Autodesk Rides with a Digital Twin on a Tandem

Tired of action movies with scenes of good guys calling up any floor in a 3D model of a building so that the SWAT teams can find the bad guys? So often does this occur that the public must expect any building to be able to be called up this way, with its insides laid bare, its floors, pipes, electrical system, I-beams, the air ducts from which the bad guys will invariably escape, an accurate computer model showing every detail complete with its design and functional data.

Those in the trenches of architecture and construction will roll their eyes. The more tech savvy will recognize the digital twin on the screen as fictional. They know that is not real yet. But some of us know that it is getting closer.

The design software industry is determined to make the digital twin real. Autodesk will enter its version of a building digital twin soon with Autodesk Tandem, a cloud-based application that has recently entered public beta testing.

Tandem is Autodesk’s introduction to the digital twin for contractors and owners. It is 100 percent cloud-based, which means that it can be used on any computer or device that has a web browser. It can read Autodesk Revit files automatically (as long as they are stored in cloud-based Autodesk Docs). You can also upload Revit files to Tandem. So, you won’t need Revit training or a Revit license. With Tandem, owners can edit and insert attributes and data, see a report on changes as well as who made them … but, most importantly, according to those involved with Tandem’s inception, it can make the handover—the transfer of assets at the end of every construction project—more streamlined and productive.

Tandem is the brainchild of senior director Robert (Bob) Bray of Autodesk, who became Tandem’s general manager. We reached out to Bray to ask a lot of questions about Autodesk’s entry into the digital twin market. Is Autodesk stepping into the shallow end of the pool? Is more to come for the digital twin? Are owners and contractors calling up Revit models and PDFs on iPads today? What’s coming tomorrow?

Not so fast, says Bray, perhaps sensing a worship of technology that seems to infect engineers and a use of buzzwords that infects journalists. Perhaps a definition of a digital twin is in order.

“You talk to 10 people and ask them what a digital twin is, you’re going to get 10 different answers,” Bray cautioned. “The twin is not really the key value proposition here. Tandem is about the long-term value of the data.”

From an Autodesk perspective, a digital twin is a dynamic, digital reflection of a physical facility or asset. It needs to possess the operational and behavioral awareness necessary to simulate, predict and inform real-world decisions and be based on real-world conditions. A great definition, but making that real is difficult.

“If you want to do this for an existing facility, it has been a very costly, bespoke process,” said Bray.

“We have long been selling software to customers to help them plan, design and build for their clients,” noted Bray. “But after the construction, we have the handover—literally a stack of documents handed to the owner. There’s an opportunity here to give the owner a digitally rich asset, one that they can use to commission the facility; accelerate its operational readiness; do space planning; connect it to operational systems for predictive, planned, on-demand maintenance, performance monitoring through connections with IoT systems and other things; and build a wealth of knowledge about the operational behavior and performance of that asset.”

“The problem occurs at facility handover,” concurred Marin Pastar of Jacobs. Pastar is global technology leader of Jacobs’ Vertical Information Modeling. Jacobs, an architecture and design firm, is at the forefront of technology implementation. Autodesk’s CEO Andrew Anagnost will refer to it on a quarterly earnings call, proud of Jacobs' expanding use of Autodesk products.

Pastar is in the microscopic intersection of circles of architects, constructors and technologists in a Venn diagram.  He used AutoCAD in 2D in architecture school, learning 3D and getting the rest of his tech education on his own. He was involved in all aspects of project delivery from design, visualization, AR/VR, reality capture and drone systems. His goal is to streamline AEC workflows, from planning to design, construction to facility management and operations, and he is a self-confessed advocate for Jacobs’ customers: the owners.

Somewhat of an authority of AEC project delivery (he taught Which Project Delivery Method Is Best for Your Project, and Why? at the last Autodesk University), we think Pastar surely is a digital twin fan. We find out that he is—at least in concept. However, like Autodesk, he is not overpromising a digital twin with Tandem.

As it turns out, customers are not asking for digital twins—at least not by name.

Instead, “our clients ask what they can do with all the information,” said Pastar. “We go through the process of planning, design and construction followed by handover with all this data, all this information that has been inserted at every phase. The problem is, no one typically pays attention to exactly what data is needed, or how it needs to be structured to be relevant and usable. This is unfortunately a standard practice in our industry more often than not. As a result, at the end of the project, our clients are left with some sort of Revit BIM models, some sort of operations and maintenance data, and some sort of design and construction data, most of which provides no true value to them in the current format. It’s scattered, disconnected, and typically unusable. Unfortunately, it ultimately ends up on a digital shelf, or a pile of CDs that collects dust.”

Watch a pro football game and you’ll see handovers executed flawlessly, time after time, by each team. The quarterback gets the ball, steps backward, and in one fluid movement, pivots and hands off the ball to a back rushing forward. In construction, the handover is not as graceful. Stacks of documents land on a table with a thud. They are boxed up and stored away.

“Did you remember the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark?,” asked Autodesk’s Bray. “Where the camera zooms out and the ark is buried in a warehouse, to collect dust forever? That’s what happens to the documents handed over to owners at the completion of a construction project.”

The documents, either paper or their digital version, are indeed a wealth of information. BIM geometry, metadata, specs, correspondence, regulations, etc. To have it all buried in a warehouse collecting dust—a body of work that took thousands of hours to create … how is that not a crime?

We reach out to another person whose job is to create the data stacks that may potentially be buried.

Brian Melton is chief technologist of the water business at Black & Veatch, which is 11th in ENR’s ranking of design firms. The company has projects in power, oil and gas, water, telecommunications and mining and aims for "a digital transformation with clients to enable a more sustainable and resilient future." Melton is gracious, deadly serious and extremely passionate about helping to lead the company on a path of digital transformation. That should be no surprise. He has spent 20 years at Black & Veatch, taking the company from CAD to BIM to a digital twin.

“We know that our product is a built and working infrastructure project, such as a water or wastewater treatment facility, and a satisfied client," says Brian. "However, a byproduct of this process ends up being thousands of disconnected electronic files in varying file formats. We have intelligent digital models, Excel files, PDFs. It's a mountain of information that the owner will have a difficult time searching though and reusing."

“You click on a URL in the architectural model in Tandem—say, on a pump, and you’ll be able to see the related data for the pump. There’s the specification document for the pump, the pump schedule, cost and so on. This data would have shown on traditional deliverables but as all disconnected artifacts, not intelligently connected in any way. In some cases, you may need specialized design software to open the native file format in order to interact with the information and specialized training on using the software. With Tandem, you can put all the data together and create those relationships between object and files. It makes searching and viewing so much easier."

“Tandem becomes a drastically new experience for interacting with all of that information, aggregating the data and simplifying access," Melton added.

We can’t fault the owners for not being able to use the data given to them in the handoff. The model data, the building information model, or BIM model was created in Revit. The owner may not have Revit or professionals trained on how to use it. Just viewing the model, without connection to the rest of the project artifacts, is only providing a limited view of the information they are ultimately after, it's not the entire story by itself.

The handover documents, shown as tall stacks of paper, can be digital files instead, but in 20-plus years of creating digital files, have we really created the digital thread? Not at all, says Melton. The data is created in individual silos and there it sits—trapped.

“Along comes Tandem, a digital hub that can integrate data from multiple systems,” noted Melton. “It can integrate Revit’s CAD geometry, geospatial data (like a campus, for example), systems data, facility management data, IoT data, business data, tenant data,” he said.

“The challenge is not that they may not have the software applications or they don't have resources in their organization that can easily navigate through some of these datasets, like BIM," said Melton. "It's because they have no prior experience with these type of applications. They may never have been trained on how to interact with some of these complex design applications."

Even if an owner was able to view Revit files (Autodesk’s Viewer, for example), there was still no way for them to change anything. With Tandem, they can.

“We have a uniform data model,” noted Melton, proudly.

And because it is accessed through a web browser, it couldn’t be easier for owners to use.

“If you have Google Chrome, you can log in and get into the system,” said Melton. “You don’t need special applications, a lot of specialized training because the interface is simple and intuitive to use. Tandem opens up the data for a lot of users that typically wouldn’t be able to see it because they don’t have the necessary skill set to master complex design applications.”

What are all the kinds of data Tandem can access, we ask?

“We are in early stages for Tandem,” explained Melton. “We have a priority order for types of data it can access. Right now, it does a very good job of pulling in design data. An owner can even ‘clean up’ the model. For example, if you have multiple consultants working for you, they may not build models the same way and you would receive several model files that don’t match. They’re probably accurate and they did their jobs, but companies do things in different ways. Tandem allows you to pull in those models and standardize them. If you import Revit files from different consultants, you can make them all consistent per your convention. You can add attributes if they are missing. Then the data will be all together, [more] structured and consistent than the original data you received.”

“I don't believe in a single source of truth,” says Bob Bray, catching us off-guard. It’s like hearing someone say they don’t believe in world peace. Why not, we have to ask.

“I catch a lot of people with that,” says Bob, smiling, and explains. “There are many sources of truth, not one. If you are an architect, Revit is your source of truth. If you did the structural design, Revit Structure is your source of truth. If you did the construction, the procurements system is your source of truth. The punch lists and checklists that used to capture data in the field are each sources of truth. Let’s go downstream. The computerized maintenance management system is a source of truth for all the maintenance tickets. The IWMS [integrated workplace management system] is a source of truth for space utilization and planning. You’ve got an IoT system, which has a source of truth for the information collected from sensors and is stored in some database. We believe Tandem will integrate the various sources of truth to access data silos through a single pane of glass."

Every specific use application has its adherents and is relied on by them to store and serve data. Each has its own look and language, data format, user interface.… Long-term users have achieved in each a comfortable familiarity, like an old friend, who may have been difficult to get to know at first but is now completely dependable and reliable.

“Take our own Navisworks, for example. Navisworks understands geometry. You can detect clashes. But what about the metadata? The attributes are not integrated in a meaningful way. Standards like UK’s COBie [Construction Operations Building Information Exchange] or ISO 19650-3 aim toward uniformity and consistency so geometry and data can be understood and shared through design construction and during building use. But asset management can also take a proprietary route, such as with Maximo. Maximo users have their assets look a certain way.”

At first Tandem will read in and display Revit models. Autodesk has joined the Digital Twin Consortium as a founding member and has joined the Open Design Alliance, presumably to give its digital twin a wider spectrum of design formats.

Tandem displays the Revit BIM models graphically and shows data in tabular formats. Users can also put links to the data in the graphics.

“The data is validated through automation. The design data model handed over contains the specified equipment. So, when the pumps are procured, for example, do they match the specification? Having a normalized data representation allows you to do that. With a bunch of loose, unstructured attributes—it’s impossible,” said Bray.

“The job was to capture the information produced in the design life cycle for a better handover,” explained Bray. “After that, we will have Tandem connect to operational systems, do simulation … the abilities that are associated with a more mature, useful and capable digital twin.”

“In the beginning of 2020, we expected the desired outcomes from the data and models of design and construction would be used to manage carbon emissions and energy consumption. But everything turned upside down with the pandemic. The most important thing became contact tracing. Point is, the digital twin needs to be adaptable, able to take on new uses, different data. Like we did with the pandemic. Like we will do with additional data sources. The world is always changing. Owners will want to do more with their digital twin. We start understanding what owners are trying to achieve, what data they need, and then being able to capture that data. It might be scanned into BIM. It could be asset data captured from an existing system like Maximo,” said Bray.

“The data model we are developing for Tandem is the key to all this. Let’s take a facility. That facility contains assets in an existing system. A facility is made up of spaces. If you are a Revit user, you are used to thinking of levels and rooms. But that doesn’t work with data centers, wastewater treatment facilities and other industrial constructions, where they think of zones, not levels of rooms. So, we need a definition of spaces and where those assets are accessible in those spaces or how those spaces are utilized.

“In Tandem, every asset starts as a 3D model. Today, that’s done with Revit. In the future, it could be another design application. That asset is part of the facility. It’s part of a system, like a pump in a cooling system. The pump has a model name and an asset tag number. You can input this information in Tandem and build the data model. You can do that with all the asset types the owner cares about. You can track its performance parameters.

“Tandem lets users track a full history of change. Every time that asset changes, from a single value changed when a Revit file is updated to individual edits made with Tandem. Tandem tracks all of that change history. We record who made the change, when it was made, and store the previous values. And long term, we will be able to connect that asset to an IoT system to understand its utilization and its performance,” noted Bray

Currently, Revit users store their files locally in their workstations. How will cloud-based Tandem access those files, we ask.

“We support upload of Revit files. If they are using Autodesk Docs or BIM 360, then Tandem can connect to the files directly. We’re working towards users making Autodesk Docs their document repository. The advantage in doing that is Tandem will know when those files change and be able to notify the other stakeholders. ‘These three Revit files have been updated. Do you want to sync those changes?’” explained Bray.

The construction industry is the largest industry in the world—its projects are enormous and the money spent on them mind-boggling—it’s measured in trillions of dollars a year. But while leading in the money spent, the industry lags in the technology used. When product design was moving wholesale to CAD 30 years ago, the running joke was that the construction industry was just getting used to the fax machine.

A digital twin, the height of technology, especially one on the cloud, may be an alien and scary concept for the largely tech-shunning community of architects, engineers and contractors. But with Tandem, Autodesk may have found the path to its adoption: simplicity. Introducing Tandem by name rather than by its function (operating as a digital twin) is marketing genius. By limiting the use of buzzwords and their negative implications—complicated, bleeding edge, immature, expensive, unnecessary … Autodesk is betting that by the time contractors realizes that Tandem is a digital twin, they will be overcome with its simplicity and usefulness.

To build a full digital twin—that is a work in progress. For Autodesk, and everyone else.

In concept, it is as easy as connecting it to as many systems as possible through a common interface, and with each system added, the digital twin becomes clearer, gaining meaning with each connection, and with each layer of data.

“In the future, you can augment the digital model with operational data, making it more informative, then start to do analytics to make it predictive, add simulation to make it more comprehensive,” explained Bob Bray, the father of Tandem. “Eventually, you will have a facility that will be smart enough to act on behalf of its occupants, or fine-tune its operation to be more efficient.”

You could potentially have that building know when every occupant has left and turn down the thermostat, then turn it up an hour before the first occupants are expected to arrive.

Bray asks for patience. We’re not there yet, he says, meaning that we have a pretty good digital model now, but a true digital twin must be bi-directional. Autodesk has done a ton of work in the first phase of the digital twin by making design data accessible. An owner, with no Revit training or license, can pick up a tablet and use Tandem, he notes. There’s plenty more to come, so stay tuned.

Learn more about Autodesk Tandem and join the beta here: https://feedback.autodesk.com/key/Tandem-apply