Petronas Twin Towers
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Tenants of the Petronas Towers
Tower One is fully occupied by the Petronas Company and a number of its subsidiaries and associate companies. The office spaces in Tower Two are mostly available for lease to other companies. A number of companies have offices in Tower Two, including Accenture, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg, Boeing, IBM, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, McKinsey & Co, Microsoft and Newfield Exploration.
Other facilities
KLCC Park
Outside the building is a park with jogging and walking tracks, a fountain with incorporated light show, wading pools, and a children's playground. Suria KLCC is one of the biggest shopping malls in Malaysia.
Skybridge
The towers feature a skybridge (constructed by Kukdong Engineering & Construction) between the two towers on 41st and 42nd floors. The bridge is 170 m high and 58 m long. The same floor is also known as the podium, since visitors desiring to go to higher levels have to change elevators here. The skybridge is open to all visitors, but passes (limited to c. 1400 per day, which usually run out before noon) must be obtained on a first-come, first-served basis. Passes are free. The skybridge is closed on Mondays.
The skybridge also acts as a safety device, so that in the event of a fire or other emergency in one tower, tenants can evacuate by crossing the skybridge to the other tower. However, the total evacuation triggered by a bomb hoax on September 12, 2001 showed that the bridge would not be useful if both towers need to be emptied simultaneously, and the capacity of the staircases was insufficient for such an event. Current plans thus call for the elevators to be used if both towers need to be evacuated, and a successful drill following the revised plan was conducted in 2005. The sky bridge is built in such a way that it will rotate with the high wind up by the top.
Elevator system
The towers have an advanced elevator system which attempts to minimise valuable floor space whilst maximising the number of people they can transport to their desired floor. The main bank of elevators is located in the centre of each tower. All main the elevators are double-decker with the lower deck of the elevator taking you to odd numbered floors and upper deck taking you to the even numbered floors. In order to access an even numbered floor from ground level, one is required to use an escalator to access the upper deck of the elevator.
From the ground floor there are three groupings of elevator. The “short haul” group of 6 elevators take people to floors between level 2/3 and level 16/17. The “mid haul” group of 6 elevators take people to floors between level 18/19 and level 37/38. Finally there is a a set of shuttle elevators that take people directly to levels 41/42. In order to get to levels above 41/42, one is required to take the shuttle elevators and then catch a connection lift to the upper floors. These connecting elevators sit directly above the elevators serving levels 2 to 38 but the pattern now repeats with the upper levels, one set serving levels 43/44 to 57/58 and one set serving levels 59/60 to levels 73/74. It is therefore not possible to travel from the ground level all the way up to the upper most level using one elevator.
Apart from this main bank of elevators, there are a series of “connecting” elevators to take people between the elevator groupings. Unlike the main elevators, these are not of the double-decker type. Two elevators are provided for example to take people from levels 37/38 to levels 41/42 (levels 39 and 40 are not accessible as office space). This avoids the need for someone situated at the lower half of the building to go all the way down to the ground floor in order to go all the way up in the shuttle elevator in order to gain access to the upper half of the building.
The elevators contain a number of safety features. It is possible to evacuate people from an elevator stuck between floors by manually driving one of the adjacent elevators next to it and opening a panel in the wall. It is then possible for people in the stuck elevator to walk between elevator cars. During an evacuation of the building the shuttle elevator is allowed to be used. This is because there are only doors at levels G/1 and levels 41/42 therefore should there be a fire in the lower half of the building, this enclosed shaft would remain unaffected.
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