For years, the phrase “digital twin” has floated around conference stages, industry webinars, and LinkedIn posts as if it were the silver bullet for construction inefficiency. Lately, it’s become a favorite buzzword in the modular space. Advocates call it the “next big thing,” promising factories and developers real-time insights, smoother workflows, and error-free projects. But here’s the truth: digital twin implementation in modular is far more complex than simply upgrading from BIM, and despite the hype, it’s still crawling toward widespread reality.
all photos – DIRTT
The Difference Between BIM and a True Digital Twin
Most of what’s labeled “digital twin” today is still BIM with lipstick. A BIM model gives you geometry and data about a building at design time. A digital twin, if done correctly, lives on through the entire lifecycle. That means the module itself has a unique, serialized digital identity—a twin—that carries production history, QA results, logistics details, and later, operational sensor data.
In modular, that’s a tall order. You’re not building one object but thousands of standardized yet customizable components that move through factories, trucks, cranes, and into final assemblies. To qualify as a twin, every single step has to feed data back into the model.
Where It’s Already Happening
Contrary to the skeptics, there are real examples—though not yet at mass scale.
- DIRTT (North America): For years, this interiors company has been feeding design data straight into fabrication lines. Clients can walk through a digital twin of their future space, and every panel and connection detail flows to the factory. That’s more than BIM—it’s a closed loop.
- PT Blink (Australia): Their “design–manufacture–integrate” workflow drives multi-storey projects directly from a digital core. On a recent Brisbane project, the structure of a seven-story building was erected in eleven days. That’s twin-like execution: logistics, assembly, and scheduling driven from the model.
- Modulous (UK/US): Their TESSA software embeds a digital twin of their kit-of-parts system. It allows developers to configure housing layouts, test cost and schedule impacts, and then manufacture the standardized units. Each module carries its twin through the process.
- Windover Construction (US): Using Autodesk Tandem, they hand over a functioning digital twin to building owners, linking IoT data to prefabricated assemblies. For projects using panelized or volumetric construction, that twin carries into operations.
These aren’t lab demos—they’re revenue projects. But they also prove just how varied the “twin” definition becomes depending on where you sit: design, factory, logistics, or operations.
Why Modular Adds Another Layer of Difficulty
Traditional construction can think of a building as one giant object. Modular complicates this because it produces nested twins:
- Factory twin: Machines, takt times, and throughput metrics.
- Product twin: Every wall, module, or cassette with its own QA and production history.
- Building twin: The assembled project with all modules mapped and operational data streams attached.
Each level has to connect to the others. If a plumbing chase in a module fails an inspection on the floor, that data should ripple through to the building twin for future maintenance tracking. Very few systems today do that seamlessly.
Even in countries pushing the envelope—Singapore with its PPVC regulations and national digital twin program, or the UK with platform DfMA strategies—you see more progress at the asset and city level than in the modular factory itself. The dream of a “factory-to-building-to-operations” twin is real, but it’s fragmented across multiple software vendors and workflows.
The Danger of Overpromising
Factories love to pitch digital twin capability to investors and developers. But unless they can show:
- A unique digital ID for every module,
- Data flowing from design through QA and logistics, and
- An operations-ready model at handover—
then what they’re really selling is advanced BIM. The word “twin” gets slapped on proposals to sound future-proof, but behind the scenes, many are still working off PDFs and spreadsheets.
Where We’re Heading
Industry analysts agree: the trajectory is toward integrated twins. Research in 2024–2025 frames modular digital twins as “emerging practice,” not established norm. Startups are racing to close the gap—linking IoT sensors in factories, embedding RFID in studs, or feeding QA scans into module databases.
The reality is that digital twin success in modular will require standardization across the entire supply chain. Factories, transporters, crane crews, inspectors, and owners will all have to trust the same platform. That’s a heavier lift than just buying new software—it’s a cultural shift.
My Thoughts on the Matter
Digital twin in modular construction is no longer just a concept, but it’s not yet the plug-and-play solution many headlines suggest. The pioneers—DIRTT, PT Blink, Modulous, Windover—are showing the possibilities, but also the complexity. Until factories can connect the dots from the production floor to the long-term asset, modular’s “next big thing” remains a work in progress rather than a fully proven reality.
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With over 9,000 published articles on modular and offsite construction, Gary Fleisher remains one of the most trusted voices in the industry.
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