总部位于明尼阿波利斯的承包商,加德纳建筑商turned over on July 23 what is believed to be a first twofer in the industry: a finished project along with a digital twin of the project documentation, secured and unchangeable—or “immutable,” in blockchain parlance—because it exists on multiple databases that are all kept in sync. That is a hallmark of the blockchain technology. Any attempt to modify a record stored in the blockchain will violate the synchronization protocol and be revealed and prevented.

“我们是早期采用者，”首席执行官鲍勃·加德纳（Bob Gardner）说。“这是有史以来第一个这样做的项目。这是一个试驾。”

The project was the renovation and fitting-out of a space for an exercise center called Discover Strength in Minneapolis, part of an expanding chain in Minnesota. The digital twin was created using the services of Brickschain, a company launched in January. Cofounder and CEO Bassem Hamdy was previously an executive at Procore for three years, and prior to that was at CMiC for 16 years.

“Bob is technology forward,” says Hamdy. “He was awesome in getting involved with us." He said Gardner, whom he knew from Procore, and who has been following the development of Brickschain, had approached him a month earlier. Gardner wanted to use Brickschain to capture and secure all of a project’s documentation in a blockchain ledger with a system that could be navigated and turned over to the owner as a deliverable at handover.

人们一直说采用新技术的建设很慢，但是建筑可以快速发展。这只是找到合适的项目和承包商的问题。”“这在很多方面都是历史性的，现在我们只有30天后才拥有真实的数据。”

Collecting project data took a week, Hamdy says. “Brickschain nodes” were installed on the project’s Dropbox and Procore accounts. The system automatically scraped IFC data about objects contained in the electronic files of the project’s 2D plans. It also captured all submittal transactions using software APIs.

In this case, where the system was implemented just prior to handover, neither the architect, contractor, subcontractors, nor the suppliers had to actively collect asset data. Brickschain harvested it all by scraping the records that had coursed through the Dropbox and Procore accounts. In a project set up at an early stage, all stakeholders potentially could install nodes and capture all transactions of data going into creation of a project from their own servers as they occurred, time-stamped and secured in the distributed blockchain ledger.

“Traditional discovery will be obsolete,” claims Hamdy. David Bowcott, global director for growth innovation and insight with Aon Risk Solution’s Global Construction and Infrastructure Group, agrees. “The Brickschain has the potential of making dispute resolution very quick [as in], you're the guy that changed it last and this shows me you are responsible.”

“Definitely there is a significant interest in the owner and lender community of everything that went on during the asset’s creation. From the insurance position we’re pretty interested. And if you are an owner you have the knowledge; any time they create an entry related to that project it gets captured,” Bowcott says, adding, “The market is moving toward a more transparent model, and the owners can mandate it. What are you going to do? And my understanding is, it’s actually pretty easy.”

The results are presented in a Brickschain interface that looks like a typical Microsoft Windows file-structure display. The blockchain ledger of the collected data, or “transactions,” is navigated by clicking on files representing rooms.

Inside each room are links to the records stored in the blockchain that define every installed asset. Specifications of the products are granular, down to paint colors, ceiling fixtures, LED bulbs, door hardware, along with the manuals and warranty information and service life in a countdown clock. All are harvested from the manufacturers as part of Brickschain’s asset inventory creation process. If the manufacturer updates a manual or issues a recall, that also will be captured in the future as a new “transaction” associated with that asset, with the change flagged to the owner, should the owner choose to maintain the active Brickschain subscription.

“我们构建了一个文件系统。就像文件资源管理器一样。” Hamdy说。

“Normally, when preparing documentation for closeout, it can take us a month to collect all of that information,” says Gardner. “It’s a highly manual process and it’s the bane of many owners' existence, and when they need the data because something goes wrong, it's not there. Brickschain captured all of our documents along with a data sweep of the entire project, and there is no chance they can get it wrong because the data is secured—and it’s not the data from three versions previous.”

Discover Strength的首席执行官卢克·卡尔森（Luke Carlson）说，他在移交后进行了方向，发现砖链系统直观而全面。“我们确实希望在计划下一个位置的建立和启动时使用这些数据。我将数据和软件视为在扩展业务时保持一致性和效率的关键组成部分，”卡尔森说。

“I’m excited about having our operations people be able to make decisions locally, rather than centrally, as all relevant data will be at their fingertips. Ultimately, I foresee us achieving speed, consistency, and efficiency,” Carlson says.

“Hopefully the owner will put their portfolio on it and maintain it,” says Hamdy. “We charge basically the same for a building to be put on the blockchain as we will for the annual maintenance long-term, or you can host your own node. Your data can be on your own servers. Or we can give you your own blockchain on Amazon Web Services.”

尽管这家初创公司正开始并仍在努力工作，但Hamdy表示，用砖砌创建或维护数字双胞胎的成本约为每平方英尺10美分。