The Petronas Twin Towers are not the only high rise buildings in the city of Kuala Lumpur. There are several other tall buildings in the city which exceed 200 meters – the IB tower will be one of them. The estimated year of completion of the tower was the end of 2014. Upon completion it is the fourth tallest building in Malaysia.

The Project

Designed by Sir Norman Foster of London, the IB Tower consists of 60 floors of offices, services and apartments. It is located along Jalan Binjai, near the Kuala Lumpur Conventional Centre (KLCC). The tower’s stunning design, which is striking and visually appealing, will be hard to overlook when travelling on the main roads in the city.

Scanclimber’s partner in South-East Asia, Scan-Rent Sdn Bhd Malaysia was awarded the contract to supply Mast Climbing Work Platforms for the cladding work on the IB Tower building in July 2013. The initial platforms were shipped in June 2013 and dismantling started in December 2014.

In the initial phase the contractors were considering suspended platforms and scaffolding to perform cladding work, but after discussions with Scan-Rent, this possibility was rejected and it was decided to go with Scanclimber’s advanced MCWP solution.

The challenges

In the first phases of negotiations we were facing some serious questions in the IB Tower project:

• The Height: the building is very high (275 meters) and has a specially designed shape
• The Location: Kuala Lumpur City Center is very crowded, congested and there is very limed space for loading and unloading
• The Cladding Panels: the 6 meter long, vertically slanting cladding panels were very heavy and big, which made the use of suspended platforms and scaffolding practically impossible

These primary reasons, coupled with Scan-Rent’s 18-years of experience with high rise buildings and the possibility to use two MCWPs on same mast, were the key reasons behind the customer choosing Scanclimber MCWP products for the project.

We still had a problem regarding the long anchoring distance requirement of 34 meters which was required for first 9 levels and also from level 37 to level 43.

The Solution

Instead of suspended platforms and scaffolding, the customer decided to use Mast Climbing Work Platforms. Key reasons for choosing MCWPs were: improved work safety, possibility to drive two platforms on a single mast, speed of erection, unobstructed access, possibility to transport heavy cladding panels precisely to the installation position and speed of the platforms.

The installation at the IB Tower included:

• 40 units of Scanclimber Kosmos SC4000 platforms were shipped, which are installed on 22 masts
• 4 masts with one platform per mast
• 18 masts with two platforms per mast
• Tallest mast: 275 m
• Total length of the mast: 6 000 meters on a single building
• Total quantity of the mast sections: 4840 pieces (1250mm x 700mm x 700mm)
• 6 kilometers of power cable = 24 000 kilograms

Huge projects mean huge and increasing figures and volumes. At present there are 3800 mast sections at the IB Tower work site, but the number is increasing (to 4840) as the construction and cladding advances.

The total weight of the power cable is 24 tons. The cables are 90, 150 and 300 meters long. Since speeds are 6 and 12 meters/min, it takes 23 minutes to reach the top with the faster machine and 46 minutes with the slower one. The total weight of the mast sections is 396 880 kilograms. It takes 55 truckloads to transport the mast sections to and from the site = 110 truckloads in total. And that is just the mast sections. The anchoring question was solved with the triple anchoring system, which made the 34 meters distance between the anchors possible.

Customer and our comments and experiences on the project so far

So far the project has been running smoothly and very few unexpected problems or questions have arisen. Below we have compiled the comments and feedback on the project from both our partner and the customer.

Positive:

• The customer has been very happy with the Mast Climber installation. Especially how they helped in installation of the heavy and large (6 meters in length) vertically slanting cladding panels by using multi-platform systems
• The MCWPs have been very reliable, with a very small number of technical troubles
• Ease of use of a Multi-platform system (two MCWPs on one mast)
• The speed of 12m/min machines
• Quality drawings and calculations have been very good. On the customer side, there has not been a single time that they have wanted to discuss the technical solution
• The cabling solution: 300 m of height and two machines on one mast — no technical issues

Negative:

• Logistics: the site is in the busy center of KL, we have a time slot between 10 AM to 5 PM to load and unload the trucks and cement trucks always get higher priority
• Erections of the machines: 70% of the mast erections are done manually since the crane is mostly occupied with other tasks