Learning to Succeed and Succeeding to Learn. 3 Core Lessons
The Digital Twin Hub’s ethos from the start has been one of openness; and learning from the collective successes and failures of the community. In order to make this a part of our collective behaviour I think it is essential that we ‘practice as we preach’ and as such, since we are rapidly approaching the end of the 2nd month since we launched the Digital Twin Hub I feel this give us an excellent opportunity to reflect on the progress that has been made and some of the lessons we have learnt along the way. This will then provide some context to the activities we have planned for the coming months to strive towards a Hub that truly delivers to its’ community.
COVID-19
The industry is collectively having to learn, adapt and evolve in an unprecedented manner because of the COVID-19 epidemic that has been sweeping both the United Kingdom and across the globe. It would be unfair for us to claim that we have been unaffected by this, but I think it important to reflect that its effects on the Hub are both unexpected and insightful. The core ‘stay home, stay safe’ message from the Government has moved the majority of our members into a new default of working from home. This has increased our dependence on Digital mechanisms to maintain communications; and awareness of activities outside of our standard roles.
At the outset of the epidemic we were understandably concerned about the impact that this would have on the growth of the Hub and the subsequent engagement from the community. However, we have seen continued growth in the membership level of the community growing from a core of just a dozen members to in excess of almost 200 members in just under two months. This has translated to our Digital Twin talks consistently achieving over 70 views and nearly 50 people tuning in to listen to our first ever live Digital Round table.
My personal sense is that a significant proportion of this engagement is as a result of the importance placed on the development of Digital Twins and if anything, this has only increased in light of the current situation.
Lesson 1: If a need truly exists it will continue to exist irrespective of changing circumstances. We should instead focus on how to continue delivering value within the new constraints.
Changing Behaviours
Behavioural change is going to be a fundamental component on the journey towards realising Digital Twins as both the management of the assets change but also the manner in which we all interact with the assets around us. This necessity for change is also a fundamental component of enabling the Digital Twin Hub to satisfy both the needs of the community and in turn also the value outcomes. As the Hub goes through its formation process this an area that is proving especially complex and difficult to achieve.
This difficultly exists in my mind for two core reasons: providing a sufficiently compelling offering to justify people dedicating the necessary time to the Hub and reaching a point of critical mass in which the majority of content and value is community generated.
Although the events and activities we have run so far have produced extremely promising levels of interest, these do not always result in continued engagement following. We have therefore taken the decision going forward to drive more crucial activities from the National Digital Twin Programme and related activities onto the Hub to provide the community with the opportunity to be an even greater part of the discussion.
Lesson 2: Tipping the balance of self-generated to member-generated content will deliver a sustainable and more valuable prospect.
Meeting the Demand
When we first launched the Hub, we never imagined that two months in and we would have 200 registered and approved members with a further 300 pending registrations. This demand includes not just core asset owners and suppliers but also international, academic, public bodies and more.
Although, these groups were communities we hoped to be able to include as part of the Hubs activities in future we had not anticipated this level of interest at such an early point in time. We are therefore actively undertaking steps to allow us to include as many groups as possible as soon as possible whilst maintaining security.
Whilst we work to confirm and grow the Hub’s community we are trying to make as many of the activities we host as open as possible to include as many voices as we can.
Lesson 3: Never underestimate the value people place on significant change especially where the value of success is so exponentially beneficial.
Looking Forward
As we step into the next phase of the Hub, we are filled with anticipation for where the next part of the journey will take us. Stay tuned for a number of activities that you will be able to engage with:
1. Digital Twin Talks (Series 2) – Connecting or Connected Digital Twins?
2. A Digital Twin Organisational Maturity Survey.
3. The National Digital Twin Pathway to the Information Management Framework Webinar
4. Digital Twins – A Foundational Guide
5. More yet to be announced
Samuel A Chorlton
Chair, DT Hub Steering Group
29th May 2020
Talking value
It’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last update. It has been great to see a fantastic level of engagement for our recent Digital Twin Talks and our webinar on the “Pathway to value”, with more coming up for you to get involved in later this month.
Before I get into that, I thought it would be useful to reflect briefly on the role that digital twins can play in increasing the resilience of our infrastructure, economies and societies. Digital twins can help us to improve long-term planning, including by assessing a wide range of scenarios, as well as considering the impacts of potential risks and threats to physical infrastructure and related services. They can also increase flexibility and dynamism in responding to shocks as and when these occur in future. This fact has even been recognised by the World Economic Forum (WEF) who cited the National Digital Twin programme within an article relating to infrastructure resilience and recovery.
A more resilient future should also be a more sustainable one and there is a golden opportunity to shape a recovery that meets both goals. This includes looking at our existing infrastructure and how we protect and utilise it. As well as being open to fresh ideas about how we plan, build, operate and decommission or dynamically repurpose new infrastructure. This is a clear priority for the UK and international governments, and the Committee for Climate Change has just set out six principles for a resilient recovery.
We’d love to see some of your ideas on digital twins and resilience in the DT Hub, from the projects you are involved in now through to your plans for the future.
Twin Tuesdays
Could there be a better day of the week to discuss digital twins? Our Digital Twin Talks kicked off on Tuesday 28th April with a video and live online discussion on “Towards a Web of Digital Twins” from Olivier Thereaux, Head of Research and Development at the ODI. Olivier made a fascinating connection between networks of digital twins and the thinking behind the world wide web. This prompted a lively debate on a wide range of topics including interoperability, taxonomies, data sharing, standards and being driven by a clear purpose.
You can still view the conversation thread (and add further thoughts or comments) here.
This was swiftly followed up by a talk on 5th May with Brian Matthews, Project Lead for the Data & Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI). DAFNI are providing exactly the kind of data infrastructure that the ODI are calling for and that can support sharing and connections between data and models. This sparked another lively discussion, with questions and comments on data and metadata, on how people can access and use DAFNI, on the carbon impacts of transport infrastructure and more.
You can still view the conversation thread (and add further thoughts or comments) here.
The next session took place on Tuesday 12th May with Dr Tanguy Coenen from Imec, with a focus on city-level digital twins.
Pathway to value
We had lots of great discussion during our theme 3 webinar “Pathway to value” on 30th April. Many thanks if you were able to join us and share your perspectives. If you couldn’t make it, then there are still plenty of opportunities to get involved.
During the session, we discussed how digital twins can deliver economic (profit), social (people) and environmental (planet) benefits, as well as considering some of the blockers to overcome. We also began to look at proposed activities for the theme and related priorities for members.
The slides we used, including high-level information we captured from you on valuable use cases, are now available to download from the Resources section.
We have also created a dedicated discussion forum for this theme which you can access here. Please do continue to contribute your ideas on use cases that can drive value in this section, as well as any other thoughts you have on how we can realise the anticipated benefits.
In addition, if you would like to share information about specific projects, then it would fantastic if you can add these to the DT Register. If you need any help with this then please don’t hesitate to come back to me or to other members of the wider CDBB team.
How to get involved
A quick reminder of a few of the ways you can get involved in DT Hub activities:
Comment on an existing post or start a new topic in the Members Forum
Add a summary of your digital twin projects to the DT Register (a register of digital twin projects – we’d be very happy to help to write these up)
Join the next Digital Twin Talk on 12th May, with one more planned for 19th May and then a digital roundtable to bring all the speakers together on 26th May
Let us know through the “Contact Us” option at the bottom of each page what other activities and content you would like to see in the portal in future
We hope you enjoy the latest content and activities – and look forward to seeing you online soon.
Samuel A Chorlton
Chair, DT Hub Steering Group
13th May 2020
In this note, I’d like to reflect on a successful launch for the DT Hub and look ahead at some exciting planned activities.
Launch
The formal launch of the DT Hub at the end of March generated considerable interest. I would like to express a personal thank you to all the members all your help in promoting it.
More than 200 people registered their interest within just a few days, including innovators, stakeholders as well as asset owners. This was driven by a focus on personal sharing through social media, very much in line with our community ethos, which generated a real buzz with hundreds of engagements through “likes” and “shares”.
As part of the launch, we also created a beta version of a separate space in the portal for innovators from the supply chain and other key stakeholders. We are working with a small group of these organisations to test and help us refine this area. Connected to this, we are developing an “Open Forum” where we can host joint discussions between existing DT Hub Members and the supply chain – more on that below.
Coming next
We’ve lined up an interesting set of activities, each building on the three priority themes that we identified with you.
Firstly, we’re excited to announce the “Digital Twin Talks”, with videos and facilitated online discussions in a public part of the Open Forum area. The first set of talks is a five-part series facilitated by @SimonEvans of Arup exploring how digital twins are defined and the overarching concepts around them.
Videos will be available from 9:00 each Tuesday with live discussions from 10:30 – 11:30. An introduction video is already available on the DT Hub home page. The first talk, on the 28th April, is “Towards a Web of Digital Twins” from Olivier Thereaux at the ODI.
We will also run a webinar for theme 3 addressing the “Pathway to value” for digital twins on Thursday 30th April and will send out the invitation within the next few days.
In addition, we will continue to share more content into the DT Hub to help spark discussions and follow up on themes 1 and 2 including:
• A report with initial insights for theme 1 based on member discussions and research
• Ideas on a possible “test” for what might comprise a digital twin (part of theme 1)
• Potential “role profiles” for people who need to use and interact with digital twins (part of theme 2)
• Intro pieces for themes 2 and 3
How to get involved
A quick reminder of a few of the ways you can get involved:
• Comment on an existing post or start a new topic in the Members Forum
• Add a summary of your digital twin projects to the DT Register (a register of digital twin projects – we’d be very happy to help to write these up)
• Join one of the Digital Twin Talks or the theme 3 webinar
• Let us know through the “Contact Us” option at the bottom of each page what other activities and content you would like to see in the portal in future
We hope you will enjoy getting stuck into some of the activities we have planned over the next few weeks and look forward to joining you in those discussions.
As always please let us know if you have ideas of things you would like to see on the Hub.
Samuel A Chorlton
Chair, DT Hub Steering Group
22nd April 2020
We’re delighted to announce that today marks the formal launch of the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s Digital Twin Hub.
As we reach this important milestone, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in shaping the DT Hub into what it is today . This is a key part of enabling our collective journey towards a National Digital Twin.
By tapping into your experience and ideas, we’ve already been able to come a long way in a short time. Now that we are starting to promote the DT Hub more widely, I thought it would be good to reflect on what we have done already and what is coming next.
I’m also reminded that, at a difficult time in the UK and around the world as we cope with the impact of COVID-19, digital platforms like this have an important role to play in fostering remote collaboration. We’ll try to make the DT Hub experience, from chatting on this portal to webinars, as flexible as possible to fit around your many commitments – and welcome your feedback on how we can continue to improve this.
What’s more, as our economies recover, digital twins, amongst a host of other innovations, can help us all to deliver more value from our infrastructure and the services that depend on it.
I hope you enjoy reading this update and wish you well in your personal and work endeavours over the coming days and weeks.
Where did we get to so far?
Discovery and scoping
We’ve been working with you to identify shared priorities. This has included discussion of opportunities, use cases and potential blockers and challenges.
Collectively, members see digital twins as central to their digital strategies with potential to transform strategic and operational decision making, improve productivity and deliver better services. At the same time, there is a recognition that collaboration to tackle shared challenges is essential in order to move on from pilots and start realising value from large scale implementation.
The initial thematic priorities (“themes”) emerging from these discussions reflect the desire you have expressed to make real progress on “foundational” concepts and thinking on digital twins:
Theme 1. Testing digital twin concepts: What are digital twins, what are the main building blocks for digital twins and how can we develop common understanding?
Theme 2. Digital twin competencies: What capabilities, skills and culture are needed to successfully implement digital twins?
Theme 3. Pathway to value: Building and sharing value cases; what is the roadmap to increased scale and greater value?
Our initial discussions with you generated lots more useful insight. This included a wide range of valuable use cases, from predictive through to “self-healing” assets, and from long term resource planning through to reducing carbon in mobility and logistics.
A dedicated digital space
We created this online portal as a dedicated digital space for DT Hub members – with a focus on sharing thinking related to the themes, sharing insights gained from digital twin projects and facilitating collaboration on the best way to move forward together.
It’s still early days, but we’re already seeing some interesting comments and discussions on the portal. The most popular post so far talked about ontology and taxonomy. While a link we shared on a digital twin for Notre Dame sparked a fascinating response, and then a follow up call, on the role of digital twins in conserving medieval buildings.
Today we are also beginning to test, in conjunction with key players in the supply chain, a separate space within the portal. This will include an area for joint discussion with existing DT Hub members (the “Open Forum”).
Starter content
We’ve created “starter” content to help spark conversation for each of the themes (beginning with the first, “Testing digital twin concepts”). This brings in perspectives on topics including definitions and scope of digital twins, learning from other industries like aerospace and manufacturing, as well as digital twin use cases. You can access this from the Members Forum pages.
Discussions and webinars
A key role of the DT Hub is to facilitate discussions between members. As you may have seen, we’ve started to do that around the content for the themes. Some of you have also shared your own perspectives through this portal – thank you and please do keep commenting and adding your own posts and ideas.
So far, we have held webinars for the first two themes and plan to run more going forward. There was a great turnout for our theme 2, digital twin competencies, webinar on 24th March, with several of you offering to share your approaches on roles and skills needed to implement digital twins. This kind of practical insight is invaluable, and we plan to follow up on this conversation with you in the dedicated theme 2 area in the Hub.
We will also facilitate time-boxed discussions on specific aspects of each theme – and host these in the portal.
What’s next?
Next up are a series of time-boxed online discussions or “jams” on each of the themes. We’ll host some of these in the “Open Forum” and publicise them in advance so that you can find out how to take part.
We will also plan a webinar on the theme 3, looking at the pathway to value for digital twins, in April.
In addition, we will start to summarise some of the initial findings for each theme (beginning with theme 1) into an interim report with recommendations for the wider NDT programme.
How to get involved
You can continue to get involved and have your say on the focus of the DT Hub by:
Commenting on an existing post in for one of the Themes in the Members Forum
Starting a new topic for discussion in the Members Forum
Adding a summary of your digital twin projects to the DT Register (a register of digital twin projects – we’d be very happy to help to write these up)
Getting involved in one the online “jams” that we will host in the Open Forum area – coming soon
Let us know through the “Contact Us” option at the bottom of each page what other activities and content you would like to see in the portal in future
Thank you for joining us on the journey – I look forward to sharing further perspectives as we move forward together.
Samuel A Chorlton
Chair, DT Hub Steering Group
31st March 2020
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