Panama is now the first country in Central America to have a metro system link between the center of its capital, Panama City, and its main international airport. Work at the airport, with restricted and secure areas and airspace regulations, required some creativity.

A typical station space frame and roofing is usually fabricated, transported, preassembled and later erected on site using tall cranes. In this case, the roof assembly was carried out on a stand installed above the station platform level—avoiding the use of cranes while staying below the aircraft approach limit.

There were formidable obstacles at each stage of the work, says the project team. One was total or partial stoppages during the COVID-19 pandemic, shutting work for 12 weeks until June 2020. There were also supply-chain snags, scope changes, redesigns and rework, union strikes and protests over cost-of-living increases that rocked the country for weeks in 2022.

The contracting team in 2018 offered a best-value tender at an initial price of about $88 million, according to public sources. The project broke ground in March 2019, with completion in March 2023, at a final cost of $105 million.