BIMblog - Nordic BIM Group Finland

BIMblogi: Why are digital twins perfect for hybrid work days?

Written by Christian Foss | 19 July 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost all businesses to close their offices and let employees work from home. Now we are out of lockdown and life is returning to a form of normality, but the way we work has changed forever.

YouGov found out that only one in five bosses will demand that employees return to the office full time, which means that the majority will have a new everyday life with hybrid solutions.

A new normal

The most popular scheme seems to be to let employees work from home two or three days a week and spend the rest of their time in the office. This represents a challenge for owners of commercial buildings and operators of office properties because it will be more difficult to ensure that no energy is wasted and that the spaces in the building are used. There is a need to optimize the building for this new way of working.

The use of the building for one week will not necessarily be the same as the previous one due to the new situation. It will therefore be difficult to achieve the right balance as there is no specific amount of energy used as when people were in the office for the same number of hours from Monday to Friday.

How does a digital twin improve space usage?

The digital twin uses sophisticated artificial intelligence to identify trends and patterns of energy use in a building, and allows those responsible for operating the building to make informed decisions about where to reduce energy consumption.

Read more in this article: What is a digital twin in the construction and real estate industry? 

The more you understand where the energy is consumed, the better you can develop approaches to reduce operating costs.

Before digital twins became prominent in real estate, building managers had no real way of analyzing and controlling energy use. Buildings have always produced huge amounts of data, but there has been no way to access this information until now.

A digital twin helps you unlock access to the building's data through the use of IoT and sensors with data streams available on a single dashboard for an easy overview. By monitoring the building's systems such as lighting, heating and cooling, the digital twin helps the building to achieve optimal performance that is important for the hybrid workday.

Read more in this article: Efficiency and smart operations with digital twins

A digital twin improves space utilization by providing users with tools to improve the workday. For example, when employees enters the office two days a week, they will be able to use an app to check the availability of rooms and even reserve them if they need to. 

They can also enjoy many other benefits such as heat control, air quality reporting and light control to optimize the environment so that they can feel as comfortable as possible on the days they are in the office. On days when entire rooms are not used, the temperature can be lowered to further reduce costs.

Do you want to know how to increase the value of your buildings with digital twins? Contact us and we will tell you more.