When Autodesk first released Tandem digital twin in 2022, building owners gained immediate contextual access to their asset’s data and documentation at handover. Now Autodesk has just announced its latest Tandem digital twin facility monitoring beta program, featuring a number of significant improvements.
Facility Monitoring
With this update, Tandem digital twin can provide near real-time facility monitoring and historic trend visualizations, providing insights into how systems work together and how a building performs over time.
Autodesk announces Tandem digital twin facility monitoring beta program. (Image: screen-grab.)
Owners can track office occupancy trends and strategize in order to mitigate peak energy demand. They can also adjust building systems to tune performance and optimize temperature, humidity, and overall employee comfort. Owners can also spot anomalies ahead of equipment failures in order to minimize downtime, improve health and safety, and reduce costs.
Director of Autodesk Workplace and Travel, Jenny Lum offers us her early assessment of Autodesk’s Tandem digital twin:
“We have offices all over the world and seeing Tandem in action is changing how we think about project data and management. A digital twin with facility monitoring capabilities allows our staff to study the performance of our offices remotely and see how everything is built, deployed, and connected. We value the speed at which we can access the live conditions and reference the history we need for decision-making.”
Tandem digital twin brings data to the forefront of facilities operations
When Autodesk first released Tandem, owners gained immediate contextual access to their asset’s data and documentation at handover. Autodesk has done a lot of work on Tandem digital twin since then. It now provides near real-time monitoring and historic trend visualizations. New facility monitoring capabilities now open insights into how systems come together and how a building performs.
Bringing building data to life
To achieve operational efficiency, owners have long recognized the importance of high-quality data. According to Autodesk and FMI, 71% of owners believe that capturing and retaining more data during design and construction will reduce overall lifecycle operational costs.
Design and Construction “data-wrapped” BIMs (building information models) are the foundation for visualizing physical assets in digital form. Owners can now make the most of those models by integrating cloud-enabled information systems that share data. By connecting the data, owners can layer on visualizations of current conditions, analyze historic trends or anomalies, and assess performance relative to the original design.
Good decision-making at your fingertips
Autodesk Tandem digital twin helps owners make data-informed decisions. This can improve building performance, boost occupant comfort, lower energy consumption, and reduce operational costs. It gives users access to pre-configured views of operations data in context. The responsive 3D models come to life with heat mapping capabilities. So owners can begin to explore questions such as:
- What corrections are needed to achieve sustainability goals?
- Which systems, equipment, and materials perform better than others?
- What future planning and design decisions will maximize ROI (return on investment)?
Historically, operations teams made these observations inefficiently, mostly through trial and error. Often these observations were made when an employee complained or something in the building failed. Tandem’s digital twin facility monitoring capabilities remove this guesswork by monitoring the building during its normal day-to-day usage. This means potential problems can be averted before they occur.
Autodesk takes a dose of its own medicine
For more than fifteen years, Autodesk’s Toronto office has also served as its testing laboratory. It allows Autodesk to test its emerging technology on its own building designs and systems. The Toronto Office is equipped with various smart-building technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things) and various building management systems. However, most of the data it has collected so far has not been deployed in a cohesive, joined-up manner.
Thanks to this latest beta release of Tandem digital twin, its facilities management team can start consolidating the data it collects. It can visualize trends, analyze occupants’ comfort, and monitor how the building’s various systems interact.
Try Autodesk’s Tandem digital twin beta program for free
- To join Join the Autodesk Tandem digital twin Facility Monitoring beta, please click here.
- You can sign up for a free Tandem account here, then try out the new facility monitoring beta program.
- Or perhaps you simply want to get a feel for what Tandem digital twin is and why you may wish to use it? If that is the case, then you can find an interesting Youtube video here.
If you join the program, then please be sure to read its terms and conditions carefully before use.