FTG ENG | eBooks

A S H R A E J O U R N A L a s h r a e . o r g M A Y 2 0 2 1 2 6 site," he said, helping the team avoid costly rework and delays. Operations and Maintenance Once a building is constructed and occupied, AR can still be a valuable tool. This technology can aid facilities managers in training their staff. This technology can also help building owners with QA/QC processes. Maintenance workers, for instance, are able retrieve and see actual assets' information by scanning assigned QR codes, such as the HVAC&R equipment. If there is a true Digital Twin that is connected to real-time infor- mation from another source, such as a building auto- mation system or sensors, this information can also be retrieved in real-time by using the barcode. This allows the user to see all this real-time information overlaid on the asset and that helps them with the decision- making process. "In the future the workers will be able to easily see operational data in context," said Messner. AR can sup- port people by providing information they need, he said. Messner said Penn State already tags equipment with barcodes so operations and maintenance staff can walk up to the system and pull up the updated information on the equipment with their phone. "That's not such a new technology," he said. "But [with AR] it could start to show me real-time data in place, so I could see the temperatures of water in a particular pipe… I could see which valves are open in a system around the entire building. I could start to see other information, such as flow rates, humidity or even loca- tions where fire dampers have been closed in an emer- gency scenario." Training AR can also encourage collaboration and real-time problem-solving. Some technologies have remote assis- tant tools that allow people to video call someone to help them work through a problem, said Lawver. This feature helps AR become a training tool, he said, especially with experts getting to retirement age. Instead of having one person on-site who knows everything there is to know about boiler rooms, that person can work remotely, said Lawver. The technology, when head- mounted, is hands-free, which helps people actually do the work at the same time they give guidance—compared to a traditional video call. "He can just sit on his couch and phone in to every project in the state. Rather than getting in his F-150 and driving around the state all day and maybe only solving one issue a day, now he's solving 10 issues a day just by being able to do it remotely," he said. "All the while, the people who are on the other side still have to use their hands to fix the issue… so not only are they getting help, but they're also learning as they go." Lawver said the technology can also be used as a recruiting tool. "If you bring cool technology into con- struction, people are going to come and want to work in the industry, especially the Millennials and Gen Z generations that are more attracted to wherever they can use tech," he said. He said the more the construction industry adopts innovative technologies, the more young people will want to work in the industry. "You're better driving young folks into the industry by having cool technology, and you're providing a mechanism for one to learn from the other," he said. At Penn State, Messner is teaching AR in the classroom. The university has used AR to create a sustainability education game for students on a tablet PC. "We allow students to go into an actual building space and experi- ment with replacing the building materials and systems, and then they can see and get performance information in the real-world context," he said. "I'm super excited about AR for education and train- ing because we can walk people through a series of steps. We can augment information on top of real-world content instead of using mock-ups or other training sce- narios," he said. "That's one of the areas that we're doing research in AR—what's the value of the augmented infor- mation within a training scenario." Tips and Best Practices When getting started with AR, Messner recommends new users become familiar with the technology by giving it a few test runs, using free phone applications such as Augment (see sidebar). He said he usually does this with his students before diving deeper. Ghorbani recommends studying "examples from other fields such as the manufacturing industry with a longer history of AR implementation." "It can also be very valuable to leverage existing plat- forms by major vendors... Then, for advanced users, INDUSTRY 4.0

• Cover