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Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations are undergoing a rapid transformation. From BIM and smart buildings to digital twins and AI, new opportunities are emerging every day that have the potential to revolutionize the way we design, build, and manage our assets.
But with change comes challenges - industry professionals find themselves working to overcome technical hurdles, break down silos, and usher in a new era of innovation.
Join us as we dive into captivating conversations with AECO experts who are leading this charge. We’ll explore the groundbreaking potential of digital twin technology and highlight how you can harness these innovations to unlock the full potential of your assets, improve performance, reduce costs, and increase safety.
Smart Twins is brought to you by dTwin and Nemetschek Group.
Welcome to the Smart Twins podcast from Nemetschek. Architecture, engineering, construction, and operations are undergoing a rapid transformation. From BIM and smart buildings to digital twin and AI, new opportunities are emerging every day. Those opportunities have the potential to revolutionize the ways we design, build, and manage our assets. But with every change comes challenges.
Jimmy:Industry professionals find themselves working to overcome technical hurdles, breakdown silos, and usher in a new era of innovation. Join us as we dive into captivating conversations with ACO experts who are leading this change. We will explore the groundbreaking potential of digital twin technology and highlight how you can harness these innovations to unlock the full potential of your assets, improving performance, reducing costs, and increasing safety. Be sure to subscribe in your preferred listening app and stay tuned for this episode. Welcome to the Smart Twins podcast.
Jimmy:Today, I'm pleased to welcome professor Fernando Leite as our guest. Fernanda is associate dean for research in the Cockerell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the past chair of the university wide bridging barriers research initiative called Planet Texas 2050. Most of her research has been in the building and infrastructure system information, modeling, scan to beam visualization and collaboration technology, and circular economy in the built environment. At the University of Texas, Fernanda has taught courses on building information modeling, project management and economics, construction safety, and sustainable systems engineering.
Jimmy:I believe this is just a glimpse of your background and your career journey, Fernanda. Welcome to the show.
Fernanda:Thank you, Jimmy. It's a pleasure to be here and thanks for inviting me.
Jimmy:Yeah. Thanks for making the time. Maybe to kick this off with our listeners, it would be great maybe that you highlight your background a little bit more, and give more information about your very interesting career journey.
Fernanda:Sure. I can I can probably go back to when I was a kid? So when I was 8, so I I'm originally from Brazil. My grandfather was a developer of high res residential and commercial construction in in Brazil. And he took me to one of his his job sites, and I absolutely fell in love with the chaos around construction.
Fernanda:Right? All the the heavy equipment, the materials, the people. So so I knew that that's the field that I wanted to to work in. Fast forward a few years, my father came to the US for his master's and PhD. He's an agricultural engineer.
Fernanda:So I lived in the US and in a university study for for many years growing up. And I also really enjoyed, you know, that university life, that that life as as a researcher. When we went back to Brazil when he was done with his PhD, because I had the English skills, I taught English at in an after school program. And that's where I fell in love with teaching. I would just fell in love with looking at students having those light bulb moments, and I remember having a conversation with my dad saying, look, I I really love teaching, this teaching experience that I'm having, but I I know I also love construction.
Fernanda:What do I do? And he said, well, maybe you can become a professor. You put the 2 together. And then I asked him, okay. What do I have to do to be a professor?
Fernanda:He's like, you need a PhD for that. And I said, okay. And then so that's where where that started. And and so I I did I finished my my undergrad, did my my masters in Brazil, and then went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the US, for for my PhD. And that's where I got into computer aided engineering, to computing and civil engineering.
Fernanda:So so I worked with professor Butchua Kinji at Carnegie Mellon, and that's that was my first initial step into the world of of building information modeling back when it was just something that was just starting. And we had this really good opportunity of, of with a developer that was building a new building for the school of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. And they had just heard about this thing called BIM and we were embedded in the project doing research and and they asked us, well, do you know what this is? Can you can you do some some of this in this project so we can learn it? And we're like, sure.
Fernanda:We can do some work around BIM in this project. And so so I I started I was doing work around design coordination, so I started attending all the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design coordination meetings with the contractors, and they were all obviously doing design coordination in 2 d, overlaying drawings on a light table. And I had that BIM model on the side with all the MEP systems. And, of course, I asked them, would you like to transition to using BIM? And their answer was no.
Fernanda:Right? They they we weren't hired for this. We don't have the skill set. And but that that became an opportunity for me from a research perspective because I was able to then compare the ground truth data, you know, the the, you know, that that control group which were the process, you know, the 2 based design coordination with the 3 d based design coordination. So I would attend those meetings every week, 6 to 8 hours each meeting, and they would do sections and and a few floors of the building.
Fernanda:And I would go back to my office at the university and run that that same clash detection in a couple of minutes and and find similar, sometimes better results. So that's where my my first paper that came out of, you know, the LOD paper.
Jimmy:Exactly.
Fernanda:That's that's still one of my most cited papers because
Jimmy:of Arnold, this paper. Yeah. My PhD topic was around that. And I think it, it was one of the first papers I read at that time. It was showing the use of LOD in really practical projects.
Jimmy:And at that time, I was also struggling to find real data about how this can impact would people use all of these? How how those will bring value, and how that can structure the process? Because BIM is a process, and with the LODs, we go through it somehow to make decisions. And and and with that paper, it was really very, very helpful. And, hopefully, so, Fernanda, you came from blending different kind of things from your background, from your child development into research, and into reaching the BIM point of a view as, as well.
Jimmy:And then you're applying it also in in practice. So at that time, the as you said, that people didn't have the skill set, but maybe that was around 28 or something like this, like 2008, 2010, probably.
Fernanda:Around that time. So 2006 January 2006 was when I started my PhD. And so that's when we started that that study around that
Jimmy:time. Yeah. Very nice. And then you you tell you were the first to to really touch this difference or understand the value of of BEM. See it really, wouldn't miss the value of it from comparison to the real project.
Jimmy:So can you tell us more about this? Like, if you continue a little bit, how how that was impacting the discussion maybe with the workers on-site? Did this also bring more value to their perspective on adopting maybe BIM for the next projects?
Fernanda:Yeah. So, so I think with every organization, right, they there's always resistance to change. But once they get their their they see the value and they see how much better information they're able to get in an easier way, that's when when the barrier is is decreased. Right? That's when when when it's removed and and oftentimes people will will see it now, and now it's it's the low hanging fruit.
Fernanda:Every project and and large owners that that here in the US roughly, you know, about $20,000,000. Anything above $20,000,000, you're going to do BIM based design coordination because that's simply like a very clear value value proposition. You want to identify build the building virtually first, identify all the problems, fix them before you actually go to the field. Right? So very clear value proposition.
Fernanda:So I think that became a lot of of of owners are creating their own BIM standard. And when when a few year years later, I joined UT as a faculty member. So So after I finished my PhD at Carnegie Mellon, I started at UT as a as an assistant professor. So that's the entry level position for a faculty member in the US. And so I I began interacting with the the the planning, design, and construction group that's responsible for all the capital projects on campus.
Fernanda:And they have this this one sentence that was added to every contract for capital projects on campus, and I will quote it. This is what it said. Thou shall use Ben. Right? And this is early 2010.
Fernanda:They really didn't know exactly what to ask for. So this is when people were starting to think about, okay, should we have, asked for something more specific? We know this is valuable, but we don't know how to do it and how to implement it. And now we see organizations with with BIM project execution plans, right, that are very sophisticated that they ask for very specific things and and contractors that work for them will then create a a a project specific. Yeah.
Fernanda:So so it's more so it's evolved quite a bit. And that's also when I started teaching. I created a new, BIM course here at at at the University of Texas. And initially, it was it was just model based cost estimating, scheduling and 4 d simulation, and NEP design coordination. And I teach it in a modular way because it's with modules it's easy to plug and play, to add new things, and then you can update 1 module and modify 1 module at a time as you as you're teaching it.
Fernanda:So I've been teaching this course for 15 years. Every single offering has been different because it also keeps me updated. It's me engaged if I have to update these every every, time I teach it. The I think the key though with the success of of this course and with looking at how this has evolved, I always tell my students, like, my dream is that this course is going to become obsolete and it's not gonna become needed and we're not even gonna be having this conversation in 10 years because it's part of the process. Right?
Fernanda:Why would you need, like, a separate thing to cover this? And that's my my my ultimate goal. Hasn't happened in 15 years, but I still I still hope that that will will get there someday. But as part of that course, I have a mentoring program. So so the course has, you know, about 36, 40 students in each offering.
Fernanda:And then I divide up the class into 8 to 9 teams, and each team partners has an industry mentor. And these are people all around mostly in the US. Right? And and mostly in Central Texas because I want them to go to see these projects in action, how they're they're doing this. So the secret, you know, the the the hidden agenda for me is that way I get to know everything that's going on, all the cool projects.
Fernanda:And I select all the cool projects, all the high rises that you pick up, like, the the Formula 1 racetrack. And often, that was one a case study that that, we had. You know, the the the Tesla Gigafactory, that was a case study that we had. So all these very high profile projects, a bunch of the Google Tower in in downtown, the Meta Tower downtown, all these fancy buildings, they become case studies and and we learn all about them. So in the last 15 years, we we've grown that and we we're able to build that portfolio and I understand what's the state of the art in industry, and we're able to to then keep keep the course, like, at that state of the art and one step ahead of of what industry is doing.
Fernanda:We've had companies, startup companies come in and and and test out their software systems. So Assemble Assemble Systems was a startup, and they asked us to test it out in the class. We provided, you know, a lot of we used it in the class, and then that was they implemented a lot of the feedback that that we gave them in in those tests that we did in in class. So so we've done that too. So it's a super fun class to teach.
Fernanda:I love teaching that class.
Jimmy:And I think Fernando, you did the first paper and your PhD about the LODs with a practical input, and you like that taste, and you kept doing it through the years probably. Because all of those projects, I mean, the fun of them is really to bring the practical point of view into research as well and then look at where people are are at the moment and how can we improve this, how can we push this push the boundaries even furthermore and innovate further? So it's like innovating in teaching. I think this is something really very interesting to see and hear. Very good.
Jimmy:So, Fernando, I think this is also close to the book you wrote or you brought to the market. So there is the book of BIM for design coordination, that you have prepared. I'm not sure if you can tell us a little bit more for the audience to know about this book and the main message
Fernanda:structured material around BDC design BIM based design coordination. Right? Virtual design construction for for owners, for GCs, for subcontractors, for designers. So that came from a desire to just have that that one material that we could use for for teaching perspective, but also for guidance for professionals in the field.
Jimmy:So it's like a big pyramid line. Like, how would you leverage the power of BEM or the value of BEM across the process in one place?
Fernanda:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I provide that and it's it's an easy it's a pretty easy read. I use it in my class, and I've I've seen it being adopted in other university.
Fernanda:It was recently translated to Korean, which was a surprise for me. I didn't even know it was that was happening. I just got a a copy in Korean, went to one of my Korean PhD students. Hey. What is this title accurate?
Fernanda:I couldn't understand what was written there. But it was just a fun Bernie, even though, like, from a an engineering faculty perspective. Right, there there's no incentive to write a book, right, a textbook. And and I just did that because I wanted to do that. I wanted to provide that resource from a teaching perspective.
Fernanda:I'm passionate about teaching, and I think that's important to bring research and teaching together. And and that's one way of doing that. And and I also had a lot of previous work that I was able to integrate into the that book. So, for example, that LOD paper that you were talking about, it's it's in one of those chapters. I had to just rewrite and adapt it to be less, you know, academiese and or more practical language.
Fernanda:But a lot of of of work that I had published in journal papers were were then integrated into into that book but in with a more practical way.
Jimmy:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, even thinking about the industry with using BIM, a lot of those technologies emerging over time.
Jimmy:So our industry is really developing quite fast. Many people say our domain is one of the least domains digitized, but honestly, I think a lot of advancements are happening already in technology, and there is adoption in tools, functionalities, and so on. Maybe the market is taking time for responsible, like, to see how could they can be responsible for the change or responsible for making such kind of decision. But overall, having a book with, let's say, teaching material that's helpful as a guideline is also important for the industry because we are teaching the industry to move forward. So that's really very helpful contribution to the market overall.
Jimmy:And then moving from books and, let's say, teaching the market to a little bit forward. So in your research, you already touched upon many things, including AI, crack detection, facility management, sustainability, improving life cycle. So there are a lot of topics that we touched upon. Would you maybe highlight? Let's go first with AI part because it's the current the current trend or the currently buzzing topic in the market.
Jimmy:So you touched upon things related to point clouds, maybe to, images as well. If you can add more to our, audience upon this.
Fernanda:Sure. So so it's all sort of interconnected and part of the journey. Right? So when when you're talking about doing MEP design coordination, you then at the end of the project, you have this potential to have an as built model. Right?
Fernanda:And that as built model in the past decade or so, most of the time, that was the end of it. Right? And it was saved somewhere and it wasn't real really used by facility managers. And so that that's where I started the the project. I wrote a proposal for the National US.
Fernanda:And the title of the proposal is called
Jimmy:Living Ben. And so
Fernanda:I call that the poet poetic title. And the reason why it has that title is is because I see buildings and infrastructure systems as living organisms. So once they're out in in operations, they're gonna change over time. Right? There's always renovations that happen.
Fernanda:There's always minor minor changes that the users have to adapt that that facility throughout its life cycle work. That the design and construction phase is this tiny phase if you think about it from a life cycle perspective of the project. So the the idea with the living then project is, well, what can we do to decrease the barrier of facility managers using these models in the life cycle, in the operations and maintenance phase of of these facilities? And the biggest barrier in talking to a lot of people from industry is, well, we cannot trust them. They're not up to up to date.
Fernanda:And if we go and update it, we have to, like, recreate a bunch of data. We have to go and measure it. Just a lot of work to to update these models. So the Living BIM project focuses on how do we remove the from the equation then? How can we leverage scan to BIM and reality capture technologies and deep deep learning to automatically update these models?
Fernanda:So throughout the years, there has
Jimmy:So we have design maybe from as planned, then it's constructed. Maybe there are some defenses already to as planned, and then we push it to operations. And then people lose trust in this and receive deviations or differences or even when they change the facility itself. So at that point, they want to gain that thrust again maybe by capturing the as is state or the current state. And this is why you need reality captures from your side.
Fernanda:Yeah. Instead of just laser scanning a project and then importing that point cloud into a a a model authoring tool. Right? And then overlaying your objects on top of the the the cloud of points. So that's like a manual generation of of a big model based on a point cloud.
Fernanda:Right? So the point cloud is the accurate geometry of what's out there in the field, but we want a machine to be able to understand what those x y z points mean and not a human having to do that overlay themselves. So throughout the years, we've been doing different approaches, leveraging transfer learning. So there's a lot of databases out there already that, have semantically segmented data sets and and they're labeled so walls, windows, doors, simple objects that any human can interpret. Right?
Fernanda:And what we did, we added another database called 3 d facilities and that was one of my former PhD students, Thomas Cherniavski. He created that database and he leveraged existing databases, used transfer learning to expand that. And that's a very specialized data set with lots of MEP systems, building systems that are harder for a lay person to to to label.
Jimmy:Maybe for our audience, the difference between transfer learning is that your how your researchers looked into the real deep learning model. So really going much down into the details and compares it to JWT or those kind of existing models that you just take over the shelf and use. So this is where you have this neural network. You substitute or change the last layers of it and then train it further on with specialized data. And this is what what kind of data that you have for your on purpose.
Fernanda:Yeah. That's a great a great summary. Yeah. And so so with that, like, Thomas was able to automatically classify 7 different not 7. I'm sorry.
Fernanda:Thirteen different classes of objects in the built environment, and that was more than twice as much what was done before his PhD research. And then we continue that area. So another follow on PhD student, John Wan Ma, who has since also completed his PhD, he, then used all of that that data to then actually create those those 3 d models using generative design. So if we understand that a wall moved from here to here, right, moved let's say 20 inches or you can translate that to centimeters to to the left, you then can can tell a model, okay. The this is this is a a a door or a window, and they recognize that door or the window, And they use generative design to then move it to the right right place.
Jimmy:So people can have the point style the type of the points. What kind of object is that, and then try to also match it with the original position and the BIM model itself.
Fernanda:Well, not not that yeah. The the original position is is what we're trying to change.
Jimmy:Yes. Refraction. This is the the the same object but moved, so then we need to move the BIM model accordingly.
Fernanda:Correct. Yes. And that requires a training. These models requires a lot of work. So we do a lot of manual semantic segmentation and late labeling with the help of so many undergraduate students that have worked in in in my group.
Fernanda:So without, that that that help of and that work of all these undergraduate students that are out laser scanning spaces and that are out doing the the developing the ground truth data so we can train these models, this wouldn't have been possible. So hopefully, in the future, I keep telling the undergrads, hopefully, you're contributing to something that this work won't be needed in the future. Right? And that's what we're trying to achieve.
Jimmy:That we started seeing a lot of start ups and a lot of applications coming to the market with scan to BIM capabilities. It is still, let's say, at early stage, so we don't see that much of high high accuracy or high detection of object types, maybe some windows, walls, and doors, but when we go to MAP or specialized disciplines, then it gets really complex or hard to predict. So, hopefully, soon we see more of the advancements happening at the moment.
Fernanda:And then, again, like, this also connects with with some of my more recent research interests. Right? So with over time, I was doing a lot of research and technology applied to capital projects delivery. Right? So laser scanning, reality capture with different types of of technology.
Fernanda:But then I began looking at the impact of the construction industry in in our environment and and doing research on construction waste estimation using BAM. Right? So we're we're we have this BIM model. Perhaps we can estimate how much waste is being generated for each of these waste streams. And and that also requires a lot of of of data collection in the field because we have to understand in that context, in that specific project, where are those different waste streams going?
Fernanda:Are they being recycled? Are they going to the landfill? And that varies based on the context. So in Central Texas, there are no gypsum recycling facilities. And if if we had one nearby, that stream would most likely be recycled because that's an easily recyclable material.
Fernanda:But it's not because it the the cost of shipping it to a facility, recycling facility would would almost offset the the, the carbon, the embedded carbon costs, of of that material. So looking at that, that's when I I began doing more sustainability related research.
Jimmy:Nice. And this fits a lot or focuses a lot on the material types. Right? So the the BIM model is already rich for this semantic information about what kind of material layers exist. And then from this, you can get some kind of indicator on how this will be affecting the life cycle and how can we recycle this building maybe once we disassemble it or deconstruct it.
Jimmy:Right? So you started from design to operations. So you were saying now we are designing, and we want to see how we can use those models and operations. And then you moved further into disassembly, which took you again to design because, again, the BIM model is the source of information or source of knowledge that we are trying to leverage to optimize the process. So for the design to disassembly, maybe you can tell us about the latest things you have done there and where is your research going, from that direction?
Jimmy:Because I believe, this has a huge impact on the current issues we have with the industry facing all of those sustainability issues and making informed decisions, Ethan, from the design phase.
Fernanda:Yeah. Absolutely. So so it all started with this construction waste estimation and research. Right? That we're looking specifically at different waste streams.
Fernanda:And then we in that research, and this is one of my former PhD student that students, Beatrice Guerra. She now works for for Autodesk as a product developer. She started looking at well well, if we understand how much waste, materials are are, how much waste each material is is generating, How about we look at the construction schedule and see if we can reutilize that waste from one stream, one part of the project in another before to minimize what ultimately leaves the project. And that's when I started looking at circular economy in the built environment. Right?
Fernanda:So circular economy is just a whole different concept. What you might think of waste, it potentially be a resource in either your industry or in another industry. So we're thinking we're shifting that mindset from a linear economy, take, make, use, dispose of materials to a circular economy in which that waste now becomes a resource. And so that is is key there in in terms of thinking about in the built environment, how do we do that? How do we implement that?
Fernanda:Each of these building systems could be considered, you know, a circular a circular a separate circular system. And we're looking at well, if if we want to design a facility, a building for so that it can be reutilized or so that the pieces and parts can be re that can have a second life, We need to start thinking about that early on in the design phase. And that's where that research one of my current PhDs, Dunetzie Agiliani Eliotti, he's doing his research on design for disassembly, and he's co supervised with my my colleague, Chris Rauch as well. And so we we are looking at, well, how do we do that then? How do we begin designing, and what what building elements and what building systems are best suited for design for disassembly?
Fernanda:So there are there are types of of systems that are harder to then disassemble once that that facilities is outdated, but there are there are elements that are are suitable for that. And that's not just for if you if you think about the the purest concept of design for disassembly is at the end of that life cycle, and we saw that in in the world cup, stadiums in in Dubai. Right? They they really didn't need those white elephant soccer stadiums for a very long time, but they were designed to be disassembled and transformed into smaller community centers, smaller, spaces, and that was great. I was thinking proactively based on their specific need.
Fernanda:And we can also think that way too. As an owner, we saw that how how the pandemic impacted the use of office spaces. We had a bunch of office spaces and now there's not no no, need for for that amount of square footage? How do we adapt those facilities for a new use that we may not have foreseen when that building was designed and and built? So so allowing that flexibility is not just for when it's decommissioned and will become something new, but also during the the life as needs change.
Fernanda:Again, going back to that concept, the living bit. Right? Then facility are like little bit living organisms. They change
Jimmy:over time. Thinking about disassemblies, I always imagine the modular discussion you brought at the beginning. I also hear modular construction. So is this also part of the equation? Because having, like, modularity and modular construction will maybe allow easier disassembly or unplugging things if I go back to your first statement.
Fernanda:Yes. Absolutely. I I I wish we did more of that. Right? We need to do more prefabrication, more standardization, more modularization and construction.
Fernanda:That'll speed things up. It'll create safer job sites. Right? The more we can remove from from the construction site, the state where the job site actually becomes. So doing less craft work in in the actual construction site.
Fernanda:And we can do that with so many different methods. It could it doesn't mean that we all have to look. Our our buildings all have to look the same. Right? There's there's mass customization approaches that can be done.
Fernanda:And and you can still do a prefabrication to to to custom design in in in facilities and buildings. So there's so much yet to be done in in this field. And and modularization, again, you see a lot of it being applied to certain types of materials, and we need to push that envelope to see it applied to to a variety of of of different materials in in in the field.
Jimmy:Yeah. This unlocks a lot of opportunities even to optimize further and do a better circular economy, accounting for circular economy and sustainability overall. So taking the living BIM title, I mean, I really love it because it's not only BIM, it's like making the BIM living. And so comparing this to Digital Twins overall, how did you see the connection there? Because if I imagine the core message behind Living BIM and the compare it to the current definitions of the stone twins, I see some overlap there.
Jimmy:Maybe when we discuss with different kind of people, they have in mind different definitions of the stone twins. They can be for a specific design or construction or operation phase. But the life cycle, I think, of point of view with the living BIM is really spot on. And I don't know if you can elaborate on that, or how do you see it in comparison to the new trendy buzzword of Digital Twins? It's not really a buzzword.
Jimmy:It's really becoming more tangible with with the days. So how do you see that?
Fernanda:I in a built environment, I see I see a lot of our our colleagues in in our field making that differentiation between a a BIM more like a digital shadow, and the digital twin has that connection to the real world, via sensing, actuation, whatever it may be. But there's that real world connection to the actual physical physical elements that are in the in the built environment. And important too as you're thinking about how are you going to adapt, let's say, a road. Right? If you're getting understanding what loads are actually being applied to that, like, bridge per se, that can help plan maintenance of of that that infrastructure system if you understand what what loads are being applied over time.
Fernanda:So that feeds back into that that facility life cycle analysis that makes it more efficient. You have you're able to collect real world data. So I I see that as the main difference. I know that in other fields, it's more it's almost a a a BIM. Right?
Fernanda:Digital twin is is is equal to a BIM if you look at, let's say, the aerospace industry that have been doing these types of of of of of physics based models for for such a long time, but that they they're used to test the design of aircraft systems. So very similar similar way, but I think in the built environment we we tend to think about this connection to the the physical world. Yeah.
Jimmy:But if I if I refer it to your definition of the living BIM project, you try to also to connect the BIM other to the reality or to the actual reality. It's not sensors, not actuators, but it's real time captures from the as is state. So this is also, an additional flavor or input over that BIM model to make it alive or more up to date. It can be maybe taking more time until we convert those point clouds into BIM or identify differences. But if you think about it, it's breaking the actual state on that digital model, which is the BIM model.
Jimmy:I don't know if it makes sense, but I thought you were doing digital twins since long time, but it was called Living With Women. That very interesting. I mean, the the definition of, I think, sensors, actuators, and so on, is it becoming more prominent in the market from at least from limited perspective and with different offerings we have. We always see also the value of bringing data from other systems. Like in our digital twin solution, we see the connection from facility management software or the connection from many things that happen to capture this kind of activities happening during the operation phase.
Jimmy:We see reflecting those on the BIM model are are already valuable as IoT or as sensors because they bring the actual state or the actual things happening on-site. This is why I saw your definition or your living BIM story, and it just sounded to me very close to to that definition. Thinking with different data sources and putting things and even representing information to to users, I think the most tricky tricky part is how do we visualize it, or how do we make people able to perceive what they see there? Things can be easily overwhelming. Putting things in one place for different kind of skilled people can be also complex or hard to grasp.
Jimmy:So I know you're also famous in your research in that area. Maybe Fernanda, tell us a little bit more how you see the the value of visualization overall.
Fernanda:So I think there's there's any model is a simplification of reality. Right? And how you visualize that data will impact your decision making process. And and we we wanted to test that hypothesis with comparing them for for visualization of field detected issues in in heavy industrial projects. If we compare let's say if we had professionals, people with 3 years or more of experience doing design coordination type type work in these facilities, how how does it impact if they see the input data, if they see those clashes either in, a 2 d, desktop machine, either in a a 2 d, desktop machine or in an immersive virtual reality headset.
Fernanda:Well, it turns out that that it really does impact the the quality of your decision making process. So if we compared, we had 2 groups of of of users, people that were we call them the 3 years or more people with the the more the experts, And then the novices were people with less than 3 years of of of industry experience. And we had in each of those groups, we had 2 groups, a control and a treatment group. The control group was walking a model that we had embedded several design errors in, and these are the types of design errors that you wouldn't capture in an automatic clash detection software system that you literally had to walk the model to visualize. So an example would be if you had like let's say a pipe spool that was supposed to have a support under it.
Fernanda:Right? It was a heavy pipe spool. The support didn't didn't quite get to the the height of the the connection where it should be supported. So in in this in this scenario here, you have a false negative in design coordination. Right?
Fernanda:But design coordination software systems are designed to catch true positives. Right? They have to be there has to be some sort of geometric clash in it. So for these types of false negatives, you've gotta walk the model. And if they're walking the model, oftentimes the the the, vantage point so how you're visualizing it can impact how much of these design errors you actually see.
Fernanda:For the the the novices, it was drastic, the difference. It was more than 2 times the number of design errors that they saw when they were using the, immersive virtual reality headset. Because of the angle in which you're seeing and and how you're you're actually interacting with that model, it feels like you're you're in the real world. The the experts didn't have quite as drastic, but it was still statistically significant, the increase in the number of of design errors that they saw. So what that tells me is that if we identify use cases that we can see value because that's another thing that I see a lot in in industry And when people say that the construction industry is not using technology, that's still not true because they're using all sorts of cool technologies and and projects.
Fernanda:But the issue that I see is oftentimes, companies will implement a new technology, and it's almost like that shiny new toy that they wanna test out. And they don't really think strategically about the use case that that is supporting. It doesn't just because you're doing it in a digital way, doesn't mean it's going to be better. Right? So thinking strategically and thinking, you know, holistically across your your organization of how you're going to implement this technology and in what use cases that make sense is critical for for this the long term success of implementing that technology.
Fernanda:And we see that with virtual reality as well. It doesn't it doesn't make any sense for every type of of of use case, but there are certain use cases that it really, really does help. And another one is safety training. Right? So you're putting people in in an environment that you'd you want to train them, but you don't wanna train them and put them in an unsafe situation.
Fernanda:And so that's a really great use case for safety training that they can actually feel that if you go into a virtual reality, you're walking a beam, and then you step to to the left and you fall, you feel it in your in your gut that you're falling. So it's very visceral, the feeling, very real. And that's something that you can do in the real world. So having that represented virtually is important, but just one last example is again going back to operations and maintenance. If you're talking about complex facilities that may be, let's say, an offshore facility, right, that you people work in shifts.
Fernanda:If some piece of equipment malfunctions and you don't have the right expertise in that facility at that moment in time, what do you do? So perhaps virtual reality or mixed reality can augment the expertise of people that are there in the field when you're connecting and getting input from experts that might not be on-site at that given point in time. So leveraging these technologies for use cases that actually can bring measurable benefit is is and thinking about that early on is critical.
Jimmy:The start creating, architecting, using technology for the purpose, not using technology all technologies for everything, because it will be overwhelming, maybe costly, and it will it will be in spend doing more funny fun things more than the value. But still, I mean, people counted maybe that it's not a good experience. We didn't see the return of investment. Maybe Maybe we shouldn't do this more. And I agree with you.
Jimmy:We see a lot of usages of technology in the domain and especially digital twins for remote inspection. It's really very, very, very common use case that a lot of people, especially in dangers also off-site facilities, it's heavily used and very, very valuable. Very good. Fernando, if we go to or if we come to the moment, to your current new position, So can you tell us about the vision or what you're heading towards? I know you're still doing you have your research group, you're doing research, but also you are doing contribution in the university overall.
Jimmy:If you can tell us a little bit about this, I think this will be great to hear.
Fernanda:Sure. So, over time so I I I started going into administrative roles in in the university. So I I chaired so I oversaw a large interdisciplinary research program called Planet Texas 2050 and that represented 30 different colleges, a 130 researchers all all around campus. This is many different colleges from geosciences to planning to fine arts to engineering, all working together towards building a more resilient future. So that's when I started doing a lot of work in climate adaptation and and climate resilient infrastructure systems.
Fernanda:But that also gave me an opportunity to bring teams that are that are very interdisciplinary together to solve this grand challenge. And then this this opportunity came about of of leading the entire research mission of the Cockrell School of Engineering. So what what my current role is so I'm an associate dean for research. So in the US, universities are are typically structured in one that you have a president of a university and a provost. So the president would be sort of like the CEO and the provost would be the chief chief operating officer that actually keeps the university running.
Fernanda:And then under each college, you have a dean. So we have a dean of the school of engineering. That's the the highest authority in the in the school of engineering. And then the the dean has 2 associate deans that work, along along his side. So in this case, there's associate dean for research that oversees all of of research and and facilities and space and construction.
Fernanda:And then we have the associate dean for academic affairs that looks at faculty hiring, promotions, and and and so forth. So it's more of of a people, type type person. So in my role so I at the school of engineering is pretty large here at the University of Texas. We're we're always highly ranked. We have about 300 tenured or tenure track faculty, a total of of 6,000, students.
Fernanda:And we have we're divided into 7 academic departments. So civil engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and so forth. There's 7 academic units. And then we also have 17 what we call research centers, interdisciplinary research centers that also report, to to my office. And so these are are things like the construction industry institutes, right, that do research with industry through the university and so they report to to the ADR's office.
Fernanda:And then I oversee all of space. You can't do high high quality research without appropriate space and facilities. And so it makes sense that space, is is also overseen by by the ADR. And so so currently, we're we're I'm I'm building 4 capital projects. I'm overseeing 4 capital projects in the school of engineering, including the new home of of chemical and and chemical engineering and petroleum engineering.
Fernanda:2 large facilities that will support semiconductor research, 1 in our research campus and one off-site near near the Austin airport. And we're we're we're gutting, piece of large piece of a of a building to build new environmental engineering labs as well. So there's always it's always quite exciting to see.
Jimmy:Again, building and construction. So there's always building with Fernando.
Fernanda:I know. I know. That's why my my I'm not so super active on Twitter, but that's why my Twitter handle is Lechi Build. Right? Because that that's what I do.
Fernanda:But it's it's a super fun job and it's very humbling because you get to learn everything that's going on across the Cockrell School that as a as a faculty member in your lane working in your field, you don't really have an appreciation of all the broad research that's happening from materials discovery to neuroengineering. And all it's it's it's really amazing what what people people are doing and and the problems that people are solving and being being the person that helps them get there and enable that and finding solutions and negotiating opportunities with other colleges, with companies is is just great to see that that, I can help them take their work a step forward.
Jimmy:Great. Great. So great stuff. I mean, it's a very interesting journey for Nada. So you moved again to more applied, more pushing and building and contributing, and that's really very great to see.
Jimmy:Maybe before we finalize our talk today, what would be a final advice to our audience about how can they employ digital methods or digital tools to push their construction projects forward? So from research perspective onto the practical world, since you're doing lots of practical works, what would be your advice?
Fernanda:So I I think it's so important to have a foot in the real world. Right? So you can't do digital construction. You can't do virtual design and construction unless you actually understand the real world problems. Right?
Fernanda:So having strong ties to to the real world, to actual problems that people are are seeing in the field will give you such great insights to implement new technologies in in a a lab or in software development because you're actually doing use inspired research. Right? So understanding what the needs are is is so important, and that's that's one of the reasons why I love if if they have a problem in research, oftentimes that can be a great idea for a PhD research. I've had so many PhD students come up with with their their the focus of their research by by having conversations or by going to job sites and observing problems in the field and seeing oh okay. Maybe we could try to rethink how this process is done.
Fernanda:But understanding those problems is the first step. Right? So that that connection to the real world is is so important.
Jimmy:Very good. So it's, again, like the concept of Amazon, working backwards from the customer or from the real problem, and then try to find the solution or optimize existing workflows. Very nice. And if our listeners would like to reach you out, Fernanda, you mentioned your Twitter account's not active. Is there other kind of platform that they can reach you?
Fernanda:I do have a Twitter account. I'm not, like, the most active person on social media, but I would say LinkedIn is probably the the the best approach to to find me.
Jimmy:It's alright. Yeah. Thanks, Fernando, for your time. It was a pleasure to host you, and we wish you a great day forward.
Fernanda:Thank you so much, Jimmy. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to have this conversation with you.