Ineco audit team: Mercedes Cabrera, María Tirado, Jorge Merino and Víctor Lago.
Ineco is responsible for the Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) of the railway systems and rolling stock of Line L3 (Phase I) of the Panama Metro for the HPH consortium. These works are part of the engineering services for the design, construction, supply and commissioning of the overall railway system that will connect, through its nearly 26 kilometres and 14 stations, the population centres of the province of West Panama with Panama City, crossing the Panama Canal through a tunnel of more than five kilometres.
Independent Safety Assessments can only be carried out by an accredited assessor and are essential to guarantee that the design and construction of a new line, such as Line 3 of the Panama Metro, has been carried out in accordance with the applicable safety standards and can enter into commercial service. Ineco is recognised as an inspection entity for the Independent Safety Assessment of Railway Applications valid in the more than 70 countries with which ENAC has mutual recognition agreements, including the European Union, USA, Canada, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India, Arab Emirates, Panama, Israel and Mexico, among others. Our company has been carrying out Safety Assessments on the Spanish railway network for more than a decade, a task in which it was a pioneer.
Extensive experience in Panama
Line L3 of the Panama Metro, one of the most ambitious projects currently being developed in the country, will be a monorail system on an elevated viaduct and will mean great savings in travel times compared to current means of transport. It will have a yard and workshops on the surface for the rolling stock and will also be more sustainable as it will use electricity as a source of energy and will not emit polluting gases.
Ineco previously carried out the ISA of line L1, consisting of the expansion of the operational capacity of the line in terms of the number of cars per train, fleet expansion and interconnection with line 2, with which it is interoperable. It is 16 kilometres long and has eight underground stations and six elevated stations, two of which are terminals and three transfer stations, yard and workshop facilities, as well as an operations control centre. Ineco also evaluated the safety process of all the systems on L2, which is 21 km long and has 16 elevated stations, 2 of which are terminals, yard facilities and workshops, as well as the operations control centre that serves as a backup for the CCO of Line 1.
