Digital engineering is the practice of digitizing how a project is designed, managed, and delivered, so that the data produced along the way stays usable for the life of the asset. It covers building information modeling, augmented reality, drones, robotics, digital twins, and the data environment that ties them together. BIM is one part of digital engineering, not a synonym for it.
What Technologies Fall Under Digital Engineering?
Digital engineering is digitizing the traditional ways of managing and delivering projects in order to improve schedule, budget, quality and cost efficiencies. Those gained efficiencies are then supported by the data captured throughout a project’s life cycle.
Digital engineering is often confused with building information modeling (BIM). While BIM is an important part of it, there’s actually much more to it than that. Digital engineering represents a variety of technologies that are gaining traction for the operational efficiencies they bring to construction projects.
Six technologies do most of the work here. Each is useful on its own, and considerably more useful in combination with the others.
Building Information Modeling
BIM is a virtual 3D modeling process that integrates the data associated with each construction component into the project model, becoming an interactive treasure trove of information that can be used throughout the build and long after it’s been handed off. It allows you to change details, “try on” modified designs and adjust materials during the early modeling phase before the build begins. By detecting potential clashes, you make design alterations to help eliminate their occurrence. Once everything is set, the takeoff can be integrated directly from the BIM model into the estimate for more accurate job costing. The result? All of this helps preserve the original budget while reducing the amount of change orders and pricey rework down the road after work has begun.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is a variation on virtual reality. In AR, you overlay a virtual computer-created image on an actual camera view. So, for example, if you placed a 3D or BIM model on top of an empty job site image, you could show a client what their project would look like when completed in its new location. This takes modeling to a whole other level, showing potential negative interactions with the surrounding environment or where tweaks to the design can be made before designs and takeoffs are finalized. It’s also where clash detection before designs are finalized becomes something a non-technical stakeholder can see for themselves, rather than something you have to talk them through.
Drones
Drones collect vital data that is too time-consuming, costly or dangerous for humans to obtain. When outfitted with high-resolution cameras or light detection and ranging technology (LiDAR), they can literally give you a new perspective of your job site with their ability to record videos, snap photographs and survey a job site. They can also capture quality control issues and job progress throughout the site. When connected to the cloud, they send that information back to the office in real time for immediate analysis, decision-making or action.
Robotics and Automation
Programming robotic machines via a linked computer can automate once-manual tasks either on an assembly line (think prefabricated materials for a construction project) or at a designated area on a job site. They bring precision and sustain productivity over long periods of time. This is quite useful for repetitive and even physically taxing tasks that would take site crews much longer to complete. There’s no risk of human injury or fatigue that might impede progress. It should not be thought of as a replacement for human labor, but an enhancement to it.
Digital Twins
Where BIM is more about what goes into constructing the physical asset, a digital twin is a virtual, interactive model of a physical asset that uses real-time data that shows how people interact with that building and the environment within it. It can also serve as a sort of “copy” of the project to be used for future projects, saving time and money in the process.
The Common Data Environment
Once collected, the valuable data on which digital engineering relies is stored in a common data environment (CDE), a central location where all information associated with a project is collected — everything from its building components to contracts to change orders to site crew schedules.
How Digital Engineering Data Gets Used
The value shows when the outputs are combined. Each technology is useful alone; together they give you one picture of project performance instead of six partial ones.
While these and other technologies that fall under the digital engineering umbrella can operate very well as stand-alone solutions, when used in certain combinations, the data they collect and generate can form a more complete picture of your project performance.
This level of full 360-degree insight allows you to better manage performance. Once the data is in the CDE and connected, it does four jobs:
- Faster decisions when something goes wrong and you need to course correct.
- Quality control, when errors, clashes or noncompliant work turn up.
- Risk management, when a site or building hazard is discovered.
- Collaboration, because every team is reading the same data rather than their own copy of it.
Different teams can use this true data at different points along the project’s life cycle, from the design phase right through to post-build operations.
What to Look for in a Digital Engineering Tool
All the technologies above are widely available. What separates a working digital engineering setup from a drawer full of pilots is usually how well the outputs connect. Here is what to look for:
- A model environment that federates what other tools author, rather than asking every discipline to design in one application. Design authority stays where your expertise already is.
- Data that survives handover. If your model stops being maintained at turnover, the asset life cycle argument for digital engineering never pays off.
- One environment holding documents, contracts, change, and schedule alongside the model, so you can trace a clash or a quality issue through to what it actually costs you.
- Open formats and published integrations. Your drone capture, LiDAR, and robotics outputs all come from third-party vendors, and those change more often than the platform does.
InEight Model is a federated model environment built for that first point. It brings models authored in other tools together into one place all your disciplines and stakeholders can work from through the build, without becoming the tool they design in.
