Digitising the Existing Public Sector Building Stock: A Template for Sustainable Management & Retrofitting through Digital Twins
Sustainability in new buildings is supported by a stringent set of regulations covering energy efficiency and, increasingly, embodied carbon. Digital twins will support ongoing management of these buildings to ensure not only efficiency and sustainability at delivery but over the lifetime of the buildings. For existing stock, however, significant challenges exist where historical design and construction information is sparse and unreliable. Rehabilitation and rejuvenation are increasingly preferred to demolition and reconstruction from an embodied carbon perspective; however, the information gap noted presents a significant challenge in key decision-making and investment.
In Ireland, the public sector owns up to 13,700 buildings1 and is required to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. There is limited clarity on how to efficiently and accurately construct digital twins to enable this, especially as they are also required to be to a standard consistent with the Government’s Building Information Modelling (BIM) Mandate.
Using one or more blocks from Dublin City Council’s Civic Offices campus, this project will develop a robust, reliable and consistent methodology and process for developing digital twins to the BIM Mandate to support energy efficiency and operational management of the existing public sector stock.
Lead RPO: TUDublin
Lead PI: Barry McAuley, Mark Mulville
Industry Partners: Dublin City Council
Collaborators
Principal Investigator
Barry McAuley
Head of Geospatial Surveying and Digital Construction, Technological University Dublin
Dr. Barry McAuley is a Chartered Construction Project Manager and Head of Geospatial Surveying and Digital Construction at Technological University (TU) Dublin. With extensive experience in the AEC sector, Barry completed a Ph.D. in 2016, focusing on Facilities Management integration using Building Information Modelling (BIM). He has been involved in National and International research initiatives, working with organizations such as Enterprise Ireland, the Department of Education and Skills, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and the European Commission. He also currently serves on a number of journal editorial boards, scientific committees, and industry panels, facilitating communication between the Irish AEC sector and academia.
Dr. Mark Mulville
Head of School, School of Surveying and Construction Innovation at Technological University Dublin
A Building Surveyor and Architectural Technologist, Mark’s research interests include the delivery of long term building performance in the context of a changing climate, energy efficiency, comfort, health and well-being in buildings and the optimisation of construction processes utilising digital technologies.
Mark is currently principal investigator on the DTIF funded A-EYE project developing a construction visualisation platform to support construction productivity. Mark is also principal investigator on the SEAI funded CC-DORM project examining overheating risk in dwellings in the context of large scale retrofit and climate change. Mark previously led the Building Performance research cluster in the University of Greenwich (UK).
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