The Digital Twin Revolution in Facility Management

Traditional building maintenance solutions are no longer enough to keep buildings functional, safe, and comfortable for occupants. With the construction industry’s technology-enabled transformation comes the need for a more advanced Facility Management system. That’s where Digital Twin technology comes in.

In this article, we’ll look into the details of integrating Digital Twin and Facility Management. You can take advantage of a Digital Twin software to model virtual copies of your assets and experience the benefits of this powerful combination.

Also, remember that you can make your maintenance processes even more efficient by using a Facility Management software, the system integrating all the features you need to plan, implement and control every aspect related to you organization’s asset management in a single platform.

The role of Digital Twin in building Facilities Management

A Digital Twin is a technological innovation that enables you to virtually replicate the physical and functional characteristics of an asset, taking advantage of the potential of BIM models and devices equipped with artificial intelligence.

It is based on the combination of three essential elements:

1. the existing physical asset, to be monitored, managed and maintained throughout its life cycle;;
2. the digital asset, which represents the virtual counterpart of the existing asset;
3. an interactive digital wire integrating the two systems and ensuring a continuous exchange of relevant data and information.

How Digital Twins are transforming facilities management

A digital twin can do more than just help us to understand the physical world as it exists today. It can also be used for predictive simulation, to forecast the potential outcomes of decisions and compare possible scenarios – informing choices and helping asset managers, facility managers and service providers to examine different aspects of a facility’s performance through a powerful platform for collaboration and problem solving.

It’s a virtual modelling technology with machine learning, software analytics, and artificial intelligence integration that can update a BIM model relating to an asset with real-time data, facilitating a two-way connection between the physical world and the digital world.

Physical world data informs the Digital Twin in real time and can be used by facility managers to:

• proactively identify problems;
• plan and perform maintenance;
• monitor equipment performance;
• simulate and analyze hypothetical scenarios;
• improve the decision-making process;
• optimise workflows.

Digital twins also allow stakeholders to interact on the building model in real time and manage complex issues that are typically faced during maintenance processes.

Asset monitoring with Digital Twin

What are the current applications of Digital Twins in FM?

Digital Twin technology can be used in Facility Management for several purposes. In fact, it helps facility managers to:

• obtain up-to-date and reliable information with regards to current activities, the state of health (technical condition) of assets and their geographical location;
• analyze the operation of the equipment and report possible malfunctions or subsequent failures well in advance;
• verify in real time the productivity and operating conditions of plants and define what adjustments are necessary;
• identify quality and safety problems and carry out analyses on the individual components of the systems to establish the best intervention strategies;
• simulate different scenarios to identify future resource needs and implement predictive maintenance;
• optimise energy use by assessing the impacts of different energy efficiency programmes;
• support the training of users with virtual or augmented reality simulations that help prevent potential dangerous situations.

Training with virtual reality

What are the benefits of a Digital Twin in Facility Management?

Managing the resources of a facility with the help of a Digital Twin basically means:

• knowing in advance the behavior of an asset;
• improving maintenance strategies;
• reducing unplanned downtime;
• increasing the operational efficiency of resources;
• monitoring the performance of the equipment;
• increasing the levels of quality and safety;
• improving the decision-making process
• saving on maintenance time and costs.

How to integrate Digital Twin and Facility Management

Digital Twin technology can be considered as an extension of Building Information Modeling.

As you may already know, BIM models are digital representations containing the information necessary to manage the entire life cycle of an asset, from the design phase to the operation phase.

BIM models play an essential role in Facility Management as they provide facility managers with a complete overview of their resources, streamlining each maintenance process.

With the help of Digital Twin technology today, however, it is possible to add an extra dimension to BIM models. In fact, by combining these systems with the potential of smart sensors and IoT devices, it is possible to create “living” models capable of activating a constant exchange of information with the real world.

Certainly, to integrate Digital Twin functionality into your Facility Management processes, you need the right tools. For this reason, we recommend you to rely on a software for managing Digital Twin, the solution designed specifically to create and manage digital copies of any resource within a structure. Try it immediately to start monitoring your asset operations in real time and get accurate and reliable information to set your maintenance strategies.

To manage your resources even more efficiently, you can rely on a software for Facility Management, the centralized and cloud-based platform that allows you to take advantage of the potential of BIM models to geolocate plants and equipment, plan targeted interventions, track maintenance activities and simplify every aspect related to Facility Management.

To learn more, read also: Lean Maintenance, What is it and when to implement it