In October, the Nemetschek Group announced the availability of its SaaS digital twin platform, dTwin
dTwin is a horizontal and open platform that delivers data-driven insights and helps customers to efficiently manage facilities from design to operations.
It is the first solution in the industry that fuses all data sources of a building in one
overarching view.
What Is a Digital Twin?
In recent years, the use of digital twins has become increasingly common practice in
the AEC/O industry.
While the original definition of a digital twin focused on the life of air vehicles, over time the concept started playing a role in other sectors. In construction, a digital twin means a digital replica of a physical asset.
This may be a component, a system or a whole building. More importantly, the virtual replica is continuously fed with real-time information from the physical object, reflecting its current state.
Therefore, a digital twin not only allows for accurate visualisations but moreover derives insights through analysis, simulations and optimisations.
Nemetschek’s dTwin Solution: Horizontal, Open, Data-Driven
From planning through construction to the operation of a building, there are enormous amounts of data created by multiple stakeholders.
However, this valuable information resides mostly in silos and thus becomes inaccessible throughout a building’s lifecycle.
This results in major inefficiencies due to constant and tedious rework. Moreover, outdated and incomplete information leads to poor and error-prone decisions, which negatively affect the performance of buildings and increase operational costs.
This fall, the Nemetschek Group revealed the launch of its solution dTwin to tackle these challenges by helping to optimise workflows.
The SaaS digital twin platform is especially targeted at owners and operators of large buildings and complex structures, for example construction projects such as universities, hospitals and airports.
dTwin is a fully open API-based platform and builds on the extensive know-how of the Nemetschek Group with more than half a century of building experience.
The platform is bringing together all relevant information from CAD/BIM, IWMS and more.
With the real-time streams from building operations and all other sources that can be
connected via the open API interfaces, dTwin thus bridges the gap between design,
construction and operations, and enables a true open data-driven Building Lifecycle
Intelligence approach.
Project teams are able to take on a fully digital path, resulting in enhanced collaboration and efficiency. This enables significant cost savings, improved project management, and more favourable outcomes for all project stakeholders by centralising all building data in one place.
With an ever-increasing focus on providing more sustainable and cost-effective buildings and infrastructure, digital twins have an important role to play in reducing waste, errors, risk or energy consumption.
Creating Value with Digital Twins
The concept of a digital twin is not new – neither to the industry nor to Nemetschek.
But, according to the Nemetschek Group, until now the practitioners in the market were not fully equipped to use and generate real value from a data-driven solution such as dTwin.
The new solution creates a real-time connection between building data, sensors and facility management information.
It creates real value with regards to the increasing demands of ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) and a stronger focus on owners.
Customers receive cross insights through linking and querying across the different data sources.
dTwin Enhances Visibility, Increases Efficiency and Enables Data-Driven Decision-Making
César Flores Rodríguez, Chief Division Officer Planning & Design and Digital Twin at the Nemetschek Group, explains that “the new digital twin solution dTwin significantly enhances visibility, increases efficiency and enables data-driven decisionmaking.
Particularly the fusion of various data sources in dTwin is a strong differentiator compared to other solutions in the market”.
Dr Jimmy Abualdenien, Head of Digital Twin Product at the Nemetschek Group, adds: “dTwin intelligently structures the information and properly links it across systems, throughout the complete lifecycle of a building.
The benefit is harmonised information streaming from various data sources.”
The digital twin business unit at the Nemetschek Group is working closely with customers around the globe to enhance the offering, adapting it closely to the needs of owners.
Nemetschek expects to see more integration of digital twins with Building Information
Modelling (BIM) authoring software, enabling more accurate and detailed virtual replicas
of buildings and infrastructure across the entire operational lifecycle.
Automation in such workflows will be tremendously enhanced when powering digital twin platforms with AI.
In addition, the planning of smart cities can be significantly enhanced with platforms such as dTwin.
There will also be an increase in the use of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR)
to visualise digital twins in a more immersive way, helping to improve communication
and collaboration among stakeholders.
Maria Christine Richtsfeld
Communication Specialist
Nemetschek Group
*Please note: This is a contributor profile.
