3.1. Importance of a Digital Platform in Project Evaluation
Throughout the entire life cycle of a capital construction project—encompassing design, construction, operation, and eventual dismantling—information continuously evolves, replenishes, and transforms. Essentially, this process constitutes an information flow, leading to the formation of a structural information model for organization of object’s lifespan. This model comprises interconnected information flows from various project subsystems [
18]. The digital transformation of construction management relies on the expanding capacities and tools provided by information and communication technologies, alongside the unique characteristics of information flows within the construction sector.
The central idea behind digitalization, both in general and within the construction industry, revolves around the concept of a digital platform. This platform serves as a unifying hub for all essential information and communication software tools needed to address industry-specific challenges. It grants specialists and other stakeholders access to a wide array of tasks that may be accomplished with significantly reduced exertion. Among such tasks are organization, planning and analytics of the project. With the integration of the platform, the once time-consuming and labor-intensive process of manually calculating construction volumes is no longer necessary. The platform automates this aspect, streamlining the entire construction planning process and significantly reducing the potential for errors.
Moreover, the platform’s advanced capabilities extend beyond volume calculations, as it also facilitates the creation of detailed calendar plans and schedules. By harnessing the power of automation and intelligent algorithms, the platform generates comprehensive and accurate schedules, taking into account various factors such as resource availability, project dependencies, and potential risks as presented in
Figure 3.
The newfound efficiency and accuracy offered by the platform not only enhance the overall productivity of construction projects but also provide project managers and teams with greater control and foresight. As a result, construction timelines can be optimized, and potential delays can be identified and mitigated proactively, leading to smoother project execution and improved outcomes.
The functionality of the platform is its key attribute. It contains a set of algorithms that facilitate communication among production and participants of project within a unified data area. The capabilities and efficiency of the digital platform are contingent upon the available interaction functions of project participants and the corresponding algorithms. These factors determine the platform’s advantages, drawbacks, effectiveness, and level of development.
An effective management of a construction project requires implementing a model with organizational structure that is flexible and caters to the unique characteristics of each stage and accommodates the various participants involved in the project’s life cycle. This model is often referred to as a “virtual design enterprise.”
An effective management of a construction project requires implementing a model with organizational structure that is flexible and caters to the unique characteristics of each stage and accommodates the various participants involved in the project’s life cycle. This model is often referred to as a “virtual design enterprise.”
A wide array of tasks within the construction industry must be addressed by an industrial digital platform should possess extensive performance. These tasks include:
Managing Information: The platform should enable easy access and efficient handling of project data, as well as real estate market information.
Dealing with Infrastructure Challenges: It should provide access to various digital resources required for smooth infrastructure management.
Handling Technological Requirements: The platform should offer specialized tools and technologies essential for construction processes.
Streamlining Corporate Processes: It should optimize control procedures to enhance the overall efficiency of the construction project.
By adopting such a digital platform and utilizing a flexible organizational structure, the virtual design enterprise can effectively navigate the complexities of the construction industry, ensuring successful management of capital construction projects throughout their life cycle.
By utilizing the industry digital platform and its tools, the process of attracting resources can be streamlined, and continuous project monitoring becomes feasible. The platform enables swift organization of resource allocation, ensuring the right amount of resources is available at the required times, thus minimizing losses due to downtime or search of the resource.
The virtual engineering enterprise offers organizational flexibility that allows it to optimize its use of resources to sufficient minimum. This approach proves cost-effective since maintaining and sustaining owned assets can be more expensive, especially when they are not consistently in use. In contrast, the virtual engineering enterprise employs its own assets only for the extended duration required during the project’s life cycle, leading to increased project efficiency and overall effectiveness.
The virtual project enterprise is operated both in real-world and digital format, therefore, managing the facility’s entire life cycle. The digital structure consists of data flows that correspond to each successive life cycle stage and are structured in a way of a production chain, after unification on a single industry digital platform. This platform serves as the central hub for integrating all organizational and resource-related modifications.
To ensure real-time tracking and synchronization, the project’s digital twin is utilized. This digital twin is a virtual representation of the actual facility, capturing all updates and changes as they occur throughout the life cycle. Cloud technologies, big data analysis, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced communication technologies facilitate the seamless transfer of vast amounts of information, keeping the digital twin up-to-date with the real-world developments. This convergence of technologies enables efficient and accurate management of the project, leading to improved productivity and performance throughout its life cycle.
3.3. Implementation and Further Development of Digital Twin Model
The ultimate level of advancement proposed in the ladder characterization system not only involves real-time visualization and prediction to aid decision-making but also includes automated feedback and control of the built environment as presented in
Figure 4. This level incorporates an intelligent feedback control system that enables the built environment to autonomously take actions based on optimized results and control strategies. Achieving this level of sophistication often relies on leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms. Through these advanced Digital Twins, virtual and real-world built environments can seamlessly interact with each other.
In essence, an ideal next-generation Digital Twin must be capable of supporting buildings of varying scales, ranging from single structures to city-scale building stocks. The increasing complexity of elements to be considered must also be accommodated as the scale expands. The key results of this development process can be outlined as follows:
Development of a cloud platform: This platform serves as a hosting and sharing hub for scan-to-BIM projects. It effectively manages large volumes of data, including point clouds from laser scanning and digital photogrammetry (primary data sources), as well as reports, digital drawings, and multimedia (secondary data sources).
Enhanced workflow efficiency: The integration of the platform improves workflow, coordination, and collaboration among stakeholders. It provides a user-friendly 3D visualization interface, streamlining processes.
Improved accessibility of Virtual Reality (VR) projects: The platform facilitates sharing of VR projects by allowing the distribution of executable files that can be installed on dedicated applications.
Augmented Reality (AR) object implementation and sharing: The platform supports the integration and sharing of AR objects, enhancing the overall user experience.
Enhanced interoperability of digital models: The platform promotes interoperability by utilizing specific proprietary and open-source exchange formats, enabling seamless data exchange between different software and systems.
Diversification of digital uses: The platform enables various digital uses, including smart glasses, VR headsets, PCs, mobile phones, and tablets, catering to different user preferences and device capabilities.
The continuous advancement in Information Technology (IT) enhances the interactivity of the platform, particularly by integrating monitoring data. The ultimate objective is to combine digital models and real-time data into a unified digital solution that supports awareness and building management over time.
Table 2 illustrates the fundamental elements of integrating BIM and AIoT in smart construction. In our view, prioritizing the analysis of potential consumers’ preferences becomes imperative. Therefore, for new construction projects and the redevelopment of residential areas, builders and developers are encouraged to employ the provided scheme to identify promising directions for the company’s growth and development.
Upon analyzing the data, the BIM implementation guideline has undergone revision, leading to the removal of two modeling methods. However, the guideline retains the content related to data capturing, laser and image survey data processing (as depicted in
Table 3). The decision to eliminate the methods of mapping vectors onto point cloud and parametric modeling semi-automatically stems from the results, which indicate that these approaches are not widely accepted among most of the respondents.