Digital Twinning for Temporary Works Enabling Safe and Economic Project Implementation

The construction industry currently relies on engineers' experience, prescribed codes and manual design processes to deliver buildings and infrastructures. The ever-growing scale and complexity in the delivery process has rendered this existing system inefficient and high cost; on occasion, it has even compromised the safety and quality. Digital technology has advanced the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing industries.

A similar digital upgrade in the construction industry is long overdue, and its benefits are readily acquirable.

This project aims to develop digital twins for temporary works and construction methods, thereby transforming the design, implementation and coordination practice in the delivery of construction projects, enhancing safety and reducing cost. From the fundamental aspect, the research is focused on modelling, data analytics and artificial intelligence, and develops digital twins solutions that fit the industy needs.

From the application pespective, the research emphasizes temporary works and construction methods, often a significant part of a project's construction cost, sometimes 50% or more.

The research project is open ended and has a broad scope for potential investigation. The first area involves understanding the physics behind temporary works and defects in them, and a simulation-driven automated design system. The second is understanding fresh concrete rheology by means of numerical modelling and improving placement quality.

The third is predicting uncertainty and managing risk in the delivery of infrastructure by applying stochastic methods and machine learning. The last is developing simulation-driven digital twin technology for the whole lifecycle of the asset. This project aims to work on these areas and bring step-change to how infrastructure is designed and tested, and how projects are planned and managed.

This will lead to improvements in industrial practice, safer and more reliable infrastructure and lower costs, bringing social benefits.