, is the HPH consortium, comprising Hyundai E&C (Hyundai Engineering & Construction), POSCO E&C (POSCO Engineering & Construction), and Hyundai Engineering. In the bidding for the Line 3 project, the company ranked highly for its experience in executing large-scale subway construction projects in Korea and overseas, as well as for its technical capabilities and ability to meet construction time frames.

To win a project of this magnitude, Jaewoong Hwang, a senior manager of the company’s infrastructure engineering team, says that the company presented a practical building information modeling (BIM) execution plan for a large-scale railway project that reflected its experience from past overseas projects. “We received a high score in the technical evaluation because we proactively presented a plan to facilitate collaboration among various types of work through a common data environment,” Hwang says.

International construction projects incorporate many engineering disciplines and teams from around the world. Currently, the Line 3 project involves approximately 350 personnel, including Korean staff from the HPH JV; local Panamanian personnel from the Panama Metro Authority, which is the client; a Japanese supervision team; and Spanish designers.

“This plan has the advantage of stimulating collaboration among various construction disciplines,” says Hwang, explaining that digital collaboration is essential for resolving issues that require input from multiple teams. “For example, the plumbing engineer may want to pass through a particular wall for smoother pipe installation, while the structural design engineer might insist on detouring the pipes for structural safety. In the past, these issues would require regular business travel for face-to-face meeting and video conferencing, bringing in massive design materials, exchanging ideas, and reaching a consensus. But now, everyone can exchange ideas and check progress in real time online, looking at a common visualization model, which makes decision-making much faster.”

In the past, it was difficult to identify design issues in advance, and problems would surface before or during the construction phase, which could delay the completion date and cause defects. However, now that all stakeholders are involved during the design phase and issues can be identified in real time, a significant number of design problems are resolved before construction begins. This seamless collaboration not only leads to cost savings but also contributes to accelerating the project timeline.

“We are now able to implement front-loading, a widely known productivity-management method originally developed in the manufacturing industry and now increasingly adopted in the construction industry,” Hwang says. This technique puts more cost and labor power into the initial phase of the process. By addressing and resolving issues before construction, they can be easily resolved at a much lower cost than postconstruction modifications. Even if construction is slightly delayed, proactively reducing problems through intensive evaluation in the design phase will reduce the overall project timeline and total project budget.

“Design issues are so clearly visualized, everyone can see them, and the division of roles is so clear that it’s rather difficult to move forward without solving them,” Hwang continues. “Since October 2021, we have had about 13,000 problems that needed to be resolved. If we had continued with a conventional approach, these issues would have remained unmanaged and been discovered only after construction had begun on site, which would have led to reworks and the need for variation orders.”

These benefits do not come overnight—it is not easy to change processes that have been in place for decades, and many companies in the Korean building and construction industry have yet to adopt BIM and common data environments (CDE). The Daehan Economic Daily reported in May that although many Korean authorities, such as the Korea National Railway Authority and the Korea Land and Housing Corporation, have greatly increased the percentage of obligatory BIM applications, domestic companies often outsource BIM services and have not fully implemented it in actual projects.

But with an eye on overseas markets, where BIM and CDE adoption is increasingly required, Hyundai E&C has been preparing since 2010, according to Hwang. That’s when the company started a task force for practical application of BIM, and it has been working with Autodesk to cultivate its capabilities. The task force consists of six people, including two staff members dedicated to BIM modeling and field engineers for each discipline.

“If everyone observes their own work processes with BIM and CDE in mind, there will always be opportunities to improve design productivity and quality based on this,” says Hwang, stressing the importance of BIM as a tool for all AECO stakeholders, not just a few specialists. “Process development is also required to enable each person to use BIM to enhance the productivity of their own work. The focus should be on viewing BIM not as additional task, but as a tool for simplifying existing work.”

Hyundai E&C uses Autodesk Construction Cloud as a platform to facilitate the proliferation of CDE. “Security concerns and complex configurations, such as permissions and document controls, can hinder the adoption of the cloud platform when leveraging the cloud,” Hwang says. “With Autodesk Construction Cloud, it is very easy to eliminate security concerns because you can set up responsibilities and roles in advance, and permissions are automatically assigned, and related settings can be finalized with just a few clicks.”

In November 2023, Hyundai E&C was awarded an additional $350 million contract to build a 4.5-km tunnel under the Panama Canal, which is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2026. This tunnel, which will connect the eastern and western sides of the Panama Canal, is a project linked to Metro Line 3. Because of its connection to the existing Line 3 project, Hyundai E&C was able to establish a strong lock-in effect through BIM and CDE, effectively showcasing its project execution capabilities and securing a favorable position for winning follow-up projects.

“This underwater tunnel is a complete revision of the originally planned alignment to cross the Panama Canal by bridge,” Hwang says. “This required a quick adjustment to the affected section of the existing railway design, and the fact that the existing Line 3 design was prepared using BIM greatly facilitated a smooth design change.

“When a bridge section is converted to a tunnel, the design has to be changed not only for that section but also for the adjacent section,” Hwang continues. “I think we secured an advantageous position by genuinely implementing BIM in conjunction with CDE, rather than just superficially adopting BIM. The collaborative process and experience obtained throughout the supply chain—including the client, design firms, and subcontractors in using CDE to execute a collaborative design—will have a positive effect on the awarding of future projects.”