The following article is excerpted from How Virtual Twins Drive More Sustainable High-Performance Buildings: download the full whitepaper here.
Today’s project-based construction process is set to shift radically to a product-based approach that is more standardized, efficient and integrated. This will improve customer satisfaction and offset the costs of conforming to evolving climate regulations.
The virtual twin can facilitate circular design relating to product reuse, recycling and cascading. Key areas to make circular design economically viable include material selection and procurement, standardized components and design for easy end-of-life sorting, such as Cradle to Cradle certified building materials.
We see a real shift toward off-site productization. Though modularization, prefabrication and off-site manufacturing in safe and controlled environments are not new, the combination of lighter-weight materials that simplify traceability, material transportation, digital planning and automated production systems could foster new levels of quality and efficiency in products and operations. Instead of building uniquely designed structures on-site, companies will manufacture components and whole buildings off-site as transportable pieces. This approach improves quality as much as the work is completed in factory conditions, resulting in faster and efficient approval processes.