Petronas Twin Towers

The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, sit at the heart of the city as a symbolic reminder of the Province’s meteoric rise as a centre of economic importance.

Developers Ecovest Sdn. Bhd led the construction of the skyscrapers, standing 88 storeys and 450 metres high in 1998 and The Towers remained the tallest buildings in the world up until 2004.

The immense complex also includes three smaller glass skyscrapers, an impressive podium entrance, retail centre, vast car park, recreational ground and one of the country’s largest mosques.

The Challenge

Working alongside Ecovest, the project’s mechanical and engineering consultants, George Ken (Malaysia) Berhad, sought an IT infrastructures specialist to design, install and test the network, security and data cables throughout the entire building.

The sheer enormity of the project presented the chosen technology partner with a significant test; the task of creating an intelligent building environment and infrastructure to serve security cameras, smart card readers and door entry controls for all areas within the complex.

Furthermore, unique construction challenges also impacted on the design of the structured cabling system. The Towers’ architecture meant that there was no uniformity between floors and so it was impossible to produce a standard design template.

The intricate car park layout, with its network of underground tunnels to improve traffic flow, also resulted in an additional area which needed cabling for security purposes and had to be accommodated within the system design.

Solutions Delivered

ISG technology was awarded this highly prestigious project, after being selected for its extensive experience in intelligent buildings and network infrastructure design and installation.

As well as its proven expertise in the technical aspects of the brief, the team demonstrated insightful local knowledge which helped to secure the contract. ISG was able to assign ex-patriate project managers to oversee 80 local site staff, which was hugely beneficial in terms of communication, with this local knowledge consequently aiding progress.

Upon completion of the works ISG had installed and tested 700km of cable – including fibre, co-ax Cat 5 and telephone cabling – plus 6,000 voice and data communications points. All horizontal data cabling on each of the 88 floors was Cat 5 copper and connected to a vertical fibre backbone running up each of the towers.

Due to structural complexities, however, a number of revisions had to be made to the plans and construction methods during the deployment. Working alongside the contractors, ISG had to effectively treat the network system design as a ‘work in progress’ to accommodate the alterations to the development, while being mindful that even minor changes could have major ramifications.

Despite these complications, the project was completed on schedule, thanks to ISG’s professional intuition and resilience to overcome the specific challenges encountered along the way. Today the Petronas Towers remains one of the technology specialist’s proudest achievements and is a remarkable physical example of the size and complexity of projects well within ISG’s expert capabilities.

Please click on the following link to download the Petronas Towers case study as a PDF.