Second artificial island for Panama City

The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has placed the first stone for an artificial island to be constructed by Royal Boskalis Westminster off the coast of the Punta Pacifica residential area on the densely populated shoreline of Panama City.

The project will be the second island Boskalis has constructed at the location. Nine hectares of land will be created by placing approximately 600,000 cubic meters of rock to form a perimeter and filling this with 1.3 million cubic meters of sand. The project also includes the construction of a bridge to connect the two islands. This land reclamation project is driven by the necessity to create high-end property in a densely populated region where the economy is booming.

Boskalis was awarded the contract from Compañía Insular Americana, S.A. following the successful construction of the first island, which was handed over to the client in early 2013. Santa Maria was the first artificial real-estate island in the Americas. With a contract value of more than €55m the next project is scheduled to commence in the second half of 2015 and is expected to last for two years. The client Compañía Insular Americana, S.A. is an affiliated company of Ocean Reef Island Inc, for which Boskalis constructed the first artificial island.

Boskalis will use tugboats and barges to transport the rock and a clamshell and excavators to install the rock perimeter. Thereafter, the island will be filled with sand supplied by a large trailing suction hopper dredger.

As with the first island, Boskalis Panama S.A. was awarded the design and construct contract at the end of a tender procedure. Decisive factors included not only the price but also, and more importantly, the reliability of the contractor in terms of quality, the involvement of local management, the proposed construction method, equipment resources, and in-house engineering capability and capacity.

The first step in constructing Santa Maria was the dredging and disposal of the soft sediments overlaying the weathered rock layer. Work then started on the construction of the rock dike. Prior to the start of the contract the client and Boskalis undertook a detailed soil investigation in the rock quarry area in order to establish the presence of the various required gradings. A total of five different types of rock grading were used to work as cost-effectively as possible while maintaining the stability of the island given the long and strong swells.

The inside of the rock dike was covered with a geotextile to prevent the loss of sand through the dike back into the ocean, following which the island was ready for filling with sand.