Commercial construction is an orchestration exercise of almost unimaginable complexity that has nevertheless long been managed mostly on paper.

Teams of builders, electricians, plumbers, architects, structural engineers and numerous other professions must come together around a shared task of turning a design document into a physical structure. They do so amid a complex and constantly changing backdrop of regulations and building codes.

The possibilities for things to go wrong are endless. “Say there are a couple of levels of parking under the building,” said Breawn Felix, who is a regional virtual design and construction manager at Swinerton Inc., a diversified construction firm based in Southern California. “They may not have the head-height clearance required to accommodate ADA [Americans with Disability Act] vehicles, or you might have a big exhaust pipe running through the garage that could require a redesign.”

A fire extinguisher supply line that crosses an air conditioning duct or a concrete footing and doesn’t leave enough surface area to provide for sufficient lateral pressure can trigger a code violation that requires a costly re-do.

In her 11 years of managing projects of all kinds, Felix has seen just about everything. It’s her team’s job to take a building from the bid phase to reality. Now, she’s doing it with the help of three-dimensional imaging technology that captures every stage of a construction project in a digital twin that can be used for inspection and modeling.

Even small problems can take weeks to fix, particularly when construction teams don’t agree on who’s at fault. “Change orders can be contentious because no one knows for sure who is responsible,” said Jeevan Kalanithi, chief executive of OpenSpace Labs Inc., which built the digital twin technology.

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