Operationalizing a Smart Museum: An Owner's Journey to a Digital Twin

ARUNDHATI GHOSH: Hello, and welcome. My name is Arundhati Ghosh, and I'm a customer adoption specialist for Autodesk Tandem. It is my great pleasure to introduce the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History. In today's class, Operationalizing a SMART Museum, an Owner's Journey to Digital Twin," we will hear from their digital transformation story of collectively creating a SMART museum that stands as a beacon for community education, sustainability, and climate justice.

This is a safe harbor statement, which basically says that we might be discussing some product features that are on the roadmap.

We will first hear from Jeff Anderson, chief operating officer of the Wright Museum, on the legacy, the opportunities, and the vision for the SMART museum.

Next, we will experience a day in the life of the director of facilities, Warren Emerson. Leslie Tom, chief sustainability officer, will give us a peek into the plans she steered to embrace data and put the ideas into action, followed by Dustin Tiemeyer, director of design technology at Peter Basso Associates, who will dive into the technical ins and outs of connecting the digital twin ecosystem. We will close with the desires for the future.

What we hope you take away from this class today is learnings around how to uncover owner's agendas, funding, and strategies to shift projects into truly digital-twin mature models. We will discuss the digital tools, our successes, the pain points, and we'll also talk about specifically Autodesk Tandem, Revit, Eptura, BIM 360 Collaborate Pro, disruptive technology sensors, building management systems, and how that all came together to operationalize and communicate and build this digital twin of the SMART museum.

We also hope that you can learn how to operationalize and communicate benefits and outcomes from diverse stakeholder perspectives.

In the presentation today, Leslie will be speaking on behalf of Jeff and Warren. So with that, I will hand this off to Leslie.

LESLIE TOM: Thanks, Arundhati. This is a photo of our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Anderson at our Green Museum Town Hall in 2019, when Jeff started at the museum. I'm sure he would say what an incredible journey it's been. He's had over 30 years of experience at nonprofits, museums, and is a building representative.

Our museum is located in Detroit, Michigan. We're a Black city, 85% African-American. And so this is a very profound museum, legacy museum, that we are in, with a history of innovation, industrial automaking, building off of the shoulders of giants. So this is our context that we're working with in creating a SMART museum.

We are part of a cultural district in Detroit, Michigan, with 13 other neighbors. I've heard that only outside of DC are there libraries, museums, and educational institutions. So we're part of a fabric in Detroit.

This is a photo of Charles H. Wright, the founder of the museum. In 1965, he started this museum. He's an obstetrician-gynecologist that founded Detroit's International Afro-American Museum. Dr. Wright has delivered over 7,000 babies in Detroit. And from that experience, he's had the legacy and experience of being able to work with children and community members to remember history.

He'd bring healthy babies into the world and be able to use history to be able to instill respect, wonder, and a sense of self, which is why the staff at the museum and why the building at the museum is so important. There's a lot of legacy and mission work here that's being done in Detroit and at this museum. Next slide.

So this is a picture of the Wright Museum in 1997. It was built by the city of Detroit by two African-American architects, Detroit architects Howard Sims and Harold Varner. They designed this as the jewel of an African village, where our theater, our museum store, exhibitions, all spin off and connect around a 70-foot-high dome.

Then we have over 35,000 objects in our collection, with a footprint of 122,000 square feet. Resourcing a building like this is significant. And because institutions like ours are traditionally underfunded, this means when Jeff joined in 2019, there was a history of deferred maintenance. So this is a building, and this is a project and a story of an existing building that we are working to bring into the 21st century.

The next slide shows a little bit about how we all care about that we are part of the climate crisis. Our executive leadership team, our staff, our visitors all are beginning to realize how an African-American Museum can start to play a role in the climate crisis, how we can start to leverage our data, how a museum convenes people, conversations, all the behaviors, being able to be a third space and pushing the needle forward through education and learning. Next slide.

So what's so exciting and interesting about museums is that they are trusted. There's the American Alliance of Museums, which is a membership organization for most museums across the United States, has done a study and has found that history museums especially are one of the most trusted spaces. And so as we start to combine climate, sustainable practices, that if we start to share some of this stuff, that they are trusted and have high goodwill for the public.

What else is really interesting is that-- fun facts-- there are more museums in the world-- or in the United States than there are Starbucks and McDonald's combined. You can totally search this fact. There's about 14,000 Starbucks and 14,000 McDonald's, and over 35,000 museums in the United States. So we are one of many museums who are pushing the envelope on how to make the next generation of green museums, make the next generation of data-driven museums. Next slide.

So in 2020, our executive board of trustees got together and declared five different institutional goals. And these goals have really helped to hone the vision, the direction of all the different departments within the museum. Some of these goals are centering Detroit being a leader in the museum field, being able to be a next-generation museum professional leader, being able to preserve our financial vitality, as well as embrace sustainable solutions. And so with these five goals, we are able to really convene and break down the silos within our institutions, departments.

Also, since 2015, we've been embracing sustainable practices throughout the institution. This is when we hired the chief sustainability officer position through Wayne State University's Detroit Revitalization Fellowship program. And the initial call to action was to reduce our utilities.

And so we started to do that. We installed green stormwater infrastructure. We started to add submetering. We started to really understand all of our utilities within the institution.

But then we started to realize what can a museum institution like ours do. And that was also pair up with our green-- not seen behind the walls, behind the ceilings, behind the chases-- green experiences. And so we started to push what a museum could do with climate. And we also realized that we wanted to build a legacy here at the Wright Museum. And so building good infrastructure, data systems, software systems that will help us be able to leverage the next generation. Next slide.

And so this is a quote from Michon Lartigue, our senior vice president of institutional advancement at the museum. She's helping to tell stories around what we are doing here with our SMART museum journey. And she is quoted to have said that "we have the opportunity to imagine with industry partners"-- like with Autodesk or Eptura or other software partners-- to "be innovative and leverage our own data and technology." And so this we leave this slide knowing that we are really building a foundation here for the next generation.

So I'm going to pass this over to Warren Emerson, who is our director of facilities. And this slide of Warren, when we asked him what our pain points were, he said it was getting too many phone calls at all points in the day-- night and day of people wanting their light bulb fixed, their temperature is too hot or cool in their space, a toilet is flooding.

And so he is saying that what would help him most is to just get all of that data that's getting thrown at him every day and being able to organize it. And so we're going to walk through a day in the life of our director of facilities at the museum and the solutions that would help him. So next slide.

So these are some of the pictures that Warren faces every day. Some are extreme, like the photo on the right, which is a 500-year flood that happened in 2021 in Detroit. This was sort of like the worst-case scenario of what happened. And luckily, our CEO, Neil Barclay, moved our entire collection offsite the day before this flood happened.

This shows six feet of water in our orientation theater. All of the buildings in Detroit were flooded with huge amounts of water. Water and buildings don't mix, and so seven insurance claims later, we are working to try to make our museum a little bit more resilient to extreme flooding and extreme weather events, extreme rain events.

Photos on the right are also we are in a very old building. A lot of our equipment is end of life. And so these are sort of our pumps in our penthouse for our different mechanical systems that are needing to constantly be fixed. Dustin from Peter Basso Associates is going to talk a little bit more about our plans and how we're moving forward.

And for Warren, a Zen moment would be having all of the data organized, all of the specifications and maintenance contracts and who our vendors are to fix things, organized so that he can have fun and relax more and not have to have the phone calls that ring off the hook.

And so this brings us to why this is so important and changing all of our ideas to actions. This is a photo of me at Burning Man a couple of weeks ago, probably months when you see this. And you've heard the story of everyone getting stuck in the mud. I was definitely there, and it just seems like a metaphor for how we all have so much data, so many projects, so little capacity, and how we can move from actually getting really good data streams to really help us analyze, strategize, and moving us all forward.

So this is a slide that represents why I have the dream job of working at a museum. This is sort of a day in the life of a museum professional. And at a museum, there are receptions, exhibit openings, exhibit closings, life events like weddings, celebrations of life.

There's catering happening. There's conversations. There's people just coordinating and moving through our space with lots and lots of parties.

And I never knew that joining a museum would also be all of these events and experiences. But I think what it feels like to me is that a museum is a little small city. And so there are so many inputs, there's so many outputs, and I love the scale of a museum because one can wrap their heads around all the data flows. So next slide.

I suppose that this is our digital journey. The other aspect of a museum, especially the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, is that we all care so deeply for the collection and for this museum. All the staff care, and so putting a lot of effort into helping to maintain our museum, our collection, means a lot. And so this is why we are moving forward with this sort of work and this journey.

So in 2015, I came to the museum, and there were only water-damaged bid package plans. And I tried to take those plans and digitize them into Revit models. But as you can see from our dome, the geometry of our museum and all the circles was really, really hard to model.

In fact, it was impossible. I got to the roof and realized each roof section was 7 degrees, and I just couldn't figure out how to model that roof. And that's where we brought in Dustin from Peter Basso Associates, who I met through the AIA Detroit BIM user group chapter.

He introduced us to a laser scanner and modeler, Charles McLean, who then helped us laser scan the entire museum and then create a building information model. And fun tip, this is Dustin and I rolling around in the museum with our BIM model doing an as-built study of how we can make sure that the building was actually accurate. Next slide.

So we did a couple of presentations to our executive leadership team so that they could buy into this journey that we were about to embark on in 2020. And part of that was being able to understand what our business cases were for each of the different aspects. So going into a little bit deeper dive of what our goals were and outcomes is that we wanted visibility into our life cycle. So we wanted to understand how much different components cost per year, how much our maintenance fees were, creating clear reports. We are starting to do that work with Eptura. Next slide.

And as well as being able to have a 3D model, we want to be able to improve collaborations with that model. And it's really interesting. We're scoping out pilot projects right now, and it's really starting to work.

So whether we're working with outside architects, engineers, or contractors-- for example, with our GM Theater remodel project-- or whether we're working internally with our design and fabrication team, where they're using the 3D model to help do designs for our different exhibits. We just recently opened a Detroit tree exhibit. You could look on our website at www.thewright.org to find more about some of our exhibits. But we're starting to use this model to help us with schematics, design development, construction documentation, and getting feedback from community members or from various departments within the museum. Next slide.

We also are realizing that all of these software tools are going to help increase operational efficiency. So whether that's helping to with maintenance, being able to make decisions for staging different projects. And Arundhati is going to show a little bit more, too, in a live demo of how these components are really helping to answer questions. That would take lots of time for us to try to figure out how to answer. And now we have a tool with just a click of a button. Next slide.

So my role at the museum is to help to integrate different goals and objectives and visions in each of the different departments. I'm leading with sustainable solutions as the integration. But as you can see from this slide, the various different green buckets are our departments. The dark green departments are those that we're starting first to figure out how to create these pilots. The lighter greens are where we have ideas of where to move next as we can bring all the different departments up with using our data-- leveraging our data that we have from the built environment. Next slide.

So this is just a little picture of the many conversations we've had to explore what our goals might be for this pilot project, what our outcomes might be, how we can start to find funding. And it's really exciting to work in a museum to figure out how we can start to tell our story and how we can teach the story to other people who might be in the same boat of wanting to transform their digital journey. We are a City of Detroit-owned building. And so being able to leverage even city building expertise with sharing that with other city-owned buildings is something that we all strive for. Next.

So this is just a quick timeline where it just basically shows that we had no drawings back in 2015. By 2019, we started the process of laser scanning and creating a BIM model, creating really good foundations.

After that, we started to spin off different pilots. So we are currently in the process of doing a digital twin pilot and an internet of things pilot with sensors and making data streams be able to be accessible by us. So this is our digital transformation story. And we are taking it one step at a time, both being able to understand the impact from the top down and bottom up as we start to change our behaviors, practices, and policies. Next slide.

So it's pretty exciting that we are using this model. We are currently in an informational sort of stage. And we want to be able to, as we think of the future, keep moving up to be able to get grants and get funds and scope out projects so that we are being able to predict what's happening, comprehend, and have our building actually think for itself. Next slide.

And I think just one more plug for what's next. It's really exciting to see how much a museum has and how many databases we have and to have those databases begin to talk to each other to be able to do things like pre-heat and pre-cool our spaces, since we know how many people will be coming into these different spaces, being able to create smart policies. Some of the internet and sensor projects that we have tell us how many times, for example, people are entering the bathrooms. So can we start to create smart policies around that? And being able to collaboratively design internally and externally and with community voice with this entire stack that we are creating.

So with that, I'm going to pass it on to Dustin to tell a little bit more of the technical aspects.

DUSTIN TIEMEYER: you, Leslie. I'm Dustin Tiemeyer. I'm the director of design technology at Peter BIM Associates. We're Michigan's largest MEP design firm. And we've got about 100-plus engineers and designers on staff.

So as such, you can see me at work here in this picture on the left. I'm usually quite a bit underwater trying to support that many people. And it seems like things are never that far from a shipwreck.

So just joking-- that's a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But working with the museum has allowed me to come up for a breath of fresh air and kind of step away from those CAD managerial duties and work with them on a really exciting project.

And so Leslie mentioned that we got to know each other through the Detroit area BIM user group that I founded in 2006. And as we started talking about where the museum was at, I remembered when the museum was built because I was in architecture school in Detroit at the time.

And I'd come to realize, and in conversations with Jeff, that the museum is about 27 years old, the physical building is. And a lot of the mechanical systems, some of them had failed completely. One of two chillers was lost. So the building is in a precarious state where if the other chiller fails, there will be no cooling or dehumidification.

And there was just a handful of other really serious mechanical issues that needed to be repaired at the building. And so the museum decided to engage PBA to help with the mechanical systems replacement project and to follow along with that journey to help with the digital twin goals and ambitions the museum had for moving into the 21st century. So next slide, please.

As Leslie mentioned, there were no accurate drawings of the building. So there were no CAD files to start drawing from. There was no-- certainly no 3D model. We had very little reliable information.

So we employed a 21st-century solution to fix this problem. We laser scanned the entire museum. Laser scanning, of course, picks up what's visible. And so we hired a gentleman to laser scan the 120,000 square feet. He did that over the course of about three days and then spent about a month modeling it in Revit.

So the hope was to have very reliable data to start moving forward, because as leading this project as MEP engineers, it's not the traditional situation where an architect is in charge and providing backgrounds. So we use the laser scan and BIM to form the architectural and structural backgrounds that we as MEP engineers use to work on the design of the MEP mechanical systems replacement project.

And when you get into technical details, we all know that nothing is ever perfect. And so the last bullet point of each of my slides is going to be that pragmatic look at what was less than perfect, because that's when things get real.

So we had an interesting surprise, in that the outdated PDFs did not show a 32-inch duct. And that duct was built-- it was enclosed with walls all the way around. So it was also not picked up with the laser scanning.

And so when the contractor in the area began doing demolition work because of that flood, we discovered that there was a 32-inch duct running underground that was not possible to be picked up in a laser scan and also not visible on the PDFs that were pre-CD set from 1997. So it was an interesting surprise. Luckily, there was no water in the duct, surprisingly. And things were able to move forward. But just an example of how even the best laid plans, you'll run into surprises.

So the mechanical replacement project is a 5-plus year project with more than six phases. Primary goals were to keep the facility operational. Early on, we talked about would it be better to shut the building down for a year and a half and do it all in one fell swoop. And that was not an option.

And so we developed a phased approach to changing out humidification in one phase and heating boilers in another phase and steam boilers in another phase and the chillers in another phase, et cetera. So this MEP-led project utilized a BIM collaborate/BIM 360/Autodesk Construction Cloud. Use the term that suits you.

It really was the perfect host for us because we were able to upload our federated model. And we as engineers could work in it. Several side projects spun off, because funding can sometimes come from donors. And the funding doesn't all come from the same place. And with the museum, you're able to do certain exhibits because of certain donors.

And that's come up with one of the theaters. So for that, we brought in an architect to do the architectural modifications to the theater while we did the mechanical. And this was all empowered by BIM Collaborate. So it really was a great platform for us to work on this project.

Again, the bottom bullet point, you find out that there's limitations or exceptions inside programs that you don't necessarily expect. In this case, pushing data from BIM Collaborate/Revit to Tandem became very important to have all of the rooms and spaces in a specific phase because they'll only be accommodated from one phase when it gets to Tandem. So yeah, you'll never know all the details of what you're going to encounter, especially on a journey this big.

So the Revit data pushed to Tandem. And this is all still in process, mind you. We're only three phases into maybe an eight-phase project. So we pushed data into Tandem, and we're going to continue to push data into Tandem as the project goes along. And at the beginning of the process, we weren't sure, or maybe we thought that Revit and BIM 360 were going to be the original host design source of truth. That database-- Revit is a database-- that database would be what contained all the data, and we would find some way to move things-- move data in and out of it for these external applications and goals that we're hoping to achieve.

Well, while we were scheming up this plan to use Revit as the source of truth, Autodesk introduced Tandem, which quickly became very obvious that Tandem was going to be the right place to be the host design source of truth/living digital twin. They've put a lot of effort into it in the past few years, and it's evolving and increasing in capabilities, seemingly at an exponential pace. So it's an incredible platform.

Data is not just stagnant in Tandem. So we're using an internet of things approach with sensors from disruptive technologies that we're putting into some of the spaces. This is a pilot project. What you see on the screen is about a 1,000 square foot exhibit space on the first floor of the museum. And we've put in CO2 sensors and door-opening sensors and water leak detectors.

But what you're seeing visualized on the screen now is CO2 sensing across-- there's sensors on both sides of the room. You can see those little green balls. So this is a live projection of the CO2 in that space. So traditionally, thermostats and humidostats, they report temperature and humidity. Well, if a room is being kept at a constant temperature, even when people are moving in and out of it, if a large group of people moves in, they're going to start generating a lot more CO2. So perhaps fresh air is still needed.

So these very easy to use sensors are placed in the space. And then that data is streamed live into Tandem. And the hope is eventually that in Tandem, the data won't just be streamed there, but if that CO2 reaches a certain level, an alert can be sent. And then eventually, that alert will just be sent hopefully to the building management system to tell that air handler to start bringing in more outside air.

So the future building management system we're going to go to is Schneider Electric EcoStruxure. And they do have an API. So I'm hopeful that we'll be able to integrate both these internet of things sensors with the BMS system kind of all inside Tandem in one cohesive environment.

Now, getting back to Warren's dream, Warren's dream of his phone not ringing all the time, a maintenance ticketing software. As the engineers on the project, we want this system to be operational and efficient and bulletproof for the next 25 years until the equipment that's going in today eventually gets to the end of its life. And maintenance is essential to that. And so what we're doing is, we're doing a pilot project where we're taking about 80 to 90 pieces of equipment that have been put in to date and installed in our operational, and we're going to be moving them into the Eptura ManagerPlus software.

Now, we had originally thought when we started scheming this entire idea that we would be going to BIM 360 Apps. But Autodesk has decided to move away from that platform over the coming years. And so we decided to move to Eptura. It's a lot more robust platform, many more features are available there. So we're excited for it.

And the main idea is that we want to be able to capture both labor and consumable costs. And we want to be able to plan for them. We want maintenance to not only be reactive, we want it to also be proactive. And so those are the dreams of the maintenance ticketing system.

So as we get to my final slide here, you can see that we've been talking about this for a long time. And some of the most important things are, if you're a technical person, don't start trying to answer technical problems right away. Fly in at a 30,000-foot overview.

Figure out what your goals are. Figure out what your dreams are for how this data will help you in the future and what answers you want to solve and how can you-- so create a list. Create a bucket list. And then once you've done that, use your skills as technical people to engage the right partners and to solve those questions, and then put your application stack together.

So with that, I'm going to hand it back to Leslie.

LESLIE TOM: Thanks, Dustin. Yeah, just to reiterate what Dustin said a little bit that we have definitely taken a journey together collectively within all of the different departments of our museum and executive leadership to figure out how to scope out this project before we started. And I think it's really given us a solid foundation and legs to move forward as we figure out what those next steps want to be with owning all of our own data. I'm very fortunate for having an architectural background as well so that we can navigate what that future looks like. Next slide.

And so with the SMART museum that we're creating, we're using these different tools-- and here's another picture of our stack-- to be able to access our data, be able to make sense of it, be able to storytell within our institution of what data is important, why, and when, be able to visualize that data and improve all of our processes with continuous improvement sort of feedback that we're building into our process.

And so with that, Eptura is helping us to manage and report the data; give access to our specifications, our drawings, who our vendors are to help us care for our building; being able to work with Revit to help with the design process, whether that's exhibitions or remodeling or renovations or even future plans and thinking, especially as we plug into the Cultural District in Detroit; and being able to measure all of that data through sensors. So this is our project. We are on our journey. We'd love for you all to continue to watch us as we keep creating this SMART museum and next-generation museum of the future.

With that, I'm going to hand it over to Arundhati.

ARUNDHATI GHOSH: Thanks, Leslie. And now I'll walk through a demo of Tandem and show you all what the pilot project today looks like. We are actively adding more data and integrating more sensors. This is a live project. And we are bringing in live information in.

So this is the Wright Museum, the building itself. Within Tandem, we can always use the model to start navigating and creating those views that stakeholders are interested in, whether it's just understanding the different spaces, the orientation theater that was flooded, looking at that, the beautiful rotunda space in here in the middle. And also, those mechanical rooms-- as Leslie and Dustin both mentioned earlier, these weird spaces that have been formed because of, again, this beautiful building with lots of curves and lots of circular walls and these interesting spaces that are tucked in.

Where we are going with some of the workflows that we've been exploring now with Dustin and Warren through the integration of sensor data is the ability to create heat maps. So as we bring in the disruptive technology sensor data into the Tandem environment, as you can see, we can quickly start seeing those visuals in a very like photorealistic way, whether it's CO2. That's relative humidity and temperature. As I zoom out, we have started to integrate sensors into a few different places that you can see.

Now, going back to the workflows that we are now starting to think about is how would Warren use Tandem in his daily workflows. How does this-- bringing in all this information, what are the steps that Warren would take?

So as an example of that, we see that this is gallery-- gallery A, which is where the sensors are installed today. So there's a-- we can see there's an anomaly or discrepancy in the expected data from the CO2 count.

As you select the room, we are adding in information, such as the air handler unit that is serving that particular room. So we can see that, well, it's AHU-8. Now, within Tandem itself, one of the things that we recently set up was translating the AHU zones that Dustin and his team have developed, outlined in their PDFs, and translating that into a visual right here in Tandem.

So this is the way we've been thinking through how to annotate and augment the data and what information becomes really important to capture as part of the digital twin. So this is a good example here. You can see that the blue space-- the spaces that are blue are AHU-1, AHU-4. Right here, the orange one is AHU-9. And all these yellow spaces are being fed by AHU-6.

The other thing that Dustin mentioned was the several renovation phases that are going on in this building. There are more than five phases, a lot of construction activity that's going on in an existing facility that's operational. So being able to, again, quickly dive into exactly the spaces where that renovation is happening and what is changing is helpful in giving Leslie and her team an idea of where changes can impact the usage and operations of the museum itself.

Moreover, within Tandem, we are also starting to identify different systems. So as an example right here, so as Dustin has been-- and Dustin's team's been creating the models and adding more systems into this ever-growing facility, we can start identifying-- isolating the systems, and also looking at-- start seeing some of those parent-child relationships.

So this is, again, a good example of-- let me look at just the first floor. We're looking at just-- this is AHU-1 right there, and seeing the downstream terminal units from that air handler unit, and then further down into the specific rooms and spaces where that terminal unit is connected to.

Where we are now headed moving forward as we are working more with Eptura is understanding exactly the information that Warren would need as part of his preventive maintenance program and annotating, again, adding that information into Tandem, looking at what data is relevant for the Eptura process, what information is needed for some of those-- the budgeting and reporting goals of the museum. And then also, do we have the relevant data for understanding these parent-child relationships within the building systems?

So these are some of the ways by which we are exploring the use of Tandem. And again, we are continuously adding use cases and adding on to the system. And with that, thank you.