Boosting Operational Efficiency, Reducing Costs, and Expanding Services with Digital Twins
Autodesk Tandem is a digital twin solution that bridges the gap between building design and operations. It gives facility owners and managers a user-friendly interface to navigate their buildings within a true-to-life 3D model. Providing the contextual awareness of what goes where, and how systems interconnect, a digital twin is brimming with past and present data. And in the near future, it will be able to predict scenarios to further streamline operations. With live IoT data and O&M manuals all neatly filed away within their corresponding asset, digital twins hold the answers to many operational queries and challenges.
For NV5 — a leading provider of professional and technical engineering and consulting solutions—Autodesk Tandem has proved invaluable as a communication and visualization tool. Paired with their rule-based analytics platform, SkySpark, the team leverages AI and machine learning to digest huge datasets and deliver their clients with the insights to help them optimize operations and labor allocation.
As Executive Director of Building Solutions, Daniel Kolimar explained, “We’re seeing a lot of buzz around digital twins. But for us, it does actually solve a problem. It’s not a marketing gimmick. It gives you the ability to actually load in all that data, visualize it, and help people get from zero information to all the information very, very quickly.”
“The current project handover process from construction to operations is lacking. Tandem addresses some of those gaps.”
Daniel Kolimar, Executive Director of Building Solutions, NV5
Find trends in the data
From casinos and golf courses, to airports and office blocks, NV5 is finding multiple benefits for both clients and themselves by using digital twin technology. For instance, Kolimar shared his perspective, “Companies across the globe are trying to reduce the amount of money they put into their facilities. We present operational information to our clients to enable the same amount of people to do more.” Essentially, NV5 gives their clients the knowledge to help them work smarter, not harder.
In this particular instance, Kolimar is referring to a pilot project the team is carrying out for a casino with 26 properties. On just one gaming floor alone, they have 120 trash cans. Prior to adopting digital twin technology, two employees were responsible for regularly checking to see if they were full. With an ever-growing list of work orders, NV5’s client was interested to make better use of their staff’s time.
By installing and leveraging sensor data, people will no longer have to be on trash patrol. Instead, they can look at the data to work out which areas are prone to filling up fastest, and proactively empty cans based on both time and location trends—or, when the sensors alert them to do so. With the time saved from pacing, employees can use their skills to focus on more worthwhile jobs, such as replacing air filters and fixing dehumidifiers.
“It’s not about a product or end solution, it’s about solving a problem for a client.”
Daniel Kolimar, Executive Director of Building Solutions, NV5
Maintain high standards with clear visualizations
Just like casinos have standards they want to maintain by staying on top of trash, golf resorts’ reputations are made on the quality of their courses — and greens. Too dry or too wet and the grass won’t be up to scratch. Golf courses are able to monitor the soil and water, working with their agronomy team. By implementing a simple traffic-light system in their true-to-life digital twin, their clients are able to review the moisture and automate sprinklers turning off and on as required. Besides maintaining their reputation, this upgrade also enables NV5’s clients to save money and water, allowing them to run their businesses more cost effectively and sustainably. As a result, clients are able to run their businesses more cost effectively and sustainably.
Stick to a tight schedule—and maximize revenue
NV5 has also been working on a proof of concept with airports to help them tackle the ever-important challenge of getting planes off the ground on time. As Kolimar explained, “Getting planes out and onto the runway is critically important for an airport. They just need to keep that constant churn. If they don’t, they can’t get a new plane to land. You then have backups on the taxiway and it just creates headaches.”
With between 20 and 40 different data points built into the equation, the team has developed a formula for forecasting a plane’s takeoff time, from the minute it returns to the airport. Again, using a traffic-light system, airport managers would be able to see at a glance if there’s likely to be a delay. By reviewing the data, they could identify what’s affecting the schedule such as ‘no fuel truck available’ and find a solution to get ahead of it.
Interestingly, the second source of revenue for airports comes from their tenants. NV5’s client wanted to establish which of their tenants were the most lucrative. To work out which shops and restaurants were making the most money, they looked at another dataset including foot traffic and revenue per square foot. With their digital twin loaded with these rich data insights, the landlord can make well-informed decisions.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good visualization is worth a million.”
Daniel Kolimar, Executive Director of Building Solutions, NV5
Understand the cause and effect
“Clients often struggle to just keep up with the things that are breaking in their buildings,” Kolimar shared. As such, another use case NV5 is finding adds value to its clients is catching anomalies within the complex infrastructure of their building systems. He continued, “We look at metrics like how many work orders has a particular unit had, is it costing more to run than others, is this consistently happening?” If so, users can then crunch this data to calculate the cost implications of buying a new system versus fixing it. For instance, they can review the data for a set of air handling units in their analytics platform, SkySpark, and then take these insights into Tandem to review the system within the context of the building and its counterparts. Leveraging Tandem’s Systems Tracing feature, building owners and operators can go a step further than just replacing a broken part, they can track how it interconnects with other systems and pinpoint what might have caused the fault.
Keep a close eye on energy consumption
Both from a sustainability standpoint and a cost-saving perspective, being able to closely monitor how each of your facility’s systems is performing and being notified of any anomalies ensures operations run as smoothly as possible.
For NV5’s clients, they find landlords are particularly receptive to this. Typically, when tenants’ energy bills are included within their rent, they’re less aware of how they’re consuming energy. With Tandem, landlords can leverage the data to benchmark average usage and incentivize the adoption of more mindful consumption. Similarly, if a system is malfunctioning and working overtime when no one is in the building, the data will show that spike—catching costly operational issues sooner.
Unlock the insights to find solutions
Kolimar makes it perfectly clear, digital twin technology is adding value for many of NV5’s clients. But, in every instance, they start with the business problem. The fact is, understanding the problem by looking holistically and granularly at the data is what often provides the insights to resolve the issues. He concludes, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good visualization is worth a million. We’re using Tandem to basically provide those visualizations for us. And distill some of the information that we have in our analytics platform—putting it front and center for our clients.”
“If you can’t advise on digital twin technology in today’s world, you’re not really doing your job as a consultant.”
Daniel Kolimar, Executive Director of Building Solutions, NV5
Explore more digital twin use cases with NV5 on our Digital Thread podcast
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