Searching for Partners: Building the Light but Powerful Digital Twin

At Syska Innovations, we’ve been tinkering with an idea. It started with a simple question:

Do facility managers really need another bloated piece of software?

Most of the digital twin platforms on the market are trying to do everything—simulate construction before it happens, track every nut and bolt after, and predict the future of your building like a crystal ball. Impressive? Sure. But also expensive, complicated, and let’s face it—outdated the minute someone moves a chair. My dad always advised me in business to “make sure the lemon is worth the squeeze.” And in these instances the lemon may not be.

We think there’s a smarter way. Instead of creating an all-you-can-eat buffet of data (with heartburn included), we’re developing a lighter, focused version of the digital twin. One that answers the real questions facility managers face:

Which valve do I shut when water’s gushing everywhere?
What breaker tripped and why are the lights out again?
Where on earth are the as-built drawings?

We want the experience to be as intuitive as a child swiping on an iPad—tap, click, done. No 200-page manual required.

Our prototype pulls from a mix of inputs: security systems, reality capture, IoT devices, BMS data, as-builts, record drawings, and even a retrieval-augmented language model.

From those inputs, the possibilities are—well, kind of endless. They could include:

• Incident response for hospitals and labs: The twin tags every valve, damper, and breaker, allowing users to instantly see what’s happening downstream.
• Retrofit support for commercial offices: The twin provides architects and engineers with not just dusty PDFs, but photos above ceilings, behind walls, setpoints, and capacities.
• Maintenance RFPs that don’t waste time: The twin gives vendors everything they need up front so they don’t show up without the right part (again).

We’re telling you this because we don’t want to build it alone.

Syska Innovations is looking for partners who want to co-develop this R&D effort. Maybe you’re a hospital that needs faster incident response. Maybe you manage offices that are constantly being reconfigured. Maybe you’re just tired of sending vendors on scavenger hunts.

If you’re willing to experiment with us, we’ll bring the brains, the tech, and yes—some humor. We’re going to introduce this idea in greater detail at Autodesk University, where Mike Ortega will talk about what we envision and the role that partners would play. But we can certainly arrange other meetings for those not in attendance.

Together, we can build a digital twin light platform that’s not about bells and whistles, but about solving real pain points.

Written By Robert Ioanna