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PETRONAS Twin Towers

PETRONAS, short for Petroliam National Bhd, is Malaysia's national petroleum corporation
established on 17 August 1974.

Since its incorporation PETRONAS has grown to be an integrated international oil and gas
company with business interests in 35 countries. As at end of March 2004, the PETRONAS
Group comprised 93 wholly-owned subsidiaries, 19 partly-owned outfits and 55 associated
companies.

Construction of the twin towers


PETRONAS took the challenge to develop the PETRONAS Twin Towers in 1991.

The project is an integral part of the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), a carefully planned
development to provide the capital city with an efficient and modern centre for urban
activity, trade and commerce encircling a vast, open green lung. It brought together the
world's leading practitioners of engineering, building technology and construction.

Construction planning began in January 1992. By March 1993, the excavators were hard at
work digging down to 30 meters below the surface of the site.

The extent of excavation required over 500 truck-loads of earth to be moved every night.

The next stage was the single largest and longest concrete pour in Malaysian history: 13,200
cubic meters of concrete was continuously poured through a period of 54 hours for each
tower. This record-breaking slab, together with 104 piles forms the foundation for each of the
towers.

From this floor rose a 21-metre high retaining wall, with a perimeter length of over 1 kilometer.
This concrete shell and the basement area it enclosed required two years of up to 40 workers
on site all day and night.
The final product is the basement car park offering a total of 5,400 parking bays on five levels
beneath the podium wrapping the towers.

As an added consideration, two different contractors were chosen for each tower to allow
cross-monitoring of construction values and techniques – with one coming to the aid of the
other should problems arise.

The construction of the superstructure commenced in April 1994, after rigorous tests and
simulations of wind and structural loads on the design.

The 'composite' structure of the Towers employs both the flexibility of steel and the rigidity of
high-strength concrete.

Each component material was used to best effect in constructing the 452 m-high buildings.
About 80,000 cubic meters of high strength concrete with 37,000 tons of steel were used to
form the frames of both Towers.

Of particular importance was maintaining the verticality of the structures throughout the full
height as they were being built. The reason for this, besides reinforcing the aesthetic design,
was to ensure structural load integrity and the safe passage of the high-speed double-decker
elevators.

The determination of verticality was monitored by international specialist surveyors who, with
the aid of global positioning systems, checked alignments every day and every night. The
same surveyor used the same instrument at the same time in every 24 hours, thereby
minimizing any element of differences in judgment.

Construction works were done primarily at night and finishing works were done primarily
during the day (to minimize the cost of artificial lighting). As a result, the entire management
and construction team redefined the Malaysian industry standard of 'fast-track'.

The PETRONAS Twin Towers were finally encased in steel and glass and could be viewed as
complete in June 1996.

The construction process also drew extensively from the local industry, with the finished towers
having over 60 percent local material content.

Malaysian made items included raw


materials such as concrete and timber;
finishing materials such as marble,
ceramic tiles and glass; pre-fabricated
materials including dry-walls, doors,
suspended ceilings, and metal decking;
equipment ranging from escalators to
light fittings and sanitary ware; also
furniture of all types from work-stations
to custom-designed suites.

Much of these materials were used in


the process of internal finishing, which
was then the focus of work teams until
the end of 1996.

Suria Shopping Mall in the Petronas Twin Towers,


Kuala Lumpur.
The Foundation
The Twin Towers were planned to be built on
the site of the former Selangor Turf Club
which was flat, green land. But soil studies
showed that the site where the buildings
were originally planned for, proved
unsuitable for the foundation due to the
irregularities of the limestone bedrock below
that's known as Kenny Hill soil.

Each tower was calculated to weigh 300,000


metric tonnes which would be spread over a
large concrete slab called a mat. But that
weight exerted 1,140 kilopascals (one The foundation took one whole year to complete;
kilopascal pressure is equivalent to 1kg every step of its construction was a
exerting pressure on 1sq mm), exceeding the technological breakthrough.
weight-bearing capacity of the soil and
enough to cause the foundation to fail.

Moreover, soil tests showed that the bedrock under both towers started shallow, 15m down,
but sloped sharply to more than 180m.

To support the immense weight, a depth of 21m (as high as a five-storey!) would have to be
excavated for the basement. This also meant penetrating the bedrock at one end but not
the other.

Installing concrete-filled piers at the deep end would be


difficult, slow and expensive, exceeding normal construction
practices. The piers' shortening over time would also produce
unacceptable tower tilting.

KLCCB (Kuala Lumpur City Centre Bhd), the developer of


KLCC, finally decided to move the location 60m southeast of
the initial site to achieve better support. Here, the bedrock
was deeper, thus allowing the buildings to be firmly
anchored in at least 55m of soil for each tower basement.

And instead of piers, it was decided an entirely different


foundation system was needed. Friction piles (structures
narrower than piers), reinforced by grout (a sand and
cement mixture), were used.

Excavation began in March 1993.

The contract for the foundation works was awarded to a consortium of French and local
companies, Dragages-Bachy-First Nationwide Sdn Bhd.

Every step of preparing the foundation was a technological breakthrough, says Arlida Ariff,
then the planning manager of the overall KLCC project.

"To dig the foundation, we didn't use hammering in the conventional sense. Instead we
excavated the ground using a combined technique of piling and raft foundation (like a big
concrete slab); it was the first time the latter technique was being used in the country.
"With this technique, when you bore the piles in, instead of circular piles, rectangular or
barrette ones were used. Barrette piles are bigger than circular piles, so we could put in fewer
number of piles. This also increases the safety margin and poses fewer problems.

"That's because the bigger the pile is, the smaller the number we have to put in and the
better its ability to withstand tension.

"Water was then used to clean and keep the bored hole intact until we poured the concrete
in. Until a certain depth, drilling mud or bentonite (a kind of "clayish" liquid)

was used instead of water as it was a stronger substance which could do the job more
effectively in deeper parts," explains Arlida who's now the general manager of KLCCB and
project management consultant for Putrajaya Holdings Sdn Bhd.

It was also the first time that the Malaysian construction


industry would witness the largest amount of concrete
poured in its history - 13,200cu m (enough to build 130
double-storey link houses!).

The concrete was continuously poured into the hole for


more than 52 hours in order to eliminate construction
joints in the pile mat and achieve a smooth finish.

According to KLCCB general manager Hashimah


Hashim, then the project manager of Tower One, the
construction industry normally uses grade 30 or 40
concrete. For the towers, high-strength grade 80
concrete was used.

"The use of such high grade concrete was a transfer of


technology from the USA which uses up to grade 110 in
the construction industry," he says.

The building of the foundation, from the excavation to its


completion, took 12 months to finish.
From left: S. Ragupathy, Hashimah
Hashim, M. Hilme Hassan and Mohamad
A. Jamal.
--Picture by Abdul Rahman Senin
General Statistics
Sub-Structure Diaphragm wall 1010m long, 800mm thick around perimeter of
(Piling, Civil Works & Phase 1 development with over 2,500 ground
Foundations) anchors
Excavation & dewatering 1,200,000 cubic meters
Piling 208 'Barette' piles (rectangular section 2.8 x
1.2m) between 40m to 115m in depth
Raft foundations 2 raft, 4.5m thick, each containing 13,200
cubic meters of Grade 60 concrete weighing
over 32,350 tons
Access roads & drainage Over 2.5km of site access roads and 4km of
temporary drainage
Additional Car Park Piling 1,000 number 1m diameter piles, 29m depth
Foundations Foundation slab 18,752 sq m of 900mm thick pressure slab
Super-Structure Height Each Tower reaches a height of 452.0m
(1,482.6ft) above street level
Accommodation 4 levels of Basement Concourse and
concourse mezzanine levels 88 floors,
including two-level entrance lobby; Sky Lobby
at levels 41 and 42; and building
maintenance equipment garage on level 88
Areas (Total) 395,000 sq m / 4,251,780 sq ft
Office floor plates 2,623.5 to 935.7 sq m / 28,239 to 10,072 sq ft
(Gross)
Office floor plates 1,970.1 to 591.9 sq m / 21,209 to 6,371 sq ft
(Net)
Office storey heights 4.0m / 13' 2"
Office floor to ceiling 2.650 / 8' 8"
height Highest occupied floor Executive office at Level 86 which is 367m
above sea level, with a floor area of 494.3 sq
m (5,320 sq ft)
Indicative Quantities Concrete 80,000 cubic meters, various strengths up to
Grade 80, weighing approx. 196,000 tons
Reinforcement 10,955 tons
Structural steel 7,500 tons of beams and trusses
Cladding 85,000 sq m above level 6
Doors 1,800 numbers
Stairs 765 flights

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