Trial / Demo
Earlier this month, IES teamed up with construction’s leading video channel, The B1M, for an exclusive session, delving into one of the industry’s key technology trends – Digital Twins. The session saw experts from across the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector come together to tackle the important question of what constitutes a Digital Twin, and fundamentally, what does not.
While the term “Digital Twin” has exploded in popularity across the AEC sector in recent years, ask around and it’s clear there remains a lot of confusion about what a Digital Twin actually is and what they have to offer.
In this live event, Emma Hooper - Head of Information Management Strategy at RLB Digital; Dan Rossiter - Built Environment Sector Lead at BSI; Mike Keeley - Associate Director, Digital at Turner & Townsend; and Richard Fletcher - Executive Board Member at IES joined The B1M’s Fred Mills to unpack some of the most common mis-uses and misconceptions surrounding the term. Helping to set the record straight and explain the value this technology holds for decarbonising the built environment.
According to Richard Fletcher, a performance digital twin, such as those developed by IES, stems from a dynamic physics-based performance model, often created during the building’s design stage, that is calibrated with real metered and sensor data. The model is connected with the real building so that there is a two-way flow of information. This makes it possible to ensure that the building is operating as per its digital twin, or vice versa – which can be a subtle difference depending on the use case. Having a Digital Twin that responds and behaves like the real building makes it possible to ensure that the building is operating as intended, or it can enable virtual testing of future scenarios to see how they would affect the building’s performance.
From a BSI point of view, Dan Rossiter referenced the BS ISO/IEC 30173 standard, which looks to formalise some of the key concepts that constitute what a digital twin is, as well as some key terms and definitions. Encouragingly, his definition was very in sync with Richard’s explanation of the IES performance digital twin. Dan explained that a Digital Twin is a digital representation of a target entity with data connections that enable conversions between the physical and digital states at an appropriate rate of synchronisation. He highlighted that this aligns with the latest thinking by government departments, such as the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which define Digital Models, Digital Shadows and Digital Twins - where the model is the static object, a shadow is a one-way connection and the twin is the two-way connection and data flow.
A common misconception is that BIM, compliance and energy models are all effectively Digital Twins. However, this is not the case. These are static models that represent a snapshot in time, whereas Digital Twins need to have a continuous bi-directional data flow to accurately represent and behave like the real building.
Emma Hooper offered up some great insight and advice to elaborate on this point, stating: “It’s all about information models. We talk a lot about models and what immediately springs to mind for most people is a 3D model, when in fact, it doesn’t have to be 3D.” She explained that a model can be connecting data to build a digital representation of a facility and if there is geometrical data available, you can create a 3D model, but it’s not an essential component. Most importantly she advised that: “Models need to be kept up to date with the physical facility, whether it’s a refurbishment or replacement of a boiler. As long as that static model is kept up to date it can then be the foundation for a Digital Twin where you can build on the performance aspect and get that data flow from the physical to the digital asset and vice versa via actuators, so you’ve got that two-way flow.”
“It’s like a magpie effect,” said Dan Rossiter. He claimed that people are drawn to something new and exciting, but cautioned, “it’s really important to find the right place to use [a digital twin] and know what kind of data you want to collect.” He noted that the target entity of a digital twin, in the case of buildings, will most likely be the internal environment of a building or its energy performance. Geometry and doors are static but the internal environment is in constant flux. “It’s really the operation of a building where digital twins are of most value,” he explained. “People tend to think of a Digital Twin as BIM with extra bells on and that’s where the confusion lies.”
Richard Fletcher explained that it’s really about using Digital Twins to ensure buildings are operating as efficiently as they were designed to be. Recent studies have suggested that in-use energy consumption can be 5 to 10 times higher than compliance calculations carried out at design stage, resulting in the well-known performance gap. “It stems back to: is your building performing as intended?” said Richard. “A building is designed for compliance and maybe optimisation of systems but when you put people in it they can change things and make decisions that don’t necessarily align with the intent of that building.” He explained that Digital Twins can determine where the operation has fallen down once the building is occupied, and can then be used to optimise the operational performance and align it with the design intent. “Once you’ve done this you can then look at a potential decarbonisation roadmap,” he explained. This could be a series of light and deep retrofits and maybe looking at renewables and decarbonisation of the grid as part of that process. “A digital twin really enables you to understand which interventions are going to have the greatest impact and can de-risk investment decisions, knowing that the different scenarios modelled as part of the decarbonisation plan will have that exact effect when actually applied to the building.”
Mike Keeley made the excellent point that there is an underappreciation of the amount of enabling work that is required to develop a digital twin. “It’s a journey,” he said. “You can’t buy a Digital Twin, it doesn’t just come out of a box.” He urged attendees not to “rush into a solution and consider the problem you’re trying to solve first.” Expanding on this, he explains: “If you define that, you can work backwards to a solution. Often a Digital Twin comes in too late to a project – we need to plan in the early days and then step-by-step gradually build the information management foundations for a digital twin.” Considering the organisational vision and objectives is also key, he counselled, and will allow you to develop a digital twin strategy aligned to the business vision.
Emma Hooper explained: “It’s all about information management at the end of the day. Information is a really important asset, and like any other asset it needs to be planned, checked, procured and used properly.” She advised that managing information and data needs to start within the organisation and not on projects. “Understand your business needs, really look at the processes and then you can start to look at where a digital twin would provide the most value.”
She also made the point that it’s important to look at how information is connected and tagged and that this is all done independent of technology. She advised organisations to do their homework on the available open standards that are available such as those provided by BuildingSmart, noting that: “Many organisations are being led by lots of propriety ways of organising their information and connecting it, and this doesn’t necessarily help the industry because we’ll end up with even more interoperability problems than we have at the moment.” She emphasised that when it comes to information, “the industry is one big organisation in the way that we share and exchange information – but if that’s all in different formats and languages and structured differently then it can’t talk to each other.”
For further insights, you can now watch the webinar on demand and hear the experts answer specific questions from the audience.
Interested in creating a Digital Twin for your building(s) but don’t know where to start? Download our FREE Guide ‘The Practicalities of Creating a Digital Twin’.
You can also sign up for one of our free web demos, or contact our team to discuss your requirements.
