"Digitalization" is a trending aspect across industries due to its numerous benefits. The AEC industry is one of the good examples where many of the traditional processes of the Construction process are moving towards the adoption of the latest technologies to achieve efficiency. Digitalization of buildings refers to the conversion of all existing information of properties into digital formats and utilizing it to solve business problems and provide optimum solutions.
Digitalization is advancing the as-built/under-construction properties to smarter sites using Digital Technologies in the Digital World, which further makes the workflows, and processes easier and more effective. Digitalization is becoming a key aspect & these Digital models are generated from the geometrical and non-geometrical information acquired during the design and development stage of construction or from the Laser Scanning technique.
The most common use cases of Digital Twin in a Built environment include zoning and space segregation, Indoor condition monitoring, Visualization of Building systems, Enriching Info on the respective assets, etc., and is not limited only to these; Further, these digitalized models can be used for CAFM Solutions which can extremely help in Asset Management, Maintenance Management & Energy Management Solutions.
Proper planning and a quick survey of the site is the crucial process to understanding the criticality of the area and also planning the laser scanning points approximately.
This process helps us with the rough estimation of time and scan points required for the area and also in acquiring the maximum data and information during the process. Based on the site condition and visibility of the services, the scan points are recorded and generally, the number of scan points depends on the area partition and the services density.
Post the planning process, the team of scanning professionals will start the scanning activity with a Terrestrial Laser Scanner with measurement and georeferencing devices. The number of scans depends based on the area and clear view range of the site and also, the schedule of the Laser scanning activity depends on the same.
Typically a laser scanning activity for each scan point takes around 4-5 minutes for a medium-level scan with the highest level of accuracy.
Since these scanners work on the LIDAR technology, the darkest of the places with the services can be captured like shafts and above-ceiling services.
Here, the raw scans generated from the scanners are being processed by importing them into the OEM Platforms and this process is majorly termed as Data Stitching. The scan points generated are in the Point Cloud format and these scan points are merged together and the unnecessary data is cleaned to form a 3D point cloud model of the actual site.
The generated 3D model is exported into the viewable format and is ready for use by the client, or for further processing to produce the BIM Models.
The processed data is published for Virtual site navigation, which also facilitates the clients to track the construction progress in construction projects. This exported data is used for BIM model production where the point cloud data is imported into BIM Model tools and further the model is generated with the required services and associated elements.
BIM is not just limited to 3 Dimensional Models but is the process of creating and managing the information of Built assets. Any constructed/under-construction site is associated with a huge amount of data on Equipment like the Make, Model, Serial Number, Year of manufacture, etc., and information may be geometric or nongeometric, or even both.
All these data is enhanced to the BIM Model and this forms the way for any Facility Management, BMS activity or any retro-fitting in the future.
BIM models are enriched with all COBie attributes required for Operations and Maintenance right from the Design development stages. This information enriched at various stages can be directly imported to CAFM solutions using COBie formats. There are various solutions available, which can integrate BIM models into their solution and associate COBie parameters to model elements. Further, dynamic data sources of the built assets like various sensors and IoT devices can be Integrated and Digital twins can be developed. Since we have defined the spaces, technical assets, and all related data; Various activities can be tracked using BIM models on the CMMS tools with Visualisation Functions, like Granlund Manager. Work order tracking, space conditions, Performance visualization, Technical system visualization, zones for lighting, cooling, occupancy, etc are some of the use cases. For example, if any room is facing a cooling issue, the Equipment associated can be directly seen, the product data and maintenance history can be fetched on selection, and further actions can be taken up. Since the work orders are associated with defined spaces, we can analyze the number of issues and type of issues coming up, and data-driven decisions can be taken.
The digitalization for smarter property maintenance and the ways of working is changing drastically in the AEC
Industry and with this digitalization, properties are generating a huge amount of dynamic and static data.
Digitalization of properties is gaining more importance for its capabilities to solve maintenance problems and manage assets.
We at Desapex, offer an end to end digitalization solutions for both upcoming and operational buildings. Scan-to-BIM technology is being used to generate a digital replica and is further enriched with all the Asset information from the documents available with FCM teams to create as-built BIM models. We are partnered with Finnish technological experts 'Granlund' to offer BIM in Facility management through a SAAS CMMS solution called "Granlund Manager". The As-built models are further utilized for generating digital twins to facilitate asset management, maintenance management, and energy management solutions.
