Potential use of digital twin for construction progress monitoring

Abstract

The digital twin (DT) presents an opportunity for the integration of the physical world into the digital world. DT technology has the potential to transform the construction industry and respond to some of its challenges. In conventional construction projects, progress is largely monitored by direct observation and measurement which suffers from numerous challenges, including low productivity, blunders, and poor technology advancements. Concerns are now being raised about integrating technology for autonomously monitoring building activity. In other sectors, DT technology has been responsible for saving product development time and costs by up to 50%. However, DT is still lagging the adoption of new technologies in the construction industry. The overarching aim of this study was to explore the adaptability of DT in construction site progress monitoring. This study comprehensively reviews and analyses DT concepts, technologies, and applications in the construction industry, parameters of applications of DT in construction site progress monitoring, how DT could be used for site progress monitoring in construction, common challenges in the implementation of DT in site progress monitoring, and strategies such as barriers related to DT in site progress monitoring, using literature findings while incorporating qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. This research shows that DT has a high potential to solve the numerous challenges in construction site progress monitoring, rather than other current technologies in use. Thus, this study raises awareness and the need for the application of DT in construction site progress monitoring