Digital Twin? That’s a Dumb Flex.

So I have to jump straight back from this recording over into Catalyst to do some orientations and to welcome folks into the community . So that is super exciting for us today and we're back from a little bit of hiatus . We haven't recorded for a few weeks . I don't know if you'll even realize this is based on publication . Probably not .

It's funny when we have these time-shifted things

weeks . I don't know if you'll even realize this is , you know , based based on publication . Probably not . It's funny when you , when we have these time shifted things . But uh , kp has been traveling all over the place and , um , we've been busy getting this catalyst thing launched . So we're back at it now . So I am joined as usual today by kp ready .

He is the CEO and founder of KP Reddy Co , the founder of Shadow Ventures , as well as author speaker . What else ? What else should I put in your bio today ?

We started this I don't know this version of the podcast a year and a half ago , I suppose , of the podcast a year and a half ago , I suppose really to dig into the popularity of your LinkedIn posts , because you're there posting a couple times , maybe three times a day , something like that , and some are long posts , some are short posts , they're insightful ,

sometimes they're pot stirring , and this is our opportunity to dig into some of those most popular posts , and so that's why we call it Unpacked . We come here and we unpack one of those posts every week . I'm going to let this dog out real quick . Usually she's asleep beside me , okay , all right , let's get back to it .

Yep , asleep beside me , okay , all right , let's get back to it . So we're back here this week for , uh , to unpack another , another one of your LinkedIn posts and , um , one of the things that we're going to talk about , a topic that is , it's not a new topic . I don't know that we really talk about anything that's all that new .

It seems like this whole conversation of innovation in the AEC world .

When we look out at the broader world , I suppose we know it's a laggard industry , and so it seems like a lot of the innovation that we talk about is not necessarily new , or a lot of the topics we talk about are not necessarily new , but this is a popular topic and it has been for a long time .

So hang on to your hats , because I'm going to read KP's post and then I'm going to give you a little bit of context here . So the post goes like this In AEC , please never say digital twin ever again . It doesn't exist and it will never exist . And you're already laughing . So , all right , we're going to get into that here in just a minute .

But first let me set the stage . Let me give everybody a little bit of context . I know many people have heard the term , many people are familiar , many people have quote unquote worked on digital twins . Before we unpack that post , let me give you a little bit of a definition .

A digital twin is a digital model of an intended or actual real-world physical product , system or process . A physical twin that serves as a digital

counterpart of it for purposes such as simulation , integration , testing , monitoring and maintenance . A digital twin is a set of adaptive models that emulate the behavior of a physical system in a virtual system , getting real-time data to update itself along its lifecycle , managing to prescribe real world actions for optimization and or mitigate unexpected events .

Observing and evaluating the operating profile system . All right , that's a lot of words . I think that was relatively understandable for for most people . So , given that definition and your post , don't ever say it again . What ? What do you see as the reality of the digital twin ?

We decided we need to say that we're in the business of digital twins . Um , not sure why , right , not sure why people brought it up . Um , maybe just to be different , differentiated , but these are one of these things . I think the reason I posted about it and get focused on these things is the more you say dumb things , the dumber the industry looks .

So , okay , so when people are on linkedin or whatnot , talking about things as they have , as they think they may have , authority , but they're saying dumb stuff , it makes us all look dumb .

So I feel like it was a public service announcement like stop saying it , because you make us all look dumb okay and and the reason being is , if we think about a digital twin , let's think about , like , why people bring it up .

It's because they get a , they they see bim , they have a 3d model and they somehow think , because they have a 3d model that is , a 3d representation of the building , quote unquote that it's a digital twin . Right , right , absolutely not . It's just absolutely not Right . I mean a digital twin .

If you look at history , right , and I think in that article I sent you um cause I was like you know , let's , let's , let's just make sure we're not . You know , kp is not just saying this to be a jerk , right , this is actually what the facts are . This is the definition of a digital twin . I didn't read it , you read it .

You read it off the internet , right ?

So unless we're going to sensor buildings and have a sensor on everything , including the revolving door , including the flooring , how do you create a digital representation of reality to predict analytics ? And the best use case of this has been from GE for their engines . Right ,

they were running LIDAR scans , they had sensors all in the motors , right , and if one of the blades had a minor flaw in it , it would get represented . And then they could say with this flaw , if I run it another thousand hours , what's it going to do ? Is it going to break ? What's the issues going to be ?

And so it requires a level of sensing in the physical system to actually feed data to the digital system .

Like , right , yeah , interesting , one of our portcos fluixix . They basically say , hey , we can put facilities on autopilot using AI and their AI system sits there and monitors the BMS system and monitors everything . And they were working with a client and they didn't understand why they're having all these energy spikes .

And it turns out some door was getting opened , some big warehouse door was getting open and left open for too long and that was changing the dynamic . Well , how do you know that ? Like , a digital twin should know this , right , but there's no sensor on the big door .

There's no sensor that says it's open or closed or how long it's open or what percentage it's open and what are the outside weather conditions in terms of temperatures . On that there's so much more complexity to it . When we think about a building system and the number of sensors and touch points that you have to have , it's just not possible .

So we should stop saying it . You don't sound cool because you say you know digital twin . You sound dumb .

If I open these three windows upstairs to release some heat , can I mess with my thermostat , right , right , it's a ? I don't know , it's a great simulation .

I'm one of these guys that walks around , I check , I check my registers , like everybody usually has all their registers open or like that one room , that extra room you're not using , you close it all the way . I'm the weirdo that walks around and mine are like , oh , that one needs to be about three-eighths open .

Um , like I don't know why we don't have VAVs in homes anyway . But if you wanted to run that simulation , well , that that extra bedroom where the window doesn't open all the way cause it's like old , the digital twin needs to know this .

Could you put a thermostat in every , could you put a thermometer in every room of your house and maybe that's how you're getting there . So there there's different , but but I think that the my general point is that no one's doing digital twins .

So I think what happens is you know you have conferences , you have people that talk about this stuff , you have people that you know . I think I posted something a couple of years ago and I was like never did an owner ask for a digital twin . They just want a building on time , on budget , that operates , performs within their criteria .

They don't ever ask for a digital twin . That's like . It's not . No one cares . It's a big , so what sandwich ?

And many times it's the mechanical systems . Right , I mean , you've been using different versions of mechanical systems a lot as examples here , but many times it's , and I think maybe it even goes back to lead , right , okay , we're going to get this lead , it's going to be . We're going to have it third-partied and then we're going to need to monitor .

You know how this system works . This system works , and there are you used the word earlier there are granular ways or different tools and systems to monitor this , that and the other , which some owners do actually really want right , looking at how their building performs .

But then you know , back to the question of digital twin is that really what we're after or is it just simply what's the efficiency ? Or how's unit number three on level number two running on June 20th 2025 . Is it ? Is it in line ? Is it is it , does it require maintenance , et cetera ?

I was talking to a large flooring manufacturer and I was like , hey , after you sell your flooring once , shouldn't you just automatically get your salespeople , should just get a lead that says , hey , it's about time for this carpet to be replaced . Like , you know what the lifespan is of a , you know you put carpet in a hospital .

You know probably in three years it needs to be replaced , right , it's not , it's not . There's no special math here . It's they . They know these things . Like that'd be great if we knew where our carpet was . We have no idea where our carpet is .

And I think you can say it in an audience that doesn't know any better , because spend time with people in aerospace and aviation and industrial . They'll quickly explain to you why you have no idea what you're talking about .

I remember this is years ago . This was before they had revit mep . Funny enough , they didn't have revit mep and I was working with a model and they did mechanical modeling how they do mechanical model . This is fantastic . What did they do right ? These ? This is fantastic . What did they do right ?

These guys were using the handrail family and editing it to become pipe . I was like this is fantastic . It's kind of like fantastic , right ? So did that model ? Did it look like the mechanical system ? Yes , but if I pulled data from it , it was a handrail , it wasn't .

The reason to have to show the mechanical was to look for conflicts , to look for crashes . It wasn't about the performance of the of the systems . It was hey , is this pipe going to run into that ? Are we going to to run this sprinkler pipe through the middle of this return

?

The idea is that architects are in AI , speak , architects are supposed to do orchestration and everyone is an agent . That's what they're supposed to be doing , and this idea that it's not happening , but we'll deal with it later . Deal with it later . Right , it's just wild and you start talking to owners and they're like , yeah , that is messed up .

And I'm like , yeah , it is Like yeah , but they kind of don't know , they kind of don't care . But when shown to them they start to understand like , oh okay , this is really strange .

So what's causing that in the field ? Because none of this happens in a bubble , none of it happens in a vacuum . There's , there's reality that that sometimes not all the time , I mean , but but sometimes forces some of these things . And you know , sometimes it's just , you know , from from the design side .

One of the things that used to kill me all the time is you walk into this room and you're supposed to have this whole row of of can lights , right , that's aligned over the kitchen island or whatever , or you know some of these and you know they're , they're dimensioned that way on on the drawings , right , and the electrician installs them , which , again , hey ,

we created this 3d model and then we printed it out on 24 by 36 inch sheets of paper . So there's that but that , but . But the electrician , did they actually read the plan ? Or were the the um ceiling ? Yeah , you know , were the the ceiling members . Yeah , placed properly there's . There's all all kinds of things , right but ?

We're going to tie construction to a construction schedule and we went through .

Like well , the mvp guys got here first and they were ready to go . And I was like like the mechanical guys showed up and they were ready to go and they'd already fabricated their stuff . So they , you know , first in , first out .

I'm not going to spend hours of my life , whether you pay me or not , doing something that will never be used .

You know , we've , we've established the fact that it's it's rarely , if ever exists , um , you know , even the idea , as , as you were talking about it earlier , in the sensors , I'm thinking just in this room , again , old house , um , you know , why would I even bother ? Why would I even bother trying to figure out if this window opens or closed ?

The walls are so leaky , right , I mean , this house is you know that old right and so .

What do we want to do with that digital twin ? Right , that that's another piece of it . Does the digital twin , I guess , if I guess the , the , uh , the theoretical digital twin has it all right ?

Like the airline industry , you know , in cars we look at mileage , right . That's .

That's what drives maintenance in most cases , which I think I kind of I don't understand the whole , like mileage or months for an oil change yeah , somehow oil goes , oh , it gets bad I think it's like a made-up thing , but um , but we do understand mileage as it relates to motor wear and tear and all that , whereas now in the airline industry it's hours , right

, it's hours of service . Also boots , yeah , and they figure it out predictably , like in this many hours of service . Because , honestly , a car , if you left it idling for six days , right , it doesn't matter that you didn't drive it right . It's the motor's been running . So I think that's kind of some of the thinking around it .

But you know , if the goal is to , like , mitigate unplanned events and really that should be the goal , right I mean that should be the ultimate goal . I think the other ultimate goal is , if you do have some unplanned maintenance or renovation or something else , to be able to quickly estimate what needs to happen .

Oh , we need to replace , you know , you know , carpets out , hardwoods in , right ? How many square feet is the room you're in ? No yeah , yeah .

You pull up the digital twin at your house and right , I mean so , yeah , sure , fine , right , yeah . But I think that's kind of the point around . This is it should really be on the world of the maintenance side the reduction of unplanned events , making almost everything a planned event . Now I've also argued there's a digital twin aspect to construction .

But that means you need to . You need

to really like understand the site logistics . You've got to understand materials management , you have to understand , like , where the work , and I don't think you have to simulate little people walking around the job site with hard hats per se . I think that would be cool .

But I remember I did a whole study for a college campus actually over at Emory , where they were building a new hospital wing and they were just very sensitive about pedestrian traffic and we had to demonstrate that to them , based on where construction was , which sidewalks were going to be closed off and where the detours were going to be .

And they had to get comfortable . And we were able to show them like , oh , on day 50 of construction , this is what it'll look like . These sidewalks will be shut down , these will be open , the kids are going to have to walk an extra hundred yards to get to class .

You know , whatever it is right , but we were actually able to show them on a day-by-day basis , based on the construction schedule , which was obviously wrong the minute it we hit print , so to speak which , by the way , I had another post right after this digital twin post was like are we still doing cpm and gant ? That we're still doing ?

Are we still doing CPM in Gantt ? Is that what we're still doing ?

Mostly , right when you think about construction and you think about CPM . We don't extend CPM out to the supply chain , right ? We're not integrating into Honeywell's supply chain to know when things are coming , so it's like I don't know . Or traffic we're not running traffic simulation to know like concrete trucks could actually be there two hours late right , right .

Right , what's what's actually useful about this model , whatever we call this thing ? Um , you know , I think the construction example is super interesting , uh , very , very complicated . Super interesting , uh , very , very complicated .

But instead of doing the walking tour at aia , I don't think they'll ever do aia at norfolk . But instead of doing the dumb walking tours , go see a shipyard . You'll learn a lot more yeah , yeah it's , it's awesome .

to that one to that one to make the hull , and of course it gets dark in there hull , and of course it gets dark in there , and as you start to splice these together , you need to start removing bracing . if you remove the wrong bracing , you've got a disaster .

And so the the people I don't even know what you call that trade , that's that's down there in the hole that's cutting the bracing away had their tablet or whatever .

They had their goggles , of course , their welding mask , but they had their VA , I guess , goggles and they were able to highlight on their tablet , in the plan or the model , I guess , the brace that needed to be cut next . And then , through their goggles , they could see the brace and they could cut it .

And then , you know , go through this process and I thought that is brilliant . Is that a digital twin ?

No , but it's a brilliant use of of some of the 3d technology that we have and , um , you know , I think the just usefulness you know , as you're saying this , right , it feels like all we do is borrow terms from other industries of course we're behind for self-validation like what ?

Yeah , he's like just one , just like just a kind , amazing person human right , yeah , absolutely it's right . Yeah , but when he know and he's from india . So when he launched track 3d funny story and he loves telling the story , but I'll tell it so he basically came to my website , filled out a form .

I set up a call with them , liked what they were doing and gave them a term sheet like three weeks later and funded them like six weeks later , and he was like I thought you had to like know people in vc . I'm like no , you just reach out and I answer you know , it's like we operate a little bit differently , right , and so he's done , fantastic .

But he was from india and so he moved here and I told him , like stop being on zoom calls , stop shooting out emails , I'll help you , help you get some of your first clients . And we did . I'm like go sit on a job site . Just spend all your time on job sites , and he would . He'd go two , three weeks

to see how his product was being implemented . He showed up to the job site . He talked to everyone because that's his personality . He's one of those guys . He's going to talk to everyone on the job side because it would be rude to do differently , it'd be rude to ignore anyone . The guy pushing the broom he's going to go talk to .

Like I said he's a better human than I , but he did it . It's such a big difference in him understanding the business . I sometimes feel like the people that are on LinkedIn all day , present company included , the people that don't talk about the industry a lot but don't , or never on .

You know , I don't have my OSHA training anymore , right , like it's like there's those of us that just talk a lot , which is me , but I've been there before . I just choose not to anymore . But I think there's a lot of people that use technology as avoidance to going out to the job site . I'm gonna get someone to go fly a drone for me .

I'm gonna sit behind my computer . Oh sure , you know it's . It's like . I think partly it's like . Maybe you know , um , maybe we'll just talk when you talk to the early and mid-career folks , right ? Maybe the first three months of the job you don't get a laptop . You just go to the job site , you just go to the job site .

Instead , we're worried about people's you know , do you know how to use Revit in the latest version ? Right , like who cares about that ? I mean who cares . I mean learning Revit is not some superpower . Knowing what to do with Revit is like probably more of a superpower .

Write something about this , it's going to suck . But if you treat it maybe as a , for instance , if you treat it as , as your intern , you know how would you explain to the intern how to use this ?

There's , there's , um , you know you can use a pneumatic nailer fantastic tool and it could really suck right If you don't use it right for a lot of reasons really suck right If you don't use it right . For a lot of reasons that's good , but yeah , I think there's a lot out there .

I mean , obviously , you know what we're talking about here is what people say , what people call things misnomers , perhaps so there's definitely that side of it . And then there's the side , I think , of people not really knowing how to use the tools and not use them effectively .

Because we've talked about this before right , if you use AI just for efficiency , you're sunk . Yeah .

I don't think the superintendents are , so the body of knowledge that AI is being fed is from office people and somewhat theorists right .

In other words , if a superintendent , the guy that's been in or gal that's been in the field all their life , if they were coordinating duct work , they're going to have a different point of view than maybe the MEP engineer or the BIM manager at the MEP contractor . And so you think about that .

The body of knowledge that ai is getting is most likely from the people with the least real world experience yeah , I think I'm sure that applies to every industry , not just ours yeah , yeah , yeah , absolutely .

But when so when I went to architecture school kind of growing up around construction uncles in construction and friends and friends of friends in construction , things like that almost every job I had when I was a kid , even all the way through architecture school , was somehow a construction-related job Framing , electrician , so on and so forth .

And then I went to architecture school and even after I graduated I see so few people coming through school or even out of school even my bosses that had any construction experience at all , and so you know , maybe they were going out in the field , maybe they learned some things , but it was theoretical , right , they weren't swinging a hammer , they weren't turning

a wrench , they weren't whatever . And I think we're still at that point now . Right , If you know there's pressure , you know get this done , get that done faster , this whatever .

But I think if , if , on the design side , as a , for instance and I'll , I'll pick on that side because that's where I come from but , um , right , if , if we don't have firsthand knowledge of how to do this , then it doesn't matter what our tools are yeah , you know what's really funny ?

People asked him about and he's a youngish guy , he's like 27 or something . He's like yeah , we're a hybrid . You know , people asked him about like and he's a youngish guy , he's like 27 or something . And they asked him like well , what do you think about like work styles , you know , being a young founder ? And blah , blah , blah .

He was like yeah , we are a hybrid workforce . Or , you know , we tell my team it's hybrid . You either work on the client side client site or you're in the office . It's hybrid . I was like exactly right . So think about this . We have all this mobility right . These BIM managers , these architects everybody's got a laptop .

Why wouldn't you park them on the job site Instead of letting them work from home ? You give them all this laptop . You're giving all this connectivity right , zoom and everything else , instead of saying you're allowed to work from home and I'm sure I'll get some hate mail . Don't let them work from home . You're either in the office or you're on the project site .

There's the only two places you get to work , because in both places you will actually learn something , hopefully . Right Right , you're not going to learn anything working from home . We didn't give you all this mobility for you to hang out in a coffee shop . Is that what we just spent all this money on ? No , it's a hybrid workforce .

You're either in the office or you're on the job site .

You know , get off a shitty call and just someone to like talk to my three-year-olds , tired of like hearing me talk about you know , mark , your three-year-old therapist yeah like , hey , dude , like we need more dpi and our , you know like he's just tired of hearing about like my investment was but um , but it is kind of interesting when you're in these like

in-office dynamics , like you kind of miss , you miss it , like when you're having a good day , a bad day , whatever , and so I think I think we might all be getting to that point where we actually miss being in an office .

time , because it's the paradigm has shifted or has broken and and hopefully you know , it's a an exploration now of what makes sense , and I think you know your argument , your friend's argument for job site or office , especially especially for maybe a younger person that's , and you've got supervision right and you've got mentoring and things that are necessary , even

through licensure processes . But , um , you know what ? What makes sense ? You know how do we get better at what we do ? Is it working in a coffee shop ? I , you know , I don't know . I like coffee , but I really like coffee .

All your things were back in the office yeah , yeah , took your handwritten notes back yeah , um like , why aren't we using mobility to be closer to the problems , closer to the projects , versus further away from it ?

A physical twin that serves as a digital counterpart of it for purposes such as assimilation and integration , testing , monitoring and maintenance . The Digital Twin is a set of adaptive models that emulate the behavior of a physical system in a virtual system , getting real-time data to update itself all along its life cycle .

The Digital Twin replicates the physical system to predict failures and opportunities for changing , to prescribe real-time actions , for optimizing and or mitigating unexpected events , observing and evaluating the operating profile system . So that last part of that definition right there is .

We focused a lot on that in our conversation today and we're giving you that definition because the post KP's post that we unpacked today reads simply in AEC , please never say digital twin , ever again . It doesn't exist and will never exist . If you are not following KP Ready on LinkedIn , you should be . It's pretty simple .

Just type in the search bar K , the letter K , the letter P , ready , r-e-d-d-y , and a guy that looks a lot like this guy that's sitting across from me right now will pop up and you should follow him . He posts two , maybe three times a day on insights from innovation for the built environment .

We do this every week , and one of the things that we're celebrating today , as we record this , is the fact that we have launched Catalyst , our community of innovators for the built environment . It's a place where we're tearing down silos .

It's a place where we can do and will have deep conversations about the things that matter most for innovation in the built environment . We're pulling people out of the wait list right now and letting them in today as we speak . In fact , I'm going to wrap this up here really quickly because I've got to go do an onboarding session .

It's been great letting a lot of people well today , letting a lot of people in , and it is going to be quite the vibrant community . My name is Jeff Eccles . I'm the Executive Director of Catalyst here at KP ReadyCo . I'm joined as always , at least in this version of the podcast I'm joined by our CEO and founder , kp Ready .

We'll be back again next week where we will unpack another one of KP's posts , probably this one on workplace culture ,

or maybe not . Thanks , kp , all right , I'll see you All right . Thank you everybody . Thanks , kp , all right , I'll see you All right . Thank you everybody . Thanks for listening , thanks for watching , depending on the version , and we'll see you next week . Thank you .