Envisioning Digital Twin-Enabled Post-occupancy Evaluations for UVic Engineering Expansion Project

The University of Victoria is in the process of expanding its engineering and computer science department to meet the growing demand for post-graduate programs by building two new buildings. UVic’s Green Civil Engineering department is actively involved in the project and planning to use the buildings as experimental apparatuses for various building science and systems research such as energy, water, and indoor environmental quality. These buildings aspire to achieve net zero carbon certifications to promote innovations in sustainability. Post-occupancy evaluations (POE) provide scientific methods and tools to analyze how buildings function and to quantify their performance. First, this paper establishes the semantics of POE in the context of the new engineering expansion project along with project phases. Second, this paper discusses the digital twin execution plan that can guide the evolution of digital twins during each phase of the project life cycle for the purpose of POE. Third, this paper compares the proposed digital twin-based POE methodology with the conventional POE methodology. Conducting the POE on the UVic ECS expansion project will enable the researchers to determine the effectiveness of sustainable features by comparing the performance of existing and proposed facilities.