Laboratory demonstration of digital twin construction

Abstract

Digital Twin Construction (DTC) is a data-centric mode of construction that leverages digital twin technologies to maintain a continuously updated representation of a project and to enable short cycle Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) planning and control with continuous feedback and improvement. Industrial implementations reported to date have been too narrow in scope and too few in number to provide comprehensive proof of feasibility and empirical evidence of impacts. We address these gaps using a laboratory setup that implements a complete DTC PDCA workflow for a precast residential project. The experimental DTC system stores project intent, monitors and captures current status, and supports human in the loop replanning or automated optimization across factory production, logistics, and erection on site for a 1:25 scale model building. Validation through numerous full construction project runs demonstrates consistent end-to-end operation and practical usability. The testbed itself provides a reference architecture for DTC systems and a platform for controlled and replicable experiments that provide comparable quantitative evidence on DTC impacts under varied levels of automation.