The Digital Twin concept can be applied to everything from small pieces of equipment to large scale infrastructure projects. In the AEC industry, Digital Twins are BIM models with embedded asset and equipment specification data. These models can then be fed into FM software to simplify asset/facilities management.
Digital Twins can help reduce project lifecycle cost by reducing asset management cost and enabling preventive maintenance. There is additionally the opportunity to optimise efficiency by incorporating IoT enabled sensors in order to gather and analyse realtime data.
Early stage projects
BIM is the base component of any Digital Twin. The best time to start the Digital Twin process is at the conceptualisation stage, by incorporating the requirements into the BIM Execution Plan. If the asset is not planned to be designed in BIM, then creating a Digital Twin will require duplicate work, needlessly inflating costs.
As a BIM specialist, JES is ideally suited to help in the creation of Digital Twins by creating BIM Execution Plans which included the relevant Digital Twin parameters. We can then continue developing the Digital Twin as the project develops.
Planning
- Strategic advice & implementation
- Asset management strategy
- Execution planning (BEP)
- Digital delivery workflows
- OIR-AIR-EIR management
Execution
- Team deployment
- Multidisciplinary Coordination
- Construction progress reporting
- Site supervision
- Data analytics
Cost
Modern engineering frameworks already include BIM. This means that planning for Digital Twin development at the start of the project can significantly minimise the financial cost implications. The overall cost of the Digital Twin will depend on Many factors including the scale of the project and the final data, IoT and ML requirements.
Benefits
If designed, developed and used properly, Digital Twins can significantly reduce both the financial and environmental cost of facilities and asset management, by using predictive data analytics, Machine Learning and AI.
Constructed assets
Creating Digital Twins of constructed projects can be challenging. This is because existing 2D data has to first be converted into BIM, which can then be upgraded to a Digital Twin. The task is made significantly more manageable by the availability of LOD 500 BIM models. Below are the steps involved in creating Digital Twins of constructed assets.
Laser scanning
This is done to collect geolocation data, which will act as the foundation of the Digital Twin.Scan to BIM
Scan data is processed by our team of engineers to create LOD 400 BIM models. Items unnecessary to the Digital Twin, such as rebar, can be excluded to speed up the process.
Data embedding
Asset and equipment specific data is loaded onto the LOD 400 BIM models to create LOD 500 BIM models.IoT integration
If Machine Learning and AI are part of the project requirements, both the digital and physical assets must be then be fitted with IoT sensors, enabling collection of real time data, which can subsequently be fed into Machine Learning and AI models.
Federation and handover
Finally, all models and data are combined to create an overall digital twin.Middle East
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