The UK’s approach to delivering complex infrastructure projects is obsolete, leading to far too many projects failing to meet the expectations of their sponsors and the public. That was the conclusion reached following a detailed review commissioned by the Institution of Civil Engineers. I was lucky enough to work on the review that was published as A Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery (SAID) and published in December 2020.
At the centre of our findings is a call for a fundamental change of mindset. The review team, led by ex ICE Vice President Andrew McNaughton, concluded that even relatively small projects are now best seen as interventions into existing complex systems, made up of a mix of physical, human and digital components.
In this world, traditional civil engineering works, while still a large capital cost, only exists to support (or perhaps just keep dry!) these systems. It is easy to see that the system – not the civils – provides the infrastructure services on which people rely. More importantly, as Crossrail has shown us so clearly, the greatest sources of risk to a project now lie not in managing tunnelling or any other piece of heroic construction but in integrating and commissioning a fully functioning system – trains, stations, tracks, digital signalling, safety and communications, driver behaviour.
SAID proposes 8 principles for better projects that can shift the infrastructure industry in this direction. Principle 8 Data Oils your Project was built on detailed interviews with leading practitioners from inside and outside the infrastructure sector. Again and again we heard about the importance of all the project participants having access to consistent timely and reliable information. Client and owner organisations recognised that it is their responsibility to fix the data plumbing. This means having the capability to define what information is needed to deliver and operate the asset. It also means ensuring that the project’s systems convert raw data into meaningful information that flows to team members as and when they need it to make decisions.
Much of this is I think a no-brainer. What was really interesting was to see how thinking about data and digital is helping to generate a shift away from a traditional project mindset and towards a systems approach grounded in an understanding of the importance of what is already there.
Every asset owner we spoke to recognised that we are now firmly in a world where project deliver a cyber-physical asset. They also get that their digital twin can be the basis for a robust delivery and commission plan that integrates the project’s physical outputs into the existing network.
What was really interesting was to hear about the challenge of how a single project’s digital outputs can be effectively integrated into the existing cyber-physical system to create the kind of golden loop of information described in CDBB’s Flourishing Systems report of 2020. This would be real systems thinking, putting projects in their proper place in relation to the systems and human needs they are meant to be serving.
The response to SAID has been overwhelmingly positive. In response ICE has commissioned a second phase of work in which we are exploring the SAID principles with a series of live projects and infrastructure sector organisations. Later in 2021 ICE will be publishing practical advice on implementing the 8 principles based on the insight generated by these discussions. I hope that this blog can start a discussion with the CDBB network that will generate insight we can include in this advice and help the infrastructure world embrace a Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery
Read more...
In November 2020 DNV published the energy industry’s first recommended practice (RP) on how to quality-assure digital twins. Our new RP, which we developed in collaboration with TechnipFMC, aims to set a benchmark for the sector’s various approaches to building and operating the technology. It guides industry professionals through:
· assessing whether a digital twin will deliver to stakeholders’ expectations from the inception of a project
· establishing confidence in the data and computational models that a digital twin runs on
· evaluating an organization’s readiness to work with and evolve alongside a digital twin.
DNV’s RP intends to provide valuable guidance for digital twin developers; introduces a contractual reference between suppliers and users; and acts as a framework for verification and validation of the technology. It builds upon the principles of DNV’s Recommended Practices for the qualification of novel hardware technology and assurance of data and data-driven models.
Making digital twins a real asset
Physical assets are built to perform to the highest standards and undergo rigorous assurance processes throughout their life. However, there has been no requirement for their digital counterparts to go through the same procedures. Our new recommended practice seeks to remedy this issue as the technology begins a path of significant scaling across the sector. We believe it is time to prove that twins can be trusted and that the investments made in them give the right return!
The methodology behind DNV’s new RP has been piloted on 10 projects with companies including Aker BP and Kongsberg Digital. It has also been through an extensive external hearing process involving the industry at large. In addition, TechnipFMC’s deep domain knowledge and expertise in digital technologies and oil and gas infrastructures has made an essential contribution to jointly developing the RP.
A framework to handle complex requirements
The framework provides clarity on the definition of a digital twin; required data quality and algorithm performance; and requirements on the interaction between the digital twin and the operating system. It addresses three distinct parts: the physical asset, the virtual representation, and the connection between the two. This connection amounts to the data streams that flow between the physical asset to the digital twin and information that is available from the digital twin to the asset and the operator for decision making.
A preview copy of our recommended practice can be downloaded from our website: https://www.dnv.com/oilgas/digital-twins/preview-DNVGL-RP-A204-qualification-and-assurance-of-digital-twins.html
We’d love to get your comments and feedback on our work – and look forward to giving a short overview of our methodology at the Gemini call on 3rd August 2021.
Graham Faiz
Head of Growth and Innovation UK & Ireland – Energy Systems
DNV
Footnote: Who are DNV?
We’re an independent assurance and risk management company, part of our service offering includes the provision of software, platforms, cyber and other digital solutions to the energy sector. We have a specific focus on helping our customers manage risk and complexity linked to the energy transition, specifically their ongoing decarbonization and digitalization journeys.
Company website: www.dnv.com
Link to digital twin services: https://www.dnv.com/oilgas/digital-twins/services.html
Read more...
The building stock is a city’s most significant socio-cultural and economic resource and its largest capital asset. Buildings are also where we spend most of our lives and most of our money, and where enormous potential for energy and waste reduction lies.
To help improve the quality, sustainability and resilience of building stocks, and to help reduce emissions from them, comprehensive information on their composition, operation and dynamic behaviour are required. However in many countries relevant data are extremely difficult to obtain, often highly fragmented, restricted, missing or only available in aggregated form.
Colouring Cities sets out to address this issue. The initiative develops open code to facilitate the construction and management of low cost public databases, which double as knowledge exchange platforms, providing open data on buildings, at building level. These are provided to answer questions such as: How many buildings do we have? Which building types, uses, construction systems, ages, styles and sizes are located where? How repairable, adaptable and extendable are they? How long can they last if properly maintained? How energy efficient are they? Can they easily be retrofitted? Who built them and what is their ownership type, and how well do local communities think they work?
Colouring Cities also looks to advance a more efficient, whole-of-society approach to knowledge sharing on buildings and cities, allowing for permanent databases to be collaboratively maintained and enriched, year-on-year, by citizens, academia, government, industry and the voluntary sector. Colouring London https://colouringlondon.org/, our live prototype, has been built and tested over the past five years using a step-by-step collaborative approach which has involved consultation with academia, government, industry, the voluntary sector and the community (working across science, the humanities and the arts). It looks to test four approaches to data provision-collation of existing open uploads, computational generation, local crowdsourcing and live streaming.
In 2020 the Colouring Cities Research Programme was set up at The Alan Turing Institute to support international research institutions wishing to reproduce and co-work on Colouring Cities code at city or country level. We are currently collaborating with academic partners in Lebanon, Bahrain, Australia, Germany and Greece and Switzerland.
Watch the Hub Insight to learn more about the project and the opportunity to get involved.
If you'd like to get involved please do test our site and add any recommendations for features you would like in our discussion thread https://discuss.colouring.london/. Or, if you are a public body or DTHub industry member wishing to increase open access to your infrastructure datasets, and/or to digital twin visualisations, relating to the building stock, please contact Polly Hudson at Turing.
Find out more:
Who are we
Game engine technology is at the heart of heralding a new age of content creation, immersive storytelling, design driven development, and business process innovation. These tools are now being utilised to work along side your data to create a visual front end digital twin, to allow for a more immersive, controllable and completely customisable digital twin application.
Unreal Engine is a game engine created by Epic Games to allow developers to create their own games and immersive 3D worlds. This technology has seen fast adoption across a number of industries including Manufacturing, Automotive, Film and Media, Architecture, Engineering and Construction [AEC]. As the need to collaborate virtually with stakeholders and end-users has increased, and the need to customise unique applications and visualise our 3D models and data becomes more important, it is where the role of game engines in AEC is making a mark. Unreal Engine is a free, open source tool for creators to develop their custom real-time experiences.
Unreal Engine and Digital twins
Data alone can often be confusing and hard to understand, its not until the data is contextualised that you are able to better understand the data and turn it into information that can benefit the project. This is where the Unreal Engine is here to support the Digital Twin communities, with its unique ability to aggregate data sources, from 3D geometry, BIM metadata, 4D construction data and IoT Hubs. Users are able to have a centralised location to contextualise the data in its native environment and allow users to build custom applications around it.
Getting involved in our future roadmap...
As we see more and more companies developing large scale digital twin applications, here at Epic Games we want to make sure we are providing everything you need to make your own digital twin applications with Unreal Engine. To allow you to integrate your existing data, geometry and IoT hub information into a visual platform for sharing with the world.
We'd love to hear from you about how you see the world of digital twins evolving. Going forward, which tools and features will you find most valuable in creating digital twins? What kinds of training and support would you like to have access to from Epic Games on this?
To help them serve you better, please take their survey about the current state of digital twins, and share your ideas or what you would like to see happen.
Take the survey here
Results of this survey will be shared to the community for wider awareness. In the mean time you can check out a recent article we shared with one of our customers in China:
Good day to you!
I am a member of the BSi e-committee, tasked with producing the attached draft of BS 99001:2021 Quality management systems.
It has been produced with the intention of being utilised alongside BS EN ISO 9001:20159001 in the UK construction sector, as it has specific requirements for the built environment sector.
It is out for public consultation until the 24th July 2021. Thereafter BSI shall hold comment resolution meeting(s) to address and resolve comments received.
The aim of this new quality management standard is to ensure that in the wake of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, BS EN ISO 9001:20159001 remains relevant to UK construction industry.
Because the NDTp is such an important element of the ever changing landscape of the UK construction industry, the BSi e-committee would very much appreciate feed back from those who are heavily involved in digitalization of the built environment in general, and those who are committed to the NDTp in particular, on the draft version of BS 99001:2021. Specifically feedback on this question would be very gratefully received:-
Will this new, built environment centric quality management system, actually help the NDTp achieve its vision, by not only supporting that vision, but actually being a key enabler of that vision?
Please do make comments using the online SDP system. Please note comments need to be saved and submitted individually.
Obviously if you have any questions, please do contact me.
Sincere and grateful thanks in advance everyone,
Best
Elvin
BSI 99001.pdf Read more...
The attached guide was put together from discussions and knowledge share through the Infrastructure Asset Data Dictionary for the UK (IADD4UK) group between 2013 and 2018. Updated where appropriate to include the most recent standards and some additional thought leadership.
The IADD4UK initiative was formed of the foremost owners, major projects, delivery partners and interested parties under the chairmanship of the COMIT innovations group. A list of participants can be found at the rear of this guide.
Early in our BIM journey it was recognised that data and its slightly more refined form, information would be the key. We had standards as how to classify it, manage it, secure it, procure it, exchange it, but nothing about what “it” actually was.
It was also understood that this required information would have an impact on everything we do with our assets, across the entirety of its lifecycle. That impact had a relationship with the outcomes delivered to their respective clients, whether that was an end user, consumer, member of the public, a shareholder or the country itself. The delivery of the outcomes ensured that there was a value in the information, without which their upkeep would not be possible.
The IADD4UK group was put together with an agreement to research and document the best way to create information requirements, not to write them, but it was agreed that if organisations could come together when writing them, the costs and risk could be shared and the benefits doubled.
The reason for increased benefits, were that when assets were transferred from one owner to another, or between delivery partners they would be described in the same way, negating the risks of translation and converting information from one system to another. Key assets in infrastructure are basically the same, whether they are owned by a transport, communications, energy or water company. They will have the same questions, tasks and decisions during their lifecycle. The answers will be different, but the basic information requirement will be largely the same. This commonality across owners could help reduce the procurement costs and the risks of generating, managing and exchanging each information set with the side effect of reducing interoperability issues between software packages.
In 2017 the IADD4UK organisation was put on hold for various reasons, chiefly lack of funding to both create and curate a common information requirements dictionary. This meant that the participants in the initiative dispersed to create their own data dictionaries utilising some of the methods and processes shared with you in this guide.
Writing information requriements by IADD4UK.pdf Read more...
Something related to digital twins:
"Delta Sharing is the industry’s first open protocol for secure data sharing, making it simple to share data with other organizations regardless of which computing platforms they use." -https://delta.io/sharing/
More information:
<Introducing Delta Sharing: An Open Protocol for Secure Data Sharing> https://databricks.com/blog/2021/05/26/introducing-delta-sharing-an-open-protocol-for-secure-data-sharing.html
Read more...
Last month, on Thursday 25 February, techUK released a landmark report ‘Unlocking Value Across the UK’s Digital Twin Ecosystem’, alongside the much anticipated publication of the CDBB’s ‘Digital Twin Toolkit’ report. Please see here for the full recording of the session:
To kick-off, Tom Henderson (Programme Manager, Smart Infrastructure & Systems, techUK) thanked members of the Digital Twins Working Group (DTWG) for their deep insight and hard work, welcoming the publication before running through the different parameters of techUK's report- highlighting the core strategic conclusions and recommendations (2:57) which focus on the need to:
Develop a cross-cutting, interdisciplinary coordinating body to drive forward digital twin adoption and diffusion in the UK
Demonstrate value from (and explore barriers to) the adoption and diffusion of digital twins via a series of strategic demonstrators
Trigger the adoption of digital twins across the UK by exploring the development of an online digital twin procurement portal
Work with industry to identify talent pipeline requirements and anticipate levels of future demand for skills across the UK’s digital twin ecosystem
Fund a Net Zero 2050 digital twin demonstrator to establish the UK as a global leader in leveraging digital twins for decarbonisation
Following the release of the techUK report, Sarah Hayes (Change Stream Lead, National Digital Twin Programme) provided an insightful overview of the NDTP and ran through the significance and findings of the newly released DT Toolkit (9:05), which looks at:
What is a digital twin?
What can a digital twin be used for?
Key case studies
How to build a business case template?
How to develop a digital twin roadmap?
Thanking the Toolkit team for their hard work and deep technical expertise, Sarah signposted the opportunity to continue engaging in the development and application of the DT Toolkit via the Digital Twin Hub – an online resource where you can learn more about emerging digital twin initiatives and share insights across the UK’s digital twin ecosystem. techUK looks forward to continuing work with the CDBB and encourages techUK members of all shapes and sizes to sign up for the DT Hub moving forward!
Subsequently (23:30), delegates heard from the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Science, Research and Innovation – Amanda Solloway MP, who took the time to welcome the publication of the reports and expressed optimism around the role that digital twin technologies can play in enabling the UK to become a world-leading scientific superpower.
In particular, the Minister discussed the link between digital twins and possibilities to drive prosperity, create new products, services, and jobs, and to transform public services. techUK would like to thank Minister Solloway for taking the time, and welcomes the Government’s recognition that digital twins are critical – not only for our recovery from the pandemic, but also to our long-term growth and productivity.
Download and read the full report here.
Icebreaker One has won a major UK Research and Innovation competition for the Open Energy project, which aims to revolutionise the way data is shared across the energy sector to make sure the UK achieves its net-zero goals.
It means the project will receive £750k in UK Government funding to continue developing a standard that all organisations in the energy data ecosystem can use to search, share and access data. It’s also developing a prototype governance platform to make sure data is shared securely.
Icebreaker One hosted a webinar on 16 February at 10am to share more information about its progress so far and plans for the future.
View launch webinar (16 February 2021)
View project summary briefing
Open Energy aims to transform the way organisations exchange the information they need to phase out fossil fuels and implement renewable energy technology. Icebreaker One is aiming to roll out the Open Energy standards, guides and recommendations across the energy sector over the next year.
Open Energy has been guided by industry advisory groups across the UK which include representatives from Ofgem, Scottish Power and SSE. It’s led by Gavin Starks, one of the key figures behind the Open Banking Standard that has revolutionised the banking sector over the past five years.
Icebreaker One worked with project partners Open Climate Fix, Raidiam and PassivSystems, to win the Modernising Energy Data Access (MEDA) competition, run by Innovate UK as part of the Industrial Strategy Prospering from the Energy Revolution programme.
A summary of the MEDA Phase Two work is available here.
Gavin Starks, founder and CEO at Icebreaker One, said,
“We’re delighted to have this backing to continue developing the data infrastructure to help unlock access to data to deliver efficiency and innovation across the energy sector.
This will have a material impact on the UK’s ability to make the most of decentralised energy supply and consumption, help address the coming challenges of the transition to electric vehicles and catalyse the delivery of our net-zero targets.
Our work will help unlock data discovery by enabling energy data search and usage by delivering a trusted ecosystem for decentralised data sharing.”
Rob Saunders, Challenge Director, Prospering from the Energy Revolution at UKRI, said:
“The MEDA competition was designed to accelerate innovative ways for energy data to be open-sourced, organised and accessed, providing a platform for new technology, services and more agile regulation within the energy sector.
“The Icebreaker One project showed exactly what can be achieved through collaborative thinking and will help create a framework for all stakeholders to share data further for the common benefit – and ultimately for the UK’s net-zero ambitions. We are looking forward to working with them closely as the project develops further.”
David Manning, Head of Data Management at SSE plc, said: “At SSE we recognise that becoming a data driven organisation is critical to our role in helping achieve a net zero world.”
“Readily accessible and trusted data will be essential to building the decarbonised energy system of the future; ensuring flexibility, customisation and personalisation for energy users, large and small. It’s exciting to see the progress being made in this space.”
https://energydata.org.uk/2021/02/03/open-energy-gets-uk-government-backing/
Read more...
“There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.”
Josh Billings
We have thought a lot about Digital Twins in recent times and heard an awful lot more. But there is always room for new thoughts on any subject, hence this short series of articles. We want to share fresh views with the experts and with the uninitiated. And we’ll include a hidden gem each week.
We’ll speak in plain English. We won't talk about taxonomies, ontologies or system of systems. Instead we will look to the wisdom of Rumsfeld, Einstein, Gandhi and others to explore the wonderful world of twinning. And we’ll keep the number of words below 400 for most of the time. That’s just one page of your valuable time. We’ll post one every week for the next few weeks, starting today, and then stop (or maybe start talking about something else when we are done).
Here are the different episodes in the series:
1. Known unknowns. Unlocking awareness, knowledge and action.
2. Time and space. The relativity of structure, behaviour and certainty.
3. Trusted friends. Authority, assurance and agency.
4. A puppy isn’t just for Christmas. Long-term value.
5. Greeks bearing gifts. Giving context.
6. Back to the future. History, science and maths.
7. Wisdom of the crowds. People matter.
So, settle back and read the first in the series. It shows us how Donald Rumsfeld has helped us unlock some of the hidden secrets of Digital Twins. And why we should seriously consider using them more.
Peter van Manen & Mark Stevens .. Frazer-Nash Consultancy
Read more...
.thumb.png.93f783ce68f49b3d5b1a52b6ab57373d.png)