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.