Bouygues and Egis are among several partners involved in the creation of a new research chair looking at the use of digital twins in construction.

The research chair will sit at the School for Major Projects, ESTP, which trains senior managers in the construction and built environment sector in France.

ESTP is teaming up with Egis, Bouygues Construction, Schneider Electric, BRGM, SNCF Réseau, and Arts et Métiers to form an alliance of stakeholders across the value chain and lifecycle of construction projects – specifically, buildings and infrastructure.

Through digital twins, the partnership intends to open the door for joint progress on subjects at the interface of each organisation’s respective activities, but also provide clarification of the challenges of the digital transition.

The teams said setting up a digital twin represents a solution for centralising, organising, and securing a project’s datasets.

They said the partnership would also help to rally a project’s stakeholders around a collaborative venture and spearhead the development of services tailored to the needs of end users.

By combining simulation, artificial intelligence, and data, the digital twin simulates the behaviour of projects in a dynamic fashion, reflecting the reality on the ground.

This should produce a number of benefits, including the real-time management of buildings, showcasing interactions between systems and objects, and enabling the optimisation of the impact buildings have on their surrounding environment.

Commenting on the initiative, Joël Cuny, chief executive of ESTP, said: “This chair forms part of a policy to significantly develop research activities by strengthening teams and launching several new chairs over the coming year.”

Image: Wikipedia Commons

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