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Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 

Dr Ioannis Brilakis, leader of the University of Cambridge Department for Engineering’s Construction IT group, and CDBB academic has been awarded grant funding, along with visiting Professor Rafael Sacks, to enhance building progress monitoring and quality control through Digital Building Twins. 

This €6 mil, 42-month grant is sponsored by the European Commission’s Horizons 2020 Framework Programme through its Digital Twins call for proposals. It is titled “BIM2TWIN: Optimal Construction Management & Production Control” and it aims 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 carbon footprint and costs, and enhancing quality and safety.  

BIM2TWIN 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. The project will use the Gemini Principles to guide the design of BIM2TWIN.  

The grant team is composed of 17 partners. The Centre Scientifique Et Tecqnique Du Batiment (CSTB) in France is the operational coordinator, supported by the University of Cambridge; Technion – Israel Institute of Technology; Technical University of Munich; Institut National De Recherche Eninformatique Et Automatique; Fira Group; Intsite; Technalia; Acciona; Ruhr-University Bochum; Spada; University Polytechnic Delle Marche; Unismart; Orange; Siemens; IDP; Aarhus University. 

Dr Brilakis, Laing O'Rourke Reader in Construction Engineering, and his Construction IT group have made pioneering scientific accomplishments in ‘twinning’ infrastructure scenes. For example, extracting a rich digital copy (Digital Twin) of real world infrastructure (such as buildings and industrial plants, bridges, tunnels, roads and railways), so that the Digital Twin can then be used for managing, maintaining and retrofitting the modelled assets. 

Dr Brilakis said: “Digital Twins allow us to automate and control many repetitive, low level construction tasks. This has massive potential in improving construction key performance indicators and the industry’s abysmal productivity performance.” 

The grant directly contributes to the mission and objectives of the Centre for Digital Built Britain, the Laing O’Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and Technology, the National Research Facility for Infrastructure Sensing, and the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction at Cambridge.

 

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