What if you could see all your projects and assets in real-time, from anywhere? With digital twins, you can do that and more. Find out how.
A “digital twin” may sound like a new, fancy technology, but the idea and use of digital twins are not new.
The idea of a digital twin has roots in NASA’s Apollo 13 mission. The Apollo team created pairs of nearly every aspect of the program to accelerate the prototyping and simulation processes. The existence of these “twins” is largely credited with NASA being able to directly model potential scenarios and ultimately bring Apollo 13 Crew safely back to earth.
Today, digital versions of these “twins” are more common than you might think. For example, GE uses digital versions of their wind farms to understand efficiency, energy production, and maintenance needs without having to visit each turbine. Tesla creates a digital version of every car that goes off the line to improve its ability to monitor and service its vehicles. Medical device companies are even creating wearable sensors that transmit key health data to doctors, allowing them to monitor patients from afar.
Digital twins are becoming more mainstream, especially in physical, complex industries like construction. This application of technology is especially relevant for heavy civil and earthmoving contractors. Contractors can use digital twins to visualize construction sites and projects in real-time, from anywhere, giving them the ability to make faster decisions, plan more effectively, and mitigate risks.
Earthbrain has reimagined this way of thinking about a digital twin to focus on the end-to-end life cycle of a construction project and how it can be improved. Therefore, this digital twin discussion will focus on digital twin development and integrating available data streams incoming from a project (e.g., as-built data, drone survey data, design data, redesign data, etc.) as an ongoing digital twin modeling and simulation effort. Together, creating and updating a digital twin throughout a project can allow contractors to consistently evaluate the delivery of earthmoving projects. This new thought process enhances performance, increases communication between all stakeholders, and creates optimum project delivery for the owner.
Digital twin solutions are transformative by providing insight into common project issues arising anywhere from project inception/cost estimating through ongoing construction production and finally to project completion. Having input (and answers) to changing project design conflicts, terrain issues, schedules, and logistical issues that inevitably arise in the delivery of complex projects provides a rapid PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) cycle for the project that does not currently exist.
The creation and use of digital twins in the heavy civil construction industry is not an entirely new concept, but the use of Earthbrain’s suite of Smart Construction solutions makes the digital twin revolutionary. The rapid PDCA process and the use of proprietary software allow for several iterations of the jobsite before moving a bucket or blade of dirt. The ability to build the job virtually, before starting physically, allows heavy-civil contractors to develop a detailed plan instead of the current one, build, evaluate, and change mentally. The creation and use of digital twins is the next step in a company’s evolutionary chain to full digital transformation through the development of a jobsite’s single source of truth, and Smart Construction is the conduit for that evolution.
Read on to find out how digital twins can help you manage your construction projects more effectively, and how Smart Construction can help you get started.
What is a Digital Twin?
At the most basic level, a digital twin is a highly-detailed and accurate virtual representation of a physical project or jobsite. For this discussion, we are focused on heavy civil earthmoving projects. A digital twin can be used to visualize a jobsite, model project activities in advance, improve collaboration between project stakeholders, optimize the project schedule, and simulate physical environments and project activities in a digital environment.
Creating and using a digital twin requires data about the physical environment it mirrors. Digital twin software consumes data from things like drone surveys, design files, equipment & machines, and sensors to create a digital version of the physical jobsite. As a project progresses, new data is uploaded to the digital model, allowing companies to understand progress on the jobsite through the digital twin.
When coupled with real-time data updates, simulations, machine learning, and AI, a digital twin is a powerful life cycle analysis tool in civil construction to ensure the successful completion of each project. The ability to visualize the project before it starts, identify and communicate potential issues and track progress in real-time can improve your construction processes and decrease construction costs, benefitting both the contractor and the project owner.
Creating a Digital Twin
Initially, a digital twin is created using data from various sources, including 2D linework plans, surveys, drone mapping, robotic 3D scanning, TIN (Triangular Irregular Network) geographic data vector development files, photogrammetry, and/or LIDAR. This collection of information is then used to create a highly accurate and detailed digital model of the physical site and its current, baseline state.
From there, construction companies can continually update the digital twin as the project progresses. The process of updating a digital twin model typically involves:
- Collecting data on current site status, e.g., as-built information, finished grade surface redesigns, production adjustments
- Processing data, including removing outliers
- Integrating new data into the existing digital twin model
- Analyzing data
- Updating the digital model
This process allows for continual PDCA and iterations to continually transform the process, leading to cost reduction and on-time project completion.
A digital twin is capable of being continuously updated through the very same information sources allowing its creation – e.g., drone survey information and conventional plan revisions – but can also receive data input from machine sensors, such as Komatsu iMC machines, IoT (Internet of Things) sensors, and field hardware digitally connected to the digital twin model. IoT technology has been particularly transformative for the construction industry with its ability to provide real-time information and the current physical state of a project while simultaneously providing the capability to filter that data for the relevant project information and update the digital twin model as soon as it is available for use.
The information from sensors or hardware has become broadly accepted in the last few years by heavy civil construction companies. Advanced companies use modern data collection rovers, drone flights and data, robotic scanning/lidar, etc. to capture and digitize data about the physical world. These widely available data sources collectively make creating and updating a digital twin easier in the heavy civil industry.
Benefits of Digital Twins
Digital twins are highly detailed and accurate digital representations of a project site. As such, they can be analyzed and manipulated at all stages throughout the lifecycle of the heavy civil construction process. This manipulation & modeling process can help construction companies identify ways to optimize projects, from the estimation/bid phase through construction. Using various modeling and simulation assumptions or scenarios can lead to even greater insight into cost estimating, task sequencing, project management, resource allocation, environmental impact, safety, owner/stakeholder collaboration on schedule to completion, and final costs.
Introducing a digital twin early in the cost estimation process can yield insight into the overall scope of work that a 2D design cannot. Early project-based design constraints or topographical conflicts can emerge from the initial digital twin creation and analysis during the constructability review process. It is at this initial stage of cost estimation that digital twin-based identification of project roadblocks or design gaps is where collaboration and value engineering can deliver significant savings in time or schedule to all stakeholders.
As an example, imagine bidding on a project through conventional means and methods, then developing a digital twin, simulating & modeling multiple scenarios leading to the conclusion that less heavy off-road dump trucks are needed, and scraper cycle times can be shortened through the re-routing of a haul road. This digital simulation result leads to higher productivity with fewer resources, cost, and project duration.
Furthermore, the project can be optimized throughout the construction process by incorporating updated project & site data into the digital twin. This allows for a deeper understanding of project progress, easy revision of timelines, better scheduling, and improved cost management throughout the project.
Additionally, digital twin-based optimization could lead to lower cycle times for heavy equipment by:
- Eliminating traffic bottlenecks on haul roads that are too steep or narrow;
- Reducing allocation of project resources of labor and machines; or
- Increasing efficiency of repurposed resources already on site, thereby accelerating schedule and possibly lowering overall cost all while reducing emissions.
Finally, the digital twin model can illuminate safety issues, structural risks, and logistical challenges not visible in a 2D or 3D static environment. The digital twin may indicate sightlines on a haul route are unsafe, a highwall excavation situation will occur leading to potentially unsafe ground conditions, or planned stockpile locations and traffic routes will hamper project progress leading to numerous relocation requirements.
The use of digital twins on heavy-civil construction projects is the next big technological leap in this industry.
The Future of Digital Twins
The instance and development of the initial digital twin allows for the creation and existence of multiple digital twins which can be stored, manipulated, adjusted, and kept up to date on “as-built” data through the data thread and IoT. Accurate digital twin development and maintenance with new data allows for moving beyond single simulations on a steady state object. Original data & design parameters combined with the IoT data thread allows the use of machine learning and AI algorithms to merge together performing parallel, multiple model, iterative project adjustments during the simulation process, providing deep insight into total project delivery and future requirements.
The ability of AI and machine learning to incorporate and analyze new design parameters in the digital simulation process allows AI algorithms to become more accurate over time especially with IoT and the data feed. Further iterations and simulations with new data introduction should, over time, generate better refined and predictive outcomes ultimately leading to higher productivity, lower cost and duration, better planning, and further collaboration.
The connector spanning the gap between 2D designs, 3D static models, and the ever-growing amount of as-built data to be incorporated into the ongoing construction process is the digital twin. Its development and use have input into cost estimation, schedule, project management, sequence, environmental impact, safety, and collaboration of everyone involved. The use of digital twins can only lead to the transformation of how a company currently operates.
Digital Twins, Digital Transformation, and Smart Construction
The digital twin is an important and integral part of the journey as a construction company works toward complete digital transformation (DX) of their company. Digital transformation is movement from analog to digital workflows throughout the organization. Digital transformation increases operational agility/flexibility through transparency of information throughout all layers of the organization, from field to management. The PDCA (Planning, Doing, Checking, Acting) cycle can be accelerated by digital transformation because DX eliminates delays in aggregating data on projects – e.g., production, people, materials, machines, delays – and allows for quick analysis and optimization of project activities and company operations.
Digital transformation is a logical next step for construction companies. Companies can move from paper-based processes to incorporating machine control, digitization through drone surveys, digitization of people and equipment, development of digital twins, and finally transformation through a single source of truth and repository of one common data source. While the digital twin can provide actionable information to perform remarkably fast decisions, having complete transformation in how a company operates is the end goal. Changing behavior today allows construction companies to become more agile & leaner, leading to greater organizational efficiency and better bottom-line results.
Digital twin technology provides visualization and jobsite management while digital transformation overall can address more outdated organizational behaviors. This positively affects the bottom line of most companies, improves safety, reduces environmental impacts of construction, increases operational agility, and allows for more informed decision making.
The Smart Construction platform helps companies execute digital transformation effectively. Smart Construction technology reduces risk in construction organizations as information is now near instantaneous and decisions can be made quicker with more valid data & insight into potential problems before escalation. This faster acquisition and management of information provides faster response capability in a changing environment for a project, & the mitigation of potential financial loss.
Set up your Smart Construction Dashboard demo today to find out how you can start creating digital twins of your job sites quickly & cost-effectively.
