BIM and Digital Twin the Future of Digital Construction

The future of construction is involved in implementing a set of technologies such as Digital Twins, BIM, AI, and VR. This refers to ‘convergent technology’ encouraging digital innovators to focus on offering combinations of various technologies to address current solutions or enhance processes and methods.

For a long time, everyone focused on identifying various applications for VR or AR as a single or core technology. AR and VR applications are still limited to some practices and have not been taken seriously by AEC Industry. However, it can be used as a core part of a digital twin or metaverse, so this makes mixed-reality technology more useful.

Practitioners and smaller firms are not able to adopt a wider range of single technologies and learn how to operate them. However, it is more efficient to use a convergent technology as a combination of BIM, AR connected to a Digital Twin. The concept of convergent technology opens the door for investigation and innovation in the construction field.

The future of the AEC industry depends on disruptive technologies due to rapid growth in digitization and digitalization of the industry. Throughout the lifecycle of a project (design and planning, construction, operation, and management), the advent of proposed disruptive technologies will push the boundaries of the AEC industry to develop solutions and business ideas for each phase of the lifecycle of the of a project (design and planning, construction, operation, and management).

Here's my list of convergent technologies that I believe will revolutionize the AEC industry in the next 10 years.

4D Printing

The technology known as 4D printing is advanced 3D printing (3DP) with the flexibility of property changes in objects with changing environments.4D printing is similar to 3D printing in terms of digital printing of the objects; it differs in using smart materials with unique thermomechanical properties that can change their shape and are based on programmable technology.

Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality

Immersive technologies will revolutionize how information is shared, displayed, processed, and modified for the year 2030 in the AEC industry. AI and multiuser applications will be developed to create new ways of interaction, enhancing training and learning processes with the aid of VR.

Cloud XR

XR stands for extended reality, which encompasses virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. All these realities come under the umbrella name of extended reality and have different significances in the AEC industry.

Visualization of the design process, real-time animation, training of site workers, estimating hazards in dangerous scenarios, safety training, schedule control, optimization of site layout, collaboration environment simulation, progress monitoring, and control of site activities are some of the benefits achieved through XR utilization in AEC industry

Metaverse for AEC and VDC Professional (M-AEC)

The Metaverse, In a nutshell, it is a digital world where anything imagined can exist; it will be a connected source with time and will have the capabilities of augmenting the senses of humans, such as sight, sound, and touch. The related technologies for supporting the Metaverse are extended realities (VR, AR, and MR), artificial intelligence, computer vision, edge and cloud computing, future mobile networks (preferably 6G), blockchain, and non-fungible token (NFTs)

The medium to enter the Metaverse will be extended realities (VR, AR, MR). Implementation of tasks in the Metaverse will be significantly authoritative for AEC and VDC professionals to review and coordinate clients’ and stakeholders’ expectations making them immersed to have telepresence and interaction with the projects.

AIoT (AI-Integrated IoT)

(IoT), it is regarded as a comprehensive, interconnected network of physical tools comprising drones or UAV’s, sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), extended realities (VR, AR, and MR), a global positioning system (GPS) and other sensing, communication, and actuating tools . Integrating with other technologies, IoT revolutionizes the Internet itself and perhaps acts as a bridge to culminate real and virtual environments.

AIoT, with other techniques, can be used in the construction industry for high-definition surveying, geolocation, data collection, and acquisition. The dynamic tracking of the construction progress, job site monitoring, health and safety management, and logistics and management are some of the attributes of using AIoT solutions in the construction industry.

Autonomous Digital Twin

Regarding the AEC industry, DT is a virtual, digital, or synthetic representation of a built asset that paves the way for better simulation of the models and forecast predictions to achieve enhanced decision-making. Integrating three key elements, physical, virtual, and data entwined together, is significant to achieve dynamic mapping for a DT . The Cyber-Physical Systems of BIM, IoT, and other data mining techniques is used to inspect the information in the physical asset to transfer it to the virtual asset.

The maturity level of the DTs can be categorized into four levels, namely “pre-digital twin”, “informative digital twin”, “performance digital twin”, and finally, “autonomous digital twin” . Most of the research and industry trends now revolve around the first three levels, which reflect real-time data of the physical asset to the digital asset and vice versa. This allows for performance measurement and monitoring of operational activities.

Construction Telematics

As the construction industry is plagued with tight margins and often occurring downtime, the facilitation of communication, sharing, and data analysis are of utmost importance to avoid disruptive effects on the overall workflow of the project.

Construction telematics is about managing asset data, whether a piece of equipment or a complete building. By incorporating CT, the exact location of assets can be tracked, job sites can be managed, asset utilization for maximum output can be retrieved, and equipment life cycle can be predicted.

Summary

Technology adoption framework is complex and should be defined based on the context considering technical, individual, social, organizational, and environmental factors.

Further, the lack of skilled workers, resistance to change, data security issues, complexity in the application, and interoperability issues stifle the uptake of single technologies and can be addressed by utilizing convergent technologies