Posada, H; Chacón, R and Ramonell, C (2025) Job roles for digital twinning building construction processes. Introducing the digital twin manager position. International Journal of Construction Management, 25(12), pp. 1415-1431. ISSN 1562-3599
Abstract
Digital Twins (DT) holds the potential to enhance management and monitoring in the construction sector by means of an interconnected information environment. Although DT theoretical frameworks have been proposed and numerous literature reviews conducted, real-world demo cases showing requirements and challenges are yet limited. These existing frameworks lack of grounded verification on real scenarios to identify essential roles and skills for effective knowledge transfer. This paper contributes to bridge these gaps by harvesting the knowledge of twinning a real-world office building. Key takeaways include a general mind map and two complementary workflows for DT generation and operation for building construction processes. The information pipeline from data collection to decision-making is described and required skills and roles are identified along this data journey. An identification of the emerging role of DT Managers is presented, a vital yet underexplored position in current construction literature. The presented practical roadmap paves the way for increasing maturity on DTs and for promoting their industry adoption.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | building construction management; digital twins; IFC; IoT; parametric design |
| Index terms: | monitoring, parametric design, office building, pipeline, construction sector, workflow, digital twin, knowledge transfer, decision-making, building construction, literature review, manager |
| Subjects: | building construction, digital engineering, construction type, research dissemination and communication, practitioner, decision analysis, industry analysis, infrastructure and transport systems, management, data analysis and analytics, control systems, design methods |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Construction Technology, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Site Management, Engineering Principles, Risk Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here