Megaprojects: Malaysia's Petronas twin towers.

Written in 2015. The following is basically an article written based on several videos I watched regarding the Petronas twin towers. It is presented here for readers to get information on the background of the completion. It is descriptive in nature.

By: Iliyas Ismail

Executive Summary

The Petronas Twin Towers is located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, at the designated Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC). In the 1990s, the area was to be developed in part of Malaysia’s Vision 2020 which would see Malaysia transforming itself into a developed country by the year 2020. The twin towers would serve as an important milestone of Malaysia’s modernizing path and it would serve as an important landmark that would attract the world’s attention.

Construction took nearly six years, from 1993 to 1997, and was finished before the deadline. The two towers were given to be handled to two different prime contractors which were Hazama Corporation for Tower One and Samsung E&C for Tower Two. These two companies would compete with each other, alongside their team of contractors.

The project met many setbacks during its constructions and witnessed many delays along the way. However, the importance of not passing the deadline, due to the huge cost of the project, required that contractors find a way to always speed up their process to catch up with their schedule. In the end, the project was a success.

Introduction

During the rule of prime minister Mahathir, Malaysia witnessed a fast pace of development in its vision to becoming a modernized nation. In an effort to make Malaysia stand out and put it in the world map, Mahathir decided that it would be in the best interest of the country to build a twin tower skyscraper.

The goal of the project was to build an eighty-eight storey twin towers, a mega-project and one that the country has not experienced before. It was not initially envisioned that it would be the tallest tower in the world at the time, however, changes in the plans during construction would bring that title to the towers.

Background

In further developing the city, the Malaysian government envisioned to build the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) which would be at the heart of the capital city Kuala Lumpur. The site is the location of a 100- acre colonial era horse race track, and this would be shifted to the periphery of the city in order to accommodate the new project. KLCC is to be the main part of the Vision 2020 plan.

The project planning started in January of 1992, and the design of the towers architecture was finalized in January 1993. Construction started in April 1993 and was finally finished in October 1996.

The scale of the project would normally mean that it would be finished in eight years, however, the Malaysian budget only allows for six years of construction. This means that workers have to work extra hours to meet the deadline. Any one day that passes the deadline would cost the builders an additional $700,000.

The design of the building was tasked to Ceser Pelli of Ceser Pelli and Associates, for completion. The Prime Minister wanted a building with architecture that reflects Malaysian culture, a building that would blend with the surroundings. More specifically, Mahathir wanted a building with an Islamic architecture. Pelli studied and researched extensively on Islamic architecture and decided to use the eight-pointed star as the buildings base, a common motive in Islamic art.

However, to maximize the floor space area, it was decided arches would be built in between the eight-pointed star, and thus the building has its design.

In order to help meet the project deadline, the government decided that contracts for both the towers would be awarded to two different companies, and they would be in competition to see who would finish first. This competition is thought to give more initiatives for the contractors to meet the deadline.

The first obstacle for the project was the ground conditions. When construction started, it was discovered that the ground was soft and unstable. Later it was found out that there was no proper survey carried out on the site before.  This would cost the project and additional thousands of dollars in order to do a survey of the site, before any construction could begin.

400 exploratory boreholes had to be dug in order to check the soil conditions. The soil was discovered to have an underground cliff.  It was later decided that it would be in the best interest of the project, to shift the construction area 60 meters away from the initial site. An interesting initial move indeed.

When construction finally started, one of the main challenges faced was the monsoon rain that regularly falls in a tropical country such as Malaysia. In order to build a stable and strong building, the team decided to insert 120 meters of steel columns and solidify them by pumping concrete non-stop for 52 hours. Due to the heavy rain that consistently fall, a large tent had to be built to cover the work area from being flooded by water.

The mega project would consist of participation of companies from many different countries apart from Malaysia, mainly companies from Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Apart from this, there are foreign workers from across many other countries. There are two consortium of prime contractors, one for each tower.

Tower One:

Mayjaus, a joint venture of:

Hazama Corporation
MMC Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd.

Ho Hup Construction Sdn. Bhd.

 JA Jones Construction Co. Ltd.

Mitsubishi Corporation

Tower Two

SKJ, a joint venture of :

Samsung Engineering & Construction (Samsung E & C) Co. Ltd.

Dong Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd.

Syarikat Jasatera Sdn. Bhd.

Tower One was headed by the Korean company, Hazama Corp. and was thus known as the Korean team, while Samsung E&C would lead the team for tower two, the team known as the Japanese team.

The bidding process for sub-contractors involved companies having to submit two highly detailed bid packages. The first was known as the ‘technical proposal’ and the second is the ‘commercial proposal’. The technical proposal was to determine the capability of the companies to undertake the project. The technical review board asked questions such as whether they have the necessary experience, are they financially stable, whether they have organized with a local partner and how did this partnering go and so on.

Companies that satisfy the requirements would go to the second stage of evaluation, which would be focusing purely on the numbers and calculations. Successful companies would then be awarded the contracts.

  

Starting the project would include the initial plan of developing the idea. The area of KLCC would have at its center a twin tower skyscraper that would be a source of tourist attraction. At this stage, all the data for the master plan, including the project goals, it vision and mission, strategies and risk are formulated and gathered.

The second phase is the development phase. Here the tender for the contract is issued and the planning for the building is sketched out. All the resources including human, cash and infrastructure are allocated.

The third phase is when the actual construction begins and is when the peak of the project is seen, in terms of total effort is exerted. Finally, the project finishes and a review of the project progress is done.

NTCP Diamond

Using Shenhar and Dvir's (2007) tool to assess the various aspects of a project, we can further analyze the project, especially with regards to its novelty, technology used, the complexity and also pace of the project.

For technology wise, as is typical with constructions of many new buildings, there are very limited numbers of new technologies used. In this case, there wasn’t any notable new technologies that were mentioned in the literature about the construction. However, there were several innovative methods of solving problems this is explained in the coming sections.

For compelexity, it has a wide dispersed collection of systems, and thus is a very complex project, involving a consortium of multi-national companies. It also involves the large scale mobilization of local workers along with foreign workers on site, with schedules of 24 hours a day.

In the novelty category, derivative seems to suit the project since there were many improvements to the existing product, like a new type of concrete were created, using a mix of concrete with other materials to strengthen it. However, there were no or very limited new generation of products used or built throughout the project.

The pace is time-critical in order not to increase the cost, that were already anticipated during the project if any problems were to arise.

The project is categorized as a Project-Based Organization (PBO), with the project carrying out all business functions usually performed by functional departments. People would also have to report the project manager instead of a line manager. For the role of project managers, KLCC Bhd. chose Lehrer McGovern, a London-based company to assume the role along with them, and Bruce Schlaitzer was the representative from the latter to hold the role of project manager.

The KLCC project was also very adaptive, anticipating problems and having the expertise to cope with changing or unusual projects.

Hot Spots

During the project, there were many obstacles that had to be overcome:

1) The fact that the soil was not suitable for construction. The construction site had to be moved to another location 60 meters away.

2) During construction, it was discovered that there was a mistake in the batch of the mixed concrete materials. This was discovered after one of the batches failed a routine testing of materials.

The concrete had to be of a certain strength to withstand from collapsing. Construction immediately grinded to a halt and the worry was how much of the concrete mix had already been used in constructing the towers. This triggered many debates on how to proceed and became a big issue, since tearing down the building would be costing the project very high. After careful checking and testing however, it was found that only one floor prior, was built using the flawed concrete mix, and thus the entire floor was demolished.

3) Floor-laying of the building was the most time consuming of the entire process. The planned scheduling for one floor to be completed was 10 days, however due to the halt in problem number two, precious time was wasted and the time for this process had to be shortened.

When laying the floor of a building, the next floor clearly cannot be completed until the one below it is done. This resulted in a bottleneck. A revised method of the floor laying process managed to cut down the time to complete from 10 days to only 4 days. However, this increased the workload and workers effectively had to work for seven days a week, and the process was 24 hours non-stop.

4) When construction reached to the 72^nd floor, a new report unveiled another major problem. Human errors had resulted in tower one being slightly off tangent by 25mm. Although a small deviant, if they were to continue unabated, the problem would only worsen and the tower would lose its straight structure.

After careful deliberations, the solution was for the construction to continue 2mm at the opposite direction, for the rest of the 16 remaining floors. This caused a setback for the contractors and delayed the project while they had to make calculations and change their plans.

Innovative methods

1) The pouring of concrete for 52 hours without break, one truckload on an average of one for every minute. 13, 000 cubic meters of concrete was pumped after the steel laid in bored holes, and it was the biggest concrete slab in the country’s history.

The logistics system used to ensure that truck-loads of concrete mix would arrive without break was complex and innovative.

2) The building would have the world’s deepest foundation at the time, with 120 meters of steel being planted in the ground to gain maximum stability.

3) The usage of strong concrete is unique in this project. The towers would be built using 16 concrete pillars, linked by beams to support a weight of 270,000 tones.  No building of such scale was constructed using concrete pillars before, usually its other materials like steel, as concrete would collapse under such weight. However, concrete is in abundance in Malaysia and steel would cost the project too high.

In order to obtain this, testing was done in Chicago to come up with a strong combination of raw materials to create the suitable concrete mix that could withstand pressure. The condition was that the raw materials used are only those that could be found in Malaysia, so that none would have to be imported.

4) In delivering the concrete up the building, they used powerful pumps delivered from Germany, and broke the record for the highest continuous pump.

5) The building of the sky bridge was an engineering challenge. In order to prevent it from collapsing by movements of the towers due to wind, an innovative solution was designed which was to use spherical bearings. These would allow the bridge to move along with the building.

Appropriate and inappropriate approaches

Overall the project was a major success, as it met the original deadline which would have otherwise cost thousands of dollars in losses for every day passed. There were some areas of improvements, such as the need to ensure that a proper survey of the land area chosen has already been done before actual construction begins. The survey done on the area was not very comprehensive, and it was thought that the area would be suitable especially because it was the site of a building housing the Selangor Turf Club before.

All the materials that are to be transported to the construction should and must be tested before being used. The mistake of a party mixing the materials should be avoided in the first place by conducting proper monitoring. A mistake of using the wrong materials would be very costly to any given project in correcting that mistake, especially if it involves tearing down part of a finished building.

Managing a low technology project without incurring too much cost in using an approach of a high-technology cost is noted to be important to not increase anymore cost. Any measures possible, should be taken to try to reduce the amount of hours of completion for any work package, and the ability to reduce the amount of days to complete the floor layering process is to be commended as an excellent move.

Conclusions

Presently, the Petronas Twin Towers has served its purpose well without any problems in its design or structure. The proper bidding process and the awarding of contracts to companies that were really able to undertake the project proves to be an important factor to the success. There was no major setbacks that could not be solved, although what needed to be done was to increase the workload for workers, which resulted in mistakes occurring.

However, the successful construction at the end meant that the teams were competent enough to overcome these errors and deliver the project successfully.