How to Keep a Digital Twin Up to Date: The Hard Problem No One Talks About

It’s the most common question we get from owners at VIATechnik. “Once I have the Digital Twin, how do I keep it up to date?” And for good reason.

Digital twins promise something every owner wants. A single, living picture of your building that everyone can trust.

But in practice, the hardest part isn’t building the twin. It’s keeping it accurate as the physical building changes.

An inaccurate digital twin defeats the whole purpose. One of the major things you’re solving for with digital twins is to help everyone answer questions like, “Where is my stuff?” and, as you advance in maturity, “What is happening in my building right now?” But without a plan for maintaining your digital twin (both the model and the underlying data), your team will quickly devolve into their former way of operating. And you end up back where you started.

This isn’t a technology issue. It’s a documentation issue, a process issue, ultimately an organizational issue. One a digital twin can’t solve on its own.

In this article we’ll explain why digital twins fall out of date, and give you some practical steps to maintain them and keep them accurate.

How Digital Twins Actually Work

It might be useful to explain how exactly digital twins work to understand why these updates don’t happen.

The digital twin itself lives in a platform like Voyager, and is typically read only with connections to several external platforms. Those external sources, such as a native 3D model that lives in Revit or similar (if you are leveraging a BIM enabled Twin), is where edits are actually made and changes are merged.

In that example, owners don’t want everyone editing the 3D model directly, as that would create more chaos. But that also means the digital twin can’t magically detect when IT moved a device, or when facilities replaced a pump, or when workforce changed the seating layout.

So someone has to update the Autodesk files, publish to the digital twin, and communicate those changes to all stakeholders. Which is why governance and communication end up being far bigger challenges than the technology itself.

Why Digital Twins Drift Out of Date

Given all that, it’s not too difficult to see why drift happens over time. But the three most common reasons we see:

• Behavior change is hard. Owners typically have at least three teams touching the building. A common example would be facilities/mechanical, IT, and space utilization or workplace. Each team is used to maintaining its own set of documents. It’s how they’ve always worked. So the moment a digital twin is created, it begins drifting.
• Org structures and skillsets aren’t designed for it. Owners typically have a couple people in Facilities who “know AutoCAD” when it comes to updating existing conditions. Which was fine the old world. But a digital twin often is built on a 3D model, with integrated data, shared access, and cross-team visibility. It’s a modern tool that, due to it’s high visibility across the org, also takes a new level of communication to maintain. But the org structure and skillsets hasn’t modernized with it.
• It wasn’t in the budget. Candidly, updating stuff isn’t always free. And many people don’t think beyond construction. They budget for capital improvements, but not documentation and data upkeep. But digital twins are living systems, and living systems require care and feeding to be useful.

The Three Pillars for Keeping a Digital Twin Accurate

So how then do you go about keeping them up to date? We recommend three pillars to keep in mind:

Pillar 1: Education

Most owners underestimate this. But everyone needs to know the new process.

Before a twin exists, everyone uses their own documents, saved in their own drives, updated on their own schedules. After the twin exists, everyone has to know it exists. They have to know where it lives. They have to understand who owns what. And they have to understand how the new workflow for making changes happens.

In practice, this typically means:

• Live demos with each department (IT, Facilities, Studio Operations, etc.)
• Onboarding sessions to show how their work connects to the twin
• Clear documentation on how to request changes

And (perhaps most critically) senior leadership has to reinforce that this is the new system of record.

Pillar 2: Communication

Even with education, things drift without ongoing communication.

In an ideal world, IT would notify the central team when they move devices, and facilities would do the same when they replace equipment. But in practice that doesn’t happen automatically.

The best practice here is to stand up a Digital Program Management Office (DPMO) – either internally, or through a partner like VIATechnik. That group meets with key stakeholders at some regular cadence to share updates and communicate what’s going on. Any changes are surfaced and reviewed in this meeting, and the DPMO then makes sure those changes are reflected in the digital twin.

Pillar 3. Budget:

This is the invisible constraint no one tells owners about. A digital twin dramatically reduces long-term design fees, renovation costs, and discovery work. But it only does that if it stays updated.

One of the clearest best practices is to treat the twin like a living asset with a predictable OPEX line item. It’s not that different from preventative healthcare (which we probably also underinvest in.) A modest investment in maintenance can prevent considerable expenses later.

What a Healthy Digital Twin Update Workflow Looks Like

Assuming you have these three pillars in place, what does a good workflow look like? Details might vary, but a common pattern would be something like this (using Voyager as an example):

1. A Change Occurs – a contractor reroutes ductwork during a minor HVAC repair, a chiller gets decommissioned and removed from the central plant, etc.
2. Using a simple form or shared workspace, the team responsible logs that change, which is then routed to the DPMO.
3. The DPMO reviews and prioritizes that change to the editable model, and then makes the change in the native 3D model to make sure everything is clean.

• The twin is refreshed and republished, ensuring the read-only version stays up to date.
• That update is communicated in the standing meeting, to ensure transparency and shared understanding.

The process is not complicated. But it does require discipline and accountability.

Common Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

There are a few repeating patterns we’ve seen in all of this that can prevent the change management process from sticking. A few suggestions:

• Have a centralized owner. If no one owns the twin, no one will believe it’s their responsibility to keep it up to date.
• Provide sufficient executive air cover. If leadership doesn’t reinforce the new process, old habits are almost certain to creep back in.
• Ban shadow updates. Teams will sometimes maintain their own set of documents anyway. Old habits die hard. Shadow updates are inevitable unless you intentionally eliminate them.
• Be quick to make changes. A common reason for the above: the DPMO needs to move quickly. If your team needs something today, and the workflow takes a week… they’re going to update their own file.

An Ounce of Prevention

Every time you renovate, you pay to rediscover your building. Keeping your twin updated prevents that. And when you do this, renovation design fees plummet. Facilities teams stop being blamed for missing information. IT no longer has to maintain outdated plans. Everyone gets visibility into what’s true today.

We’ve seen this repeatably – a $30-50k annual investment avoids six-figure re-survey costs every 3-5 years. And it helps owners treat their buildings like true digital-first assets.

Your digital twin will only be as valuable if it is accurate. If you’d like help standing up your Digital Program Management Office to keep your digital twins clean, we’d love to help.