Four recommendations for the AECO industry to accelerate the adoption of Digital Twins in the built environment

Over the last few weeks, I have delivered several presentations and lectures, and joined panel discussions, about Digital Twins in the built environment. Some of these events where fully focussed, or dedicated a full day, to Digital Twins. This for me again highlighted the momentum and strategic interest for this topic, also for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Operations (AECO) industry.

For me personally, this makes sense. Since I first was exposed to Digital Twins, now 6 years ago when GE actively started promoting the concept, it caught my interest. The power of the concept is partly in its simplicity: a Digital Twin is a replica of a physical situation. But also the fact that it has been adopted in some many sectors (for some cross sector best practices see this blog on Forbes), showcases the broad potential of the concept.

However, despite this potential, adopting Digital Twins in the built environment is complex. And the fact that the AECO industry, as an important player in this context, is overall lagging on digital maturity compared to other sectors, might even make it more challenging.

In this article, I’ll provide some recommendations how to deal with these challenges and complexity. Before I do so, I’ll first share my views about the strategic opportunity of Digital twins in the built environment and the challenges for Digital Twin adoption for the AECO industry.

Growing strategic relevance of Digital Twins

There is a clear momentum for further adoption of Digital Twins. The complexity of today’s built environment, and the multiple level of changes that needs to happen in parallel in that environment, require powerful concepts like Digital Twins. In this context, Digital Twins aim to simplify this complexity by providing relevant insights about the continuously changing built environment. And they support, accelerate and even automate decision making, using multiple data sources, simulation models and algorithms.

Recent publications, like the Capgemini Research Institute publication Digital Twins: adding intelligence to the real world highlights the impact Digital Twins are already making today. Not only on business improvement: “15% improvement in metrics such as sales, turnaround time, and operational efficiency and , 25% in system performance”. But more importantly also realizing “16% improvement in sustainability.” Also market advisory firm ABI research identified “a potential of US$ 280 billion cost saving by using digital twins for more efficient urban planning”.

Even more interesting for me is to notice how Digital Twins are positioned in recent publications. More and more Digital Twins are positioned in the core of digital transformation, where other technologies like virtual and augmented reality, edge computing and artificial intelligence are catalyst for this transformation. This full aligns the way I have been positioning the concept and the role Digital Twins can play in the built environment.

Double complexity of adopting Digital Twins

However, ?although there is common acceptance of the need for Digital Twins, adoption is quite complex. Based on my experience with digital twin strategies and implementation, I always address in my presentations five challenges for adopting Digital Twins:

• Difficult access to high-quality, granular data. For example due to fragmented technologies and legacy applications.
• Challenges with interoperability of data and models between more traditionally siloed verticals like BIM, GIS, and IoT, partly due to the lack of overarching standards and formats everyone can use. ?
• Sufficient level of trust in digital systems to actually use them in decision making. And related challenges around (cyber)security and privacy, especially for organisations working with critical infrastructure (like energy systems) and public environments (like cities).
• Human capital and the implications for employee skills. International reports – like the Connected Places Catapult digital twin competency study – increasingly identify this as an adoption barrier, not just for Digital Twins but for data and digital transformation in general.
• Technology driven instead of business / societal driven: many digital twin strategies, roadmaps, and implementation plans run into problems when approached from a technology perspective rather than led by business needs.

Part of these challenges need to be addressed on a sector level, others are more organizational challenges. This required change on two levels is clearly an extra dimension to the complexity: The digital transition of the AECO industry as a whole and digital transformation of AECO organizations need to happen in parallel.

The digital transition of the AECO industry

The digital transition of the AECO industry aims to change the industry as a system on multiple levels.

One part of this is the increased collaboration and integration of previous siloes domains and verticals. Digital twins, and especially on a more system level (often referred to as an eco system of digital twins or a system of systems), connect Digital Twins of buildings, campuses, energy systems, cities and mobility to mention a few. For example, increasingly energy systems in buildings are part of and to a large extend dependent on the smart grid they connected to. Digital twins on a system level need to enable the collaboration between these domains.

Another part is that traditional siloed verticals, like GIS, BIM and IoT, are gradually merging under the digital twin agenda. This merge enables the use of data from a wide range of sources. This requires new agreements on standards and principles that are used to enable interoperability between these systems.

And also when growing these digital twin systems, more societal dilemma’s start emerging: for example who owns and have access to data in this system? How do we organize security of this system?

Therefore it is great to see that at National and European level, multiple initiatives have been taken, ?like the National Digital Twin agenda in the UK and the Netherlands, to look at the challenges of collaboration and interoperability. This increasingly results in frameworks and reference architectures for the industry to facilitate the transition.

However, developing these framework is one thing, but making sure these principles and standards are sector wide adopted is another thing. And there, digital transformation of AECO organizations comes in.

The digital transformation of organizations

Most AECO organizations acknowledge the importance of digital for their future business. They have initiated digital transformation programs and initiatives to drive the adoption of BIM, applying computational design methodologies like parametric design, automated engineering or generative design and are using virtual- and augmented really to improve collaboration with stakeholders. Besides this, all kind of new value propositions, often related to Digital Twins, are emerging with digital technology at the core to provide new values for clients.

Although that the potential of digital is embraced, many organizations in the AECO industry, especially compared to other sectors, are just starting. And there is still a lot to learn how to make this transformation happen. Some characteristics of the industry, like the strong focus on delivering projects, fragmentation of the supply chains and landscape (between design and operations, but also in number of asset owners) and conservatism in the sector due to risks in delivering these projects, will provide some sector specific challenges.

The power of Digital Twins as a concept and its application across the asset life cycle can play a strong role here. Combined with the potential to use best practices on digital transformation in other sectors, and the already happening digital transition on a AECO system level, there is a growing momentum to change.

The way forward: four recommendations

Based on the above, there is a clear why the sector need to move into this transition and related transformations; and also to a certain extent what needs to happen becomes more clear. But the how has proven to be far more complex, also given the characteristics of the AECO industry.

To provide some inspiration for this how, I hereby give a couple of recommendations for the way forward, in line with the analysis in this article:

• Adoption of Digital Twins requires more central coordination, especially when moving to a system level. In my publication of begin 2020 “Bits and Pieces, Uniting the physical and digital world for a more sustainable Europe – a Dutch perspective” this was one of the core recommendations. Although great initiatives have emerged since then, like the Geonovum initiative in the Netherlands to develop a reference architecture for the built environment, we are not there yet. Continued cross sector level collaboration and further alignment and integration of domains and ?verticals is required, amongst others on defining standards, and clear implementation strategies for these standards need to be developed. This requires for example platforms with the right mix of participants across the various dimensions like asset owners, service providers and technology players, combined with expertise from the various domains and verticals. Too often we limit these initiatives to one domain or one vertical only. And there is still a limited digital mindset in the sector.
• The human capital agenda requires more attention. As outlined in this article, this is not just about skills on ?technology, but also about new ways of collaborating and working. Creating this overall digital mindset requires a strong human capital agenda. This agenda needs to be developed based on strong collaboration of knowledge institutes, government and business to create the right mix of capability development, living labs and experiences from actual practice.
• Shift the way we collaborate in the sector. We too often operate in a closed and fragmented supply chains. Digital Twins will require and create new value chains, and to capture values in these chains we need to work together. Not just between the traditional players like contractor and engineering firms, but also a strong involvement of asset owners and technology providers is essential. Creating environments to experiment with new modes of collaboration, like living labs, will be crucial in this. These collaborations need to be based on clear principles, for example how we deal with data (applying frameworks like the Gemini principles), how we communicate and how we ensure security of sensitive information.
• In parallel to these sector wide initiatives contributing to the digital transition, AECO organizations will need to implement aligned strategies as well in their organizations. This includes an use case centric approach, a clear view on a future ready architecture that support a wide range of use cases and aligns with sector wide standards, implementing an aligned human capital agenda on organizational level and more openly explore new forms of collaboration in eco systems.

Of course, there are much more recommendations I can made, but for now I hope with this article I shared why adoption of Digital Twins is complex, but the momentum is right to deal with it. Looking forward to engage in discussions how we can make this happen.