CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency and cost management and advisory firm WT, in have proven that quantity surveying data can be incorporated successfully into a digital twin.

Digital twins are the latest frontier in the construction industry’s digital transformation, but their potential has rarely been embraced by quantity surveyors.

“As the only quantity surveying business involved in the program, we brought a unique cost and quality perspective to increase the value a digital twin can offer the property sector,” says Ian Baddock, WT Australia’s Chief Information Officer.

As part of the Early Adopter Program, WT worked closely with CSIRO’s Terria team to co-design and develop a proof of concept demonstrating the opportunity to digitally transform the economic modelling process for commercial property development.

“WT’s digital twin is an excellent outcome from CSIRO’s Data61 Early Adopter Program and confirms that placing digital, data and workflow automation at the core of operations can deliver greater efficiencies, insights and competitiveness,” says CSIRO’s Terria Group Lead Ana Belgun.

The proof-of-concept digital twin demonstrates the evolution of a building from design through to the construction phase. It is based on a structural building information model (BIM) enhanced with rich 3D (geometry), 4D (time) and 5D (cost) data as well as photogrammetry and point cloud reality models, government datasets and WT’s own proprietary metadata.

The digital twin shows current as-built structures with colourised point cloud data and overlays of localised datasets. More than 45 datasets were configured and made accessible in the project catalogue.

These included six datasets managed by the Terria Spatial Digital Twin platform developed by CSIRO, and 40 federated datasets from numerous providers including open data from the City of Melbourne, the Victorian Government, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in addition to commercial 3D data providers.

“The resulting digital twin is a virtual reflection of a physical asset, bringing together a wealth of interactive information in a user-friendly, immersive environment.”

WT claims the digital twin has the potential to transform cost optimisation and information delivery and capture meaningful feedback from clients and stakeholders.

“It will enable developers, consultants and contractors to engage deeply with their property projects, interrogate their own and others’ information, collaborate more easily, and make faster and better-informed decisions throughout a project’s lifecycle,” says Baddock.

Image: Supplied

Branko Miletic

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