Facilities Management Professionals’ Perceptions of Digital Twins as Intelligent Realities

Recently, intelligent realities (IRs)—integrated systems that combine advanced analytics technologies such as digital twins (DTs) and artificial or virtual reality technologies—have emerged as a value-adding enhancement of DTs for facilities management (FM). However, DT-based IRs for maintenance are yet to be studied to determine their fitness for purpose from a practice perspective. The lack of practitioners' perspectives on the development of DT-based IR poses a potential disconnection between desired end user preferences for interaction with a DT for maximum application benefits and the theoretical development of this emerging knowledge field. This paper presents FM professionals' ex-ante evaluation of a conceptual prototype for a DT-based IR system. Using an electronic survey among selected FM professionals from educational and transportation facilities, it was found that the proposed solution can improve the visibility of managed assets, enhance predictive maintenance (PdM) practice, and provide cognition and judgment aid for FM professionals when they are mobile. The study provides relevant insights for developers of DT solutions and researchers on the preferred end user interaction modalities.