Improving Efficiency of University Campus Facility Management Using Digital Twin

Universities own several campuses and many buildings within the campuses. During the operation & maintenance phase, some of the buildings have architectural components and MEPFs that must be maintained. In the authors' study, university campus Facility Manager uses paper drawings and paper documents for operations and maintenance of MEPFs, and building components, which are managed by human power. In this study, As-Built 3D model of school buildings, was developed by 3D scanning with MatterPort Pro2 camera. A digital twin of the school building was developed from integrating the As-Built 3D model with a COBie Sheet information that defines the building and facility components for FMr. This developed digital twin was used to verify the efficiency of conventional Facility Management (FM) operations. The specific procedures are as follows. (1) Conducted an interview survey on FM of conventional university campuses to organize the current operations. (2) The following building items, which are annual inspection items, were extracted from the conventional FM operations being performed, Speakers, fire alarms, fire doors, guide lights, air conditioning, and fire extinguishing equipment. (3) Since these items listed above are currently documented in different formats, the authors organized them into a database using COBie format. (4) The components of the organized COBie format and the As-Built 3Dmodel were integrated to complete the digital twin. (5) To verify the effectiveness of the digital twin, experiments were conducted on information search in current FM operations and workflows using the digital twin. (6) We also verified the effectiveness of the AS-Built 3D model by comparing between the As-Built 3D model and the BIM model. Finally, we discussed how process innovation through digitalization of FM operations contributes not only to the improvement of daily operations, but also to the productivity improvement of university management.