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Beyond the Digital Twin Buzz: Turning Hype Into Value

The hype around digital twin simulations of rail systems stems from delivering the precision required to attenuate operational inefficiencies and mitigate infrastructure operational failure, but the operational benefits are only a fraction of the potential for this technology. Despite this, in high-stakes rail infrastructure project planning and execution, digital twin ecosystems have yet to generate the required and expected value in project design, build, and transition to operations.

Even when tasked with basic efficiency improvement, digital twin deployments often fail to deliver the desired value. This could be due to factors such as unanticipated upfront costs and challenges with legacy system integration, or unquantified and fragmented data and governance structures that affect ownership. Under scrutiny, these tools fall apart – with their original design not accounting for the unique needs of the ecosystem or the timing of the system’s intended benefits.

Digital twins without strategic thoughts of timing, interconnectedness and the prerequisite data requirements only add cost and complexity while delivering negligible return on investment.

Defining what the digital tools actually need to accomplish before any implementation occurs is one of the most challenging tasks for asset owners, project delivery teams, asset operators and digital twin administrators. These functionality aspirations become increasingly more complex as additional stakeholders are considered. Early definition of digital twin ownership, governance and associated risk portfolios in sophisticated and contractually challenging project delivery scenarios becomes a key factor in achieving successful deployment and adoption of a digital twin model.

To be successful, emphasis should be on the interplay among information structure, associated technology, traceability and strategic alignment. In this context, a digital twin isn’t just a 3D model or alternative reality, but a disciplined information framework and auditable data system delivering real-world accountability across the project lifecycle.

The Rail Reality: High Risk, High Scrutiny

No one needs to be convinced that rail projects are complex. Their technical complexity is further underscored by the difficulty in defining, communicating, managing and measuring performance against expectations. Often there is unintended misalignment in teams, with siloed data management further complicating suboptimal systems and governance structures.

Unfortunately, numerous global rail projects experience cost and schedule overruns through preventable, and in some cases repeated, issues in late definition of owner or stakeholder requirements, design, construction, third-party interfacing infrastructure, system integration and decision making – these cost and schedule overruns adversely impact those communities where these projects and intended outcomes are delivered.^1,2,3

Even high-visibility projects managed by competent teams struggle with maintaining control over contracting, managing local business impacts, overcoming system integration challenges, ensuring and demonstrating adherence to environmental compliance, managing stakeholder accountability, or meeting evolving governance and assurance requirements.²

Rail infrastructure projects are under scrutiny from day one. Infrastructure owners, project delivery teams, and operators all seek access to information. Ministries, funding bodies, regulators, legal teams and third-party stakeholders all require some level of access to information, but herein lies part of the challenge – it is rarely the same kind of information.

This is not new, but the ability to provide the required information at the appropriate time (in the right format and to the right people) means that digital systems must do more.

The Case for Better Information Strategy

Recent global rail projects have illustrated what happens when information strategy lags planning, design and construction. Pertinent learnings include:

Progress without clarity causes delays: With the large quantum of work undertaken on a rail development project, there is a recognized difficulty in adapting and responding to changes – this includes tracing, let alone resolving, critical (planned and unplanned) changes.² Project changes can stem from evolving and late definition of owner and third-party requirements, design and construction variances, shifting dependencies on vendors, environmental/geological factors or regulatory dependencies. These changes most often require consultative input from multiple stakeholders, and ill-equipped digital infrastructure can delay resolution. Digital infrastructures that are effectively established are expected to track versioned design changes, certify construction work at scale, and provide timely insight into geological and regulatory-related delays.

Poor integration of complex information systems leads to longer timeline: A significant factor in major infrastructure project cost and schedule overrun is the poor integration of complex information systems.⁴ Many existing project information systems do not effectively, and automatically, link critical information between project functions such as designers, environmental teams, and governance structures in a way that is traceable, timestamped, and easy to audit.

The cost of unreliable records in condensed urban environments: Rail projects expect to deal with unmapped or unreliable records of utilities and structures, but this common occurrence is exacerbated in condensed urban environments. Encountering an unmapped utility leads to enforced, unplanned design revisions, additional cost, schedule disruptions and adverse community impacts.^1,4 These information inefficiencies can be mitigated through digital systems that are structured, managed and enforced – with oversight in mind from the outset.

What Do We Want Strategic Digital Twins To Actually Deliver

A strategic approach with digital twins enables answers to questions before they become liabilities by:

Designing for oversight when priorities shift: Traceability becomes more important than system speed; contextual records matter more than performance dashboards; and accessibility across stakeholders outweighs internal team efficiencies. It’s not about moving slower; it’s about maintaining control and providing appropriate assurance. When a legal challenge arises or a board demands an explanation, answers are readily available.
Maintaining a consistent source of truth: Strategic digital twins align the information needs of asset operators, contractors, engineers, legal teams and regulators through smarter coordination of activities and cleaner documentation. For example, environmental factors tied to permitting or impact studies can be monitored from detection, versus a retroactive and manual consolidation of records.
Structuring systems with real-world accountability in mind: Strategic digital twins facilitate the logging of decisions and approvals in a format built for audit, and if required, in a format that can hold up in arbitration. With well-strategized digital environments, records are not only timestamped and attributed, but can also incorporate e-signatures, audit trails or blockchain-backed verification methods when higher levels of integrity are required. For example, procurement reviews and contract execution are two areas where structured digital records can reduce ambiguity and surface commercial risk early.

Change Your Approach to Digital Twin Strategy

Ask the Right Questions To Build a Smarter Digital Twin
Too many capital project digital twin deployments begin with technical specifications development, not sufficiently considering the conditions that shape them. Digital twin funding is first geared toward design and construction requirements, with operations and maintenance a close second; however, funding to support long-term accountability is rare. Further, lowest-bid infrastructure project procurements limit the ability to propose an optimal digital system from the outset.

A smarter approach starts with reframing the conversation:

Who will need access later and what will they need to do?
What data is critical to project delivery and operational continuity?
What decisions will need to be explained, defended, or retraced?

This approach enables boundary definition (what gets digitalized and what doesn’t). It helps avoid bloat and focuses effort on the systems and workflows where visibility matters most. It informs and reinforces contract structures and embeds collaboration, communication and performance measurement expectations into the delivery model itself.

With the right framework in place, the digital twin becomes a shared asset, not a bolt-on deliverable. The stakeholders who rely on that asset change over time, either due to project life progression or expected attrition in project teams. Digital twins should be initially used by procurement teams, designers, constructors, regulatory reviewers, and shifting over to asset managers, operators, and finance teams. Owners and digital twin operators need to enable these transitions in system users through early development of a comprehensive digital strategy.

Ensure the Strategy Is Aligned to Actual Requirements
To implement a successful digital twin, a strategic lifecycle focus must be created and maintained from project inception. This strategy should articulate the alignment between project outcomes and digital twin outcomes; detail what systems to deploy; how to configure these systems; and when to connect to legacy data. Technology must be appropriate to create, utilize and manage the information that is required at the specific phase of the project. Configuration should be also bounded to deliver immediate functionality requirements and any early requirements of the next phase to avoid cost and schedule impact associated with unnecessary set up activities while ensuring the digital twin is suitable and ready for use.

Ensure Digital Systems Are Crafted To Deliver Transparency Under Pressure
Owners and digital twin operators should embed compliance tracking, approval history, and project health metrics directly into the digital framework. This isn’t just about measuring costs; it’s infrastructure for governance. When there’s a question about who signed off, what changed, or why something unexpected happened, the system can provide a response. This helps resolve disputes and strengthens coordination. It supports real-time status reviews during project execution and forensic reviews after the fact, providing for efficient and effective oversight – and defendable decisions.

Build With Scrutiny in Mind
Every major transit project today sits under a combination of political, regulatory, administrative, media and community scrutiny. Digital twin systems will not shield a project from this increasing pressure, but can provide a defensible, continuous record of what happened and why. That starts with knowing what matters: not just the asset, but also the decisions around it, and not just the design, but the evidence that the right design was chosen.

Better alignment between digital systems and accountability structures can benefit the next generation of rail immensely because, in rail, when things go wrong, everyone wants the same thing: the record.

Building for Oversight, Not Just Operations

Most digital twin strategies focus on operations and they’re built to improve equipment uptime, streamline maintenance or reduce energy use.⁵ These are all valid goals, but in rail, they don’t go far enough.

Rail project digital twins need to reflect the full rail project lifecycle, from inception through design, construction, into operations, refurbishment and potentially, eventual decommission. They need to be designed to be suitably governed and assured.

A correctly designed digital twin strategy can deliver improved rail project performance by providing the right information, at the right time, in the right format, to the right people. This allows stakeholders to make evidence-informed and objective decisions – not only when it matters most, but all the time.

Footnotes:

1: “Annual Performance Statement 2025,” Infrastructure Australia, (March 6, 2025).

2: Denicol, Juliano et al., “What Are the Causes and Cures of Poor Megaproject Performance? A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda,” Sage Journals, (Feb. 13, 2020).

3: Mok, Jedwin et al., “UNDERSTANDING THE DRIVERS OF TRANSIT CONSTRUCTION COSTS IN CANADA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY,” University of Toronto, (January 2025).

4: Goldwyn, Eric et al., “Transit Costs Project Final Report,” (Feb. 11, 2023).

5: “18 Use Cases of Operational Digital Twins in Railways,” Smart Spatial, (April 24, 2025).