Research

Digital Twin Construction Ontology

Digital Twin Construction (DTC) has emerged as a next-generation data-driven paradigm for construction management. A comprehensive ontology that enables capturing and structuring essential construction information in a machine-readable format is indispensable for a DTC information system. By collaborating with our partners from Technical University of Munich and CSTB within the EU Horizon 2020 project BIM2TWIN, we have developed the Digital Twin Construction Ontology, which now can be accessible at https://dtc-ontology.cms.ed.tum.de/ontology/index.html.

This ontology represents the most important concepts related to the digital twin of a construction site. It explicitly defines both project intent and project status. The project intent describes the project aim in the form of, e.g., the construction schedule and a 3D building design, while the project status delineates the real-time conditions observed on the construction site. The project intent includes two aspects: as-planned construction processes and as-designed products. Their counterparts of the project status are as-performed and as-built.

Lean Construction

There is no theory of production in construction’ (Koskela). This statement lies at the root of a growing thrust of research in construction project management called ‘Lean Construction’. Lean construction views construction as a continuous flow of activities and materials rather than as an aggregation of sharply distinguished activities, related only by technical and resource dependencies. The process of building design should also be considered in terms of flow, as information flows from task to task and actor to actor. The assumption is that he ‘workflow’ of design and construction, both in general and in specific project situations, can be engineered to provide better results than are currently common.

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Parametric 3D modeling has the potential to replace the age-old paradigm of 2D drawings as the main medium of design, communication and information storage for construction in civil engineering (Eastman et al. 2003a). This research proposes to examine the economic impact of this shift.

Lean and BIM Synergies