On October 1, 2020, the Institute for Technology and Management in Construction – Department of Facility Management held its first workshop since the start of the pandemic.
Under the title “Digital Twin of a Property,” several established facility management companies, property owners, PropTechs, and scientists met at KIT to discuss the future development of a building.

 
Due to COVID-19, hygiene rules were in place throughout the event, but these had little impact on the discussion about new digital and sustainable innovations in building operations, so that at the end of the workshop, a practical research concept for building operations could be developed in broad terms. 

 
The research concept is aimed at the three highly digitized model houses of Energy Lab 2.0 on the KIT campus. These fully automated and identical model houses provide an opportunity to research innovative and digital solutions for building operation without being bound by legal constraints.  
 

The research ideas developed will be examined in more detail in a second round of workshops with regard to their implementation possibilities – time, costs, level of knowledge, technical requirements, and companies involved – and then prioritized so that the results can be put into practice.