BAM has explained how a digital twin developed for the Dunfermline Learning Campus is helping optimise the performance of the world’s largest Passivhaus-certified educational building.

Speaking at Digital Construction Week, BAM digital project solutions lead George McFaulds outlined how the contractor used data gathered during design and construction to create a digital twin for the £122m Woodmill High School and St Columba’s RC High School in Fife.

Delivered for Fife Council through the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) hub programme, the 26,000 sq m campus accommodates 2,700 pupils and was handed over in July 2024 ahead of the new school term. The project has since achieved Passivhaus certification and is regarded as the largest certified educational Passivhaus building in the world.

A key factor behind the digital twin was the project’s information management approach, according to McFaulds.

“All projects delivered through the SFT framework use their standard information management plan (SIMP), which captures the client’s project, asset and employer information requirements,” he said. “The SIMP requirements cover everything from naming conventions and COBie data requirements to asset information needed for facilities management.

“The aim of this is to standardise how they procure projects, how they deliver, design and build them, and ultimately standardise how these facilities are maintained and operated post-handover.”

McFaulds adds that the stringent quality requirements of Passivhaus, and amount of data that the whole supply chain had to gather, helped focus minds on the information management aspect of the project.

Not originally a digital twin

Notably, a digital twin was not part of the original client requirement. BAM digital project solutions business partner Garry Fannon FCIOB said the idea emerged around six months before handover during discussions between BAM Construction, BAM FM – who were tendering for the maintenance contract – and Fife Council.

“The BAM FM business has 25 years’ experience of delivering hard and soft FM and we had been looking for an opportunity to pilot a proof of concept for a digital twin,” said Fannon. “What we needed was a building with exceptional performance, that was built using a controlled digital process, and a trusted client who were keen to innovate. We got that with Dunfermline Learning Campus and Fife Council.”

BAM used Autodesk BIM 360 throughout design and construction, with all project information structured and validated through this process, and then migrated the asset data into Autodesk Tandem at handover, to create the digital twin.

This is linked into BAM FM’s CAFM platform – MRI Evolution – enabling the maintenance teams to receive alerts, manage assets and respond to performance issues identified through the twin.

“There were some lessons learned – there were a few small gaps between the information we already had and what we needed to set up the digital twin,” said McFaulds. “If we had known it was to be a digital twin at the project outset, we would have known exactly how we needed to brief the supply chain.”

Fannon said that the pilot has already achieved its objective. “We’ve taken the models and the data from the construction project into the digital twin and linked it to the BMS and our CAFM system,” he explained. “It’s a repeatable approach that can now be rolled out across future school projects, with Fife Council already interested in applying the model elsewhere.”

McFaulds added that the Dunfermline Learning Campus has outperformed its energy targets in its first year of operation by 20%, delivering £433,000 of energy savings.