Can I ask how'd you get u = 4x/(x+3)?
A rational substitution of the form u = A + B/(x+3) will take out (x+3)^2 from the denominator, simply by existing. That is the primary purpose of the substitution. The remaining part of the denominator can be perfectly repartitioned across the two components of the denominator.
The secondary purpose is to pick such coefficients A and B such that the borders coincide, which can be done by substituting values.
The third purpose is to make it such that the integral is exactly transformed into a constant multiple of I, which just so happens to be possible because of the way this problem was designed. For arbitrary problems, such a transformation may not be possible.
It only took a few minutes of scribbling until I was done with the problem, at least intuitively, and the details were fleshed out while typesetting.