Integrating Digital Twins and BIM to Gain a Competitive Edge

Innovation is the secret sauce that allows us to be more agile, adaptable, robust and faster than our competition. The catalyst for innovation is often insights into our operations, our processes, resources and markets. Insight is how data delivers value, yet many still struggle to obtain this despite the mass volumes of data we have access to in today's connected world.

For those looking to optimise the performance of their assets, collecting asset data may be the first stage of an improvement strategy - but the real challenge is how to unlock insight from that data.

Insight results from a complete understanding of the asset within its operating context. This understanding starts at the outset of its life-cycle, when it is designed, continues through construction (while it is built or manufactured) and during its operating life. New data and context are continuously added, requiring a systematic approach to extracting insights and evolving how the asset's value is released.

This approach will allow you to keep pace with changing markets and deliver greater value, for you and your customers. But it can only be achieved if everyone in your organisation is on the same page.

A project vs process approach

And here lies the problem. In most organisations, those responsible for asset design and construction are disconnected from those responsible for asset operation. And management and finance are further once removed.

This means finding the funds and support for this kind of continuous improvement can be difficult. To succeed, you need everyone to be working from the same playbook. And there’s one technology that can make that possible - the digital twin!

The foundations of a Digital Twin

Lanner, since becoming a company of Royal HaskoningDHV, has started integrating its process modelling with Building Information Modelling (BIM) - combining multidimensional models and their processes to provide predictive analysis of future performance.

Much like Lanner's predictive simulation technology, BIM acts as a great collaboration tool, capable of distributing information between different stakeholders and bringing everyone together.

By integrating BIM with predictive simulations, you can design assets with an operational mindset and understand what data is required to connect both design and operational stages of a project. Effectively, you are laying the foundations of a digital twin strategy. Get this right and you gain actionable insights that everyone can get behind and, in the long run, deliver exceptional asset performance.

Royal HaskoningDHV and Lanner have years of experience helping design operations, process and assets that help our customers optimise their performance.