Digital Twins are virtual replicas of physical products, processes, or systems. It acts as a bridge
between the physical and digital worlds by using sensors to collect real-time data about a
physical item. This data is then used to create a digital duplicate of the item, allowing it to be
understood, analyzed, manipulated, or optimized (Monteith, 2019) . This 4.0 industrial
revolution technology firstly used by NASA in the 1960s has been widely used by several
companies in the construction world like IDP Ingeniería y Arquitectura Iberia, SLU, an
Engineering company specialized in the Research, Innovation, Development of Digital Twins
in the AECO (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations) sector from Spain.
This research goes in-depth on the Digital Twins usages for construction management
automatization in the design, build, and maintenance phases of a construction project and
studies the Digital Twin platforms in development by IDP for the Horizon 2020 projects
SPHERE and BIM2TWIN. SPHERE i s a 4 -year project that aims to provide a BIM-based
Digital Twin Platform to optimize the building lifecycle, reduce costs, and improve energy
efficiency in residential buildings (Loscos et al., 2019). BIM2TWIN is a 3-year project aiming
to build a Digital Building Twin (DBT) platform for construction management that implements
lean principles to reduce operational waste of all kinds, shortening schedules, reducing costs,
enhancing quality and safety, and reducing carbon footprint. BIM2TWIN proposes a
comprehensive and holistic approach. It consists of a (DBT) platform that provides full
situational awareness and an extensible set of construction management applications. It
supports a closed-loop Plan-Do-Check-Act mode of construction(BIM2TWIN, 2021).
Furthermore, this research also goes in-depth into the different tools provided by the Digital
Twin platform for the different stages of the building lifecycle.
