Over the past decade, the construction industry has undergone a profound transformation, largely due to the integration of cutting-edge technologies that increase project efficiency, reduce travel costs, and improve project outcomes by optimizing communication between field teams and remote stakeholders. This is particularly true for the advent of the digital twin—a frequently updated virtual representation of a physical asset or an ongoing construction project that provides all stakeholders with a single source of measurable truth.
This article will define the concept of a digital twin for construction, review its benefits, and discuss why this technology-fueled asset is revolutionizing how construction, engineering, and inspection stakeholders manage buildings and structures throughout their entire lifecycles.
Key takeaways
A digital twin is a virtual duplication of a construction project that is frequently updated with data on the actual performance of the project.
These assets offer a 3D, immersive walkthrough of a job site over the timeline of the project, without the need for stakeholder travel.
This single source of truth—which can be measured, compared against plans and drawings, and combined with a schedule for 4D reality—improves stakeholder communication, optimizes decision-making, improves risk mitigation, and boosts productivity while ensuring safety and reducing miscommunications, costly rework, and delays.
In construction, a digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical asset, such as a building, structure, or infrastructure, that is frequently updated based on actual data from the project itself. A truly accurate twin is generated by a photogrammetry or reality mapping engine that automatically and precisely arranges images and video of a job site in space and over time, creating a measurable duplication of the project in 3D as immersive and precise as an in-person walkthrough.
The best reality mapping software to use for creating such digital twins should be hardware agnostic, allowing field teams to rapidly capture the reality job site using any device, not just highly-priced ones that require expert operators (i.e., LIDAR and Matterport scanners) but rather to complement them so the best of high-precision solutions (i.e., LIDAR) are brought together with high-quality visuals (Matterport scanners) and the ease and quickness of camera-based documentations. (Virtually any employee can capture the reality of a job site using hardware such as a smartphone or a 360 camera.)
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