Two construction teams once raced each other to raise the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, with every passing day of delay costing an extraordinary $700,000 that pushed workers to build at a pace the world had never seen. One tower was led by a Japanese firm and the other by a South Korean firm, with both rising side by side under government orders that enforced strict penalties to keep the ambitious project moving without pause. The towers were completed together in the late 1990s, holding