An intelligent construction system based on digital twin and foundation model optimization

    Fengyi Guo Info
    Cynthia Changxin Wang Info
    Jun Sun Info
    Kaixin Huang Info
    Xin Wang Info
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/jcem.2026.26154

Abstract

Construction sites routinely face multi-trade concurrency, spatiotemporal coupling, and high safety risk; relying solely on manual inspection and heuristic scheduling often leads to lagging detection and inconsistent execution. In response, recent practice has introduced digital twins (DT) to fuse video, sensors, and BIM and thus improve site visibility; however, most implementations remain at monitoring/visualization, lacking a mechanism to convert cognition into executable, verifiable decisions. Meanwhile, Transformer foundation models show strong capabilities in multimodal perception and representation learning, yet they are rarely closed-looped with engineering constraints and on-site execution.

Against this backdrop, taking high-rise self-climbing platform (SCP) operations as a representative scenario, we build a DT×Transformer closed-loop system. We align video/sensor/BIM/text at the component level via “Component-ID + Timestamp”, train a multimodal Transformer for operation-state recognition and short-horizon risk prediction, and then explicitly encode safety, resource, and spatial precedence constraints in a policy module to generate feasible task sequences, which are delivered to crews via AR with acknowledgments to close the loop. The system integrates multisource perception, digital twin, foundation-model reasoning, and AR-assisted execution, and was validated on a highrise self-climbing platform project for its overall improvement of construction performance. The evaluation covered four key aspects – safety management, operational efficiency, communication and execution, and information transparency. Results show that the system significantly extends the lead time of risk warnings, reduces violation rates, stabilizes construction rhythm, shortens decision latency, and markedly improves the consistency between instruction delivery and on-site feedback.

Keywords:

intelligent construction, digital twin, foundation model, high-rise self-climbing platform, AR interaction

How to Cite

Guo, F., Wang, C. C., Sun, J., Huang, K., & Wang, X. (2026). An intelligent construction system based on digital twin and foundation model optimization. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 32(3), 374–393. https://doi.org/10.3846/jcem.2026.26154

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April 20, 2026
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2026-04-20

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How to Cite

Guo, F., Wang, C. C., Sun, J., Huang, K., & Wang, X. (2026). An intelligent construction system based on digital twin and foundation model optimization. Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 32(3), 374–393. https://doi.org/10.3846/jcem.2026.26154

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