Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has gone live with a digital twin of six hospitals as part of its strategy to create a smart estate. Designed to provide a single source of estates data to support new workflows and better decision making, the 3D model is a major milestone in MFT’s digital transformation to improve operational efficiency and patient safety.

Replacing disparate systems and paper-based processes, the digital twin visualises floors, rooms and spaces with associated data and is already being used to understand space optimisation and support the management of RAAC and asbestos. Future plans include adding indoor navigation, patient contact tracing and real-time asset tracking.

Created using Esri UK’s GIS platform, which includes indoor mapping, spatial analysis, navigation and asset tracking, the digital twin went live in October 2025. BIS Consult, MFT’s strategic data partner, led the development of the underlying data strategy and the integration of the multiple information sources required.

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Spanning 274,000 square metres of internal floor space, the 3D model includes Manchester Royal Infirmary, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, Manchester Royal Eye Hospital and Saint Mary’s Hospital on the Oxford Road campus, plus Altrincham Hospital and Withington Community Hospital.

David Bailey, Head of Digital Estates at MFT, who led the project, said: “Integrating all of our existing data into one 3D model has created the foundation for building a digital twin and is driving new opportunities for efficiency gains. Moving from analogue to digital achieves a better understanding of our buildings and assets which helps improve their management and maintenance, as well as improving patient safety.”

The digital twin is being used in a trial to better understand the use of space, by quickly showing where room usage is not being optimised. Full roll-out will provide all staff with a real-time view of occupancy levels and space requests, while clinicians will be able to examine existing facilities more easily and plan new services.

New applications for RAAC and asbestos management involve performing digital surveys on mobile devices, which feed directly into the 3D model and visualise the different risk levels.

The next phase will map the remaining four hospitals in MFT’s estate and digitise building condition surveys to help tackle the maintenance backlog. This will involve mobile data capture feeding into the digital twin, providing a clearer picture of requirements and helping to prioritise resources. Replacing a manual spreadsheet approach, data and reports will be shared more easily among project teams. Energy usage data will also be added to the digital twin to help analyse and reduce energy costs.

The project overcame a major data integration challenge, which involved combining MFT data from multiple systems, including CAFM (Computer-Aided Facility Management) and CAD floor plans and improving the overall data quality. Establishing new data governance so information connected to the 3D model was accurate and up to date was also achieved.

Duncan Booth, Head of Health & Social Care, Esri UK, said: “Indoor mapping is playing a central role in the modernisation of MFT’s estates and facilities department by giving users situational awareness of the entire site. Optimising the use of existing buildings and making RAAC and asbestos management more efficient are the first of many new benefits. Already used at airports, universities and industrial sites, the technology is helping large organisations realise plans for digital twins and is now experiencing growth in healthcare.”

Plans for the future include using Esri’s GIS platform to create applications for indoor navigation for patients and staff to reduce missed appointments, contact tracing of patients to help stop the spread of pathogens inside the hospital and digital asset tracking, enabling equipment such as beds, scanners or wheelchairs to be located more quickly.

Nicholas Campbell-Voegt, Ddrector at BIS Consult, commented: “This project shows how smart use of data can transform NHS estates. By creating a single source of truth for assets and space, MFT is paving the way for a new standard in how Trusts manage their estates. The approach provides a blueprint that other NHS organisations can follow, helping build smarter, safer and more sustainable healthcare environments.”

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E.R.B. Rail JV PS, the joint venture leading the construction of the Rail Baltica mainline in Latvia, one of the largest infrastructure projects in Europe, has chosen Vektor.io as its digital platform for managing and visualising infrastructure design information.

ERB will used the platform to bring together 2D plans, BIM models, GIS data, and other reference materials spread across many different formats and systems, directly in the browser, accessible both in the office and on site

“We chose Vektor.io because it enables our team to access all design information in one platform, regardless of file format – to view 2D, 3D and survey data together,” said Agnis Mārtiņš Bērziņš, Regional BIM Coordinator of E.R.B. Rail JV PS.

“This helps all team members to work more efficiently by providing access to not only design, point clouds, orthophotos, and public maps with various data, but also to impressive measurement, sectioning, quantifying and analysing tools to ensure rapid and well-informed decision making.”

“We are proud to work alongside E.R.B. Rail on Rail Baltica,” added Teemu Nivell, Chief Commercial Officer, Vektor.io. “What excites us most is how technology supports their teams in daily work – from design reviews to measurements – turning complex data into a practical tool everyone can use.”

E.R.B. Rail JV PS is a partnership between Eiffage Génie Civil SAS (France), Budimex S.A. (Poland), and Rizzani de Eccher S.p.A. (Italy).

The consortium is delivering a high-speed rail corridor that will connect the Baltic States with the broader European network.

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Technology from Esri, Nvidia, and Microsoft is being used in a pilot project for the City of Raleigh to better understand traffic flows and impacts. The “Raleigh In Motion” digital twin project uses AI to analyse massive volumes of data captured by real-time cameras.

The traffic monitoring software allows city officials to monitor current and historic traffic flows through key intersections at the city. Nvidia AI technology processes real-time video from hundreds of cameras around the city to identify vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians.

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These feeds are then mapped in Esri ArcGIS where city officials can analyse which intersections are congested based on time of day and day of week.

Indicators on the map turn from green to yellow to red as congestion builds up in intersections. The dashboard can even flag current events like stalled vehicles in an intersection that are impacting traffic.

By fusing real-time streaming data via ArcGIS GeoEvent Server with computer vision capabilities from Nvidia, this digital twin can help Raleigh identify dangerous intersections, reduce congestion and provide safer roadways for vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians.

With these insights, the city can better respond to current incidents and intelligently plan how to remediate problematic, and even dangerous, intersections, helping the city maintain safer streets.

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Cintoo has released Esri Experience Builder Widget for ArcGIS, enabling users to stream and interact with high-resolution, mesh-based laser scan data directly within the Esri ArcGIS environment.

The Esri Experience Builder Widget brings immersive 360-degree panoramic views and virtual inspection capabilities to ArcGIS. According to Cintoo, this is particularly beneficial for indoor and brownfield projects where conventional GIS tools often struggle to handle dense or detailed spatial data.

The integration converts terrestrial and mobile LiDAR data into lightweight 3D meshes. According to Cintoo, this maintains full point cloud fidelity while enabling teams to ‘effortlessly work’ with what were previously large, complex datasets.

Users can analyse scan data, compare it to BIM and CAD models, and manage asset tags without leaving the ArcGIS environment. Use cases include managing a large-scale facility, modernising a manufacturing line, or overseeing construction progress.

“ArcGIS is used by 70% of the largest companies globally so this is a really exciting opportunity for us to demonstrate to the Esri ecosystem how our platform brings much-needed visualisation and insight and why many Cintoo customers in Building Construction & Operations, Automobile Manufacturing and Energy, such as BP and TotalEnergies, have already integrated it into their daily workflows,” said Dominique Pouliquen, CEO of Cintoo.

“Increasingly, integrating LiDAR and other types of imagery into GIS is becoming an indispensable part of modern project workflows and we are happy to make this possible for Cintoo’s customers,” said Kathleen Kewley, Esri director of AEC global business development. “In fields like construction and facilities management, modern 3D GIS is critical for dynamic awareness of assets and processes.”

The two companies plan to continue their collaboration. Upcoming developments will further expand Cintoo’s 3D mesh technology across the ArcGIS platform, making high-resolution, streaming mesh layers accessible to GIS users.

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Since 2017, Esri and Autodesk have pursued a strategic partnership to bridge longstanding divides between GIS (geospatial) and BIM (building/infrastructure design) data.

The shared ambition of executives at the two companies is to enable engineers, planners and asset owners to author, analyse and manage projects in a unified, spatially aware environment, from design through to operations.

Initially, the two companies announced plans to build a ‘bridge’ between BIM and GIS, so that Revit models could be brought into Esri platforms and to support enhanced workflows in ArcGIS Indoors and ArcGIS Urban.

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Over time, this partnership has evolved, to include Connectors for ArcGIS – tools for Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and AutoCAD Map3D – that support live linking of GIS data into BIM software with bidirectional updates.

Today, that integration is embodied by ArcGIS GeoBIM, a web-based platform linking Autodesk Construction Cloud (also known as ACC and previously named BIM 360) to Esri’s ArcGIS. This enables project teams to visualise, query and coordinate BIM models within their real-world geographic context, according to Marc Goldman, director of AEC industry at Esri.

“GeoBIM provides a common dashboard for large-scale projects, allowing AEC firms and owner-operators to visualise GIS context alongside BIM content and object properties, even though the source files may reside in ACC,” he explains.

The technical integration now takes two distinct forms, tailored to project needs.

The first is Building Layers with ArcGIS Pro, to support detailed, element-level analysis, design review and asset management. Models retain full BIM structure, including geometry, categories, phases and attributes, enabling precise filtering by architectural element or building level.

The second is Simplified 3D Models with ArcGIS GeoBIM, introduced in June 2025, to optimise performance and agility for construction monitoring, mobile workflows and stakeholder engagement. The Add Document Models tool generates lightweight, georeferenced models from Revit and IFC files while preserving links back to their source.

Esri has also extended its partnership with Autodesk with ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma, embedding geospatial reference data directly into Autodesk’s cloud-based planning platform. Forma users can now draw on the ArcGIS Living Atlas, municipal datasets and enterprise geodatabases, all natively georeferenced. This allows environmental, infrastructure, zoning and demographic layers to be overlaid onto early-stage conceptual designs.

GeoBIM provides a common dashboard for large-scale projects, allowing AEC firms and owner-operators to visualise GIS context alongside BIM content and object properties, even though the source files may reside in ACC Marc Goldman, director of AEC industry, Esri

As Goldman notes, “Designs created in Forma inherit coordinate systems and spatial metadata, ensuring that when they move downstream into Revit, Civil 3D or ArcGIS Pro, they remain consistent and location-aware. Beyond visualisation, ArcGIS for Forma supports rapid scenario testing, such as climate risk or transport connectivity, within the context of a live GIS fabric.”

Autodesk Tandem and the broader world of digital twins have also caught the attention of executives at Esri, he adds: “Esri is working with the Tandem team to serve GIS context for customers managing clusters of buildings. This could enable Tandem to evolve into a multi-building digital twin platform.”

AI, NLQ et al

According to Goldman, Esri has been using AI technology internally for years – long before the recent surge of hype around the technology. Now, he says, AI is being deployed to automate complex GIS tasks for users, lowering the barrier to entry for non-specialists.

One example of this can be found in reality capture and asset management. Esri’s reality suite, based on its 2020 acquisition of nFrames, uses geosplatting and computer vision to create high-quality 3D objects from 360-degree cameras or video inspections.

“AI enables automated feature extraction from reality capture data, such as LiDAR,” he explains. “Organisations like Caltrans can process hundreds of miles of roads overnight. Segmentation automatically recognises barriers, trees, signage and more, making the data assetmanagement ready.”

Meanwhile, natural language query (NLQ) capabilities in ArcGIS are also paving the way for the democratisation of GIS With more AEC collaborative design solutions available, employees in disciplines that once worked in silos are increasingly connected and sharing information with their colleagues. Martyn Day caught up with Marc Goldman, director of AEC industry at Esri, to discuss the company’s focus on BIM integration Explorations in GeoBIM Technology data. Users can now perform advanced analysis without specialist training.

“Say I need a map of central London, showing the distance between tube stops and grocery stores, overlaid with poverty levels,” Goldman illustrates. “The system generates the map and suggests visualisations, making spatial insights accessible to anyone.”

Urban planning remains a hot topic. That was certainly the case at our recent NXT BLD event, where innovations were showcased by Cityweft, Giraffe, GeoPogo and, of course, Esri.

It’s a domain in which Esri has long contributed and continues to do so, with technologies to enable scenario evaluation and parametric city modelling.

As Goldman puts it: “Architects and planners need to evaluate scenarios, like population growth, by bringing in demographic and visual context. Esri’s tools ensure design choices are made in the right place, with the right influences. And with AI, the possibilities for urban planning expand even further.”

In summary, Esri’s partnership with Autodesk continues to transform the relationship between GIS and BIM data, with AI set to drive the next great wave of integration. As both companies continue to expand their cloud portfolios and ecosystems, Esri is embedding spatial intelligence, predictive analytics and automated decision support directly into AEC workflows.

The convergence of ArcGIS, GeoBIM and Forma with AI-driven insights offers the AEC industry a significant opportunity to move beyond static models towards dynamic, learning digital twins. In this way, says Goldman, the Esri and Autodesk partnership will help that industry “create a more sustainable, resilient and contextaware built environment.”

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Bentley Systems has released new resources to help developers use its iTwin Platform APIs within Cesium, the 3D geospatial visualisation technology that Bentley acquired in September 2024. The move is intended to streamline integration between infrastructure digital twins and large-scale geospatial applications.

The iTwin Platform provides a set of open-core APIs for creating and managing digital twins—data-rich virtual models used across the lifecycle of infrastructure assets. Cesium, now operating as part of Bentley, is known for its 3D globe and mapping technology and for originating the 3D Tiles open standard, widely adopted for streaming large-scale 3D datasets.

The latest release provides tutorials and example workflows that demonstrate how iTwin APIs can be used inside CesiumJS applications. Developers can, for instance, combine geospatial context streamed from Cesium ion with engineering design data managed in iTwin, and visualise both in a single environment.

Key functions highlighted in the release include:

• Data integration: Support for engineering formats from applications such as MicroStation, Revit, AutoCAD, Navisworks, and Rhino. Data is automatically converted into optimised 3D Tiles for visualisation.
• Design history: APIs allow applications to display versioned design states, enabling comparisons of alternate options.
• Metadata access: ECSQL support makes it possible to query and filter models based on attributes.
• Project workflows: Developers can incorporate tasks such as clash detection, change management, and issue tracking directly within Cesium-based applications.

Three tutorials currently available focus on adding real-world geospatial context, visualising iTwin design data in CesiumJS, and switching between design options. Bentley has said further tutorials will expand to metadata querying, navigating to individual model elements, combining multiple iTwins in a single scene, and exposing advanced iTwin APIs.

The integration reflects Bentley’s strategy following the Cesium acquisition: to bring together detailed engineering models with scalable geospatial visualisation under a single umbrella, while continuing to support open standards. For infrastructure owners, operators, and developers, the alignment is designed to reduce duplication of effort when linking project data to broader geographic settings.

The iTwin–Cesium connection is particularly relevant for organisations that need to situate detailed infrastructure data within a regional or national context, such as utilities, transportation agencies, and government bodies. It also supports use cases that involve public communication, planning, and monitoring, where both engineering detail and geographic scale are required.

By publishing these APIs and supporting resources, Bentley is signalling its intention to make its digital twin technology more accessible to developers working with open geospatial ecosystems. With Cesium now part of Bentley, the release formalises an integration that has been evolving since the company first backed the 3D Tiles standard in 2018.

Documentation and tutorials are available through Bentley’s iTwin developer portal and Cesium’s channels.

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Esri has released ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma. a new integration that brings Esri’s geospatial reference data into Autodesk’s planning and design software, providing users with a single design environment without having to switch between platforms.

ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma will also streamline the sharing of designs enriched with GIS data from Autodesk Forma to Autodesk Revit.

“AECO professionals who use Autodesk Forma will now be able to quickly update projects with the most up-to-date GIS data available,” said Eric DesRoche, director of infrastructure business strategy at Autodesk. “With access to the most accurate and current geographic information during the conceptual design stage, users can design with location in mind and ultimately deliver projects that are more sustainable, resilient and can better support local communities.”

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ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma will serve as an Autodesk extension, incorporating geographic data and geospatial services to enable greater analytics and insights. According to Esri, it will give professionals a deeper, more holistic understanding of projects connected to the social, built, and natural worlds, and give direct access to maps, layers, and other spatial data.

Included are Esri’s ArcGIS basemaps and select data layers from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.

The combination of GIS and BIM during early design and planning stages will also bring teams advanced understanding and visualization of projects.

“Our augmented reality technology hinges on visualizations that function as counterparts to the physical world, so the seamless use of public and proprietary spatial data is critical for customers,” said Dana Chermesh-Reshef, inCitu founder and CEO. “ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma’s interface is easy to use and responsive, while accessing data is intuitive for AECO professionals with even limited to no GIS experience.”

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Sensat, a visualisation platform designed to bring real-world context to infrastructure projects, has formed a partnership with Transcend, a generative-design engine for water, wastewater, and power facilities.

The two companies have developed an optimised workflow designed to automate early-stage engineering in Transcend, then stream ‘highly detailed’ conceptual BIM models into Sensat for contextual review, with feedback pushed back into Transcend. Everything is synchronised through Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC).

“Design automation only proves its worth when you can see each option on the ground and adapt in real time,” said Harry Atkinson, CCO & co-founder of Sensat. “By fusing Transcend’s generative engine with Sensat’s digital twin, owners and contractors gain the clarity to de-risk projects long before shovels hit the soil.”

“Integrating Transcend’s data-rich engineering outputs inside Sensat means teams can generate, validate and iterate designs for water plants or substations in a single afternoon—delivering infrastructure that’s not just technically sound, but genuinely constructible, affordable and sustainable,” added Adam Tank, co-founder & CCO at Transcend.

Severn Trent Water, one of the UK’s largest water and wastewater service providers, has piloted the Sensat-Transcend workflow on its Westwood Brook treatment-plant project. According to Sensat, it has helped cut design-review time by 90 percent and enabled engineers to generate dozens of treatment-plant layouts in a morning, not weeks, then visualise each option against live topography to spot constructability clashes instantly.

The workflow integration begins by defining the site within Sensat, where users can select asset footprints against a backdrop of 3D terrain, utilities, and constraint layers such as flood zones. These inputs are then used to generate multiple design options in Transcend, complete with Revit models, CAD drawings, and reports. All models and associated metadata are automatically transferred to the project’s Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) folder for governance and version control.

Sensat serves as the visualisation and collaboration hub, allowing stakeholders to explore the design in its real-world context, identify risks and opportunities, and capture field notes directly within the platform. Feedback is then pushed back to Transcend, where revised design options are generated—often within minutes.

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Cityweft, a new web-based platform aimed at architects, urban designers, property developers and municipal planners, has entered its closed launch phase, with a full public launch scheduled for 5 May.

The Cityweft platform enables users to create ‘high-quality’, customisable 3D models of cities and sites that can be used for early-stage design in CAD and BIM authoring tools such as SketchUp, Revit, Archicad and Rhino.

“Context modelling should be fast, accurate, and built for the way architects and AEC professionals actually work,” said Alexander Groth, co-founder, CEO, Cityweft.

Cityweft transforms disparate real-world datasets- such as 3D buildings, terrain, and infrastructure data – into ‘unified’ CAD-editable 3D geometry. Each mesh layer is generated separately for ‘easy customisation’.

Through the web-platform, users can find city models and data from around the world (e.g. OpenStreetMaps, Google Open Buildings, Microsoft ML Buildings and Esri Community Buildings), preview and customise directly on the platform, and then export to Rhino, SketchUp, GLTF, OBJ, STL and (soon) IFC, or connect via API.

According to the company, in contrast to other solutions that use simple extrusion geometry, Cityweft’s advanced geometry processing and proprietary algorithms produce complex and accurate geometry including close to 20 roof types. Higher quality building models not only aid design but can help deliver more reliable sunlight analysis in tools like Autodesk Forma.

Cityweft is based in Tallinn, Estonia. Users can request early access to the platform.

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AI is hard (to do well)
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Darwinism in AEC technology
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Snaptrude advances
The cloud-based BIM 2.0 software fleshes out its features in pursuit of victory over the current desktop BIM tools

Vectorworks futures
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The investment issue
With Autodesk dealing with an activist investor problem what could be the knock-on effect for customers?

Autodesk Content Catalog
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How to choose a remoting protocol
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