Digital Twin – What is in the Name?

 

If you asked me before yesterday what ‘a’ digital twin was I would have said, an attempt to replicate a building/infrastructure in its entirety, possibly before it is built. Sort of an extension on a BIM approach, where they had run out of ‘D’-es while adding additional attributes to BIMs and someone decided to call it a Digital Twin. Same as the real thing, but digital.

According to the presentations of the Second Annual Digital Twin ANZ Conference, it appears that it is much more, they imply that data used for simulation and optimising before the physical object is created is all part of ‘the’ digital twin. Test scenarios, what if’s, dead end design option, all included.

It is meant to be read as a collective noun describing an approach not a thing.

As in not a virtual building or infrastructure asset nor a platform or other singular application, but ‘everything’.

This may be a logical choice of a name in the context of BIM development for those that dreamed it up, but I see it as a disruption on the way to maturing of the digital building space.

Firstly, it needs explaining for all that work in the industry but are not yet using it.

Secondly, it encourages opportunities to endlessly argue over the ‘is it or is it not’ question of conformity to that arbitrary term, like it used to be with 3D then BIM than Virtual Construction, then Digital Engineering.

Worst of all, it widens the gap between those ‘in the know’ and those that are BIM wary and are yet to place themselves on the ladder of practical BIM use.

It almost appears like every time a particular term becomes familiar within larger numbers of AEC stakeholders, someone thinks it necessary to come up with a new one. Even if this is not intentionally done to deceive there is a risk of it majorly backfiring and blocking attempts to widen the userbase of BIM practitioners.

It is not a verb, even though it can be made into one – like ‘twinning’ – as a noun its main meaning is of a singular thing while we feel it should imply a group of both ‘things’ and ‘activities’.

The ambiguity of the terminology is probably less worrying than the question of direction where this Twin is meant to be heading in an environment still struggling with the ‘old’ BIM.

One hears so much about the rapid development of technologies, AI and its sisters, the sky being the limit and so on.

We also hear at the conference that these are some early examples of Twins, so why not just say they are advanced versions of BIM?

If I reflect on my own 30+ years of experience in BIM – and I’m just happy to call it BIM - I  don’t yearn for Twins, I see the need to pause and rethink our collective BIM strategies.

We do not always need to gallop ahead of the lot; now is the time to stop inventing new approaches/names and disciplines and focus on widening the field.

We frown on people/companies that are ‘just’ doing 3D, yet a well setup enterprise working in 3D can do magic. BIM practitioners that only use a handful of I-s in their model information fields might also get little encouragements from the BIM elite, yet their use of core tools and resulting productivity gains might overshadow those prone to inventing new approaches.

Build magic BIM models and add clever simulations, tests and other processes on the top of them but no need for a new science to be formed just yet.

I see company after company that focuses on a selected few to carry the baton of BIM (or the Twin) while the large proportion of the workforce carries on business as usual.

Inclusivity should be the magic word, bringing more people of the industry into practical BIM use, getting the masses dirty their hands with models in their everyday work.

I’ve long planned to work on developing a way of measuring an entity’s (company/project) BIM saturation rate, based on people’s engagement and their BIM literacy.

With my renewed interest in this Group, I intend to use this platform for testing such a gadget/formula application, not yet sure of its final shape and format.

I will also run these posts on the original DebunkTheBIM blogpost (now in its 15^th year) to keep a record of them but also reach those old followers that are not active on LinkedIn.

What are your thoughts on the Digital Twin? Could or should the activities collectively described as the ‘Twin’ not fit just as comfortable under BIM or Digital Engineering?

At least until a wider uptake happens and its makeup better defined and bedded in.

Interested in your thoughts!