A Simple Test for Who Really Owns Your Digital Twin, and Its Knowledge
By Kimon + Zahra
We had just finished presenting back-to-back at the Digital Twin Summit in Denver. One presentation asked how we keep building and asset intelligence alive as applications, vendors, systems, and teams change. The other asked how we measure whether a digital twin is mature, interoperable, trustworthy, and delivering value.
In the hallways, those questions converged on something simpler:
Who really controls the digital twin, and the building knowledge inside it?
Large owners often rely on a mix of internal teams, consultants, vendors, and specialized applications to build and manage these environments. As integrations, mappings, custom workflows, and proprietary methods accumulate, the boundary between individual systems and the owner’s shared building knowledge can become blurred.
That led to one question:
If we depend on your team or system to build and manage part of our digital twin, show us what happens when we no longer want to use it, or you.
Not just: “Yes, you own your data.”
Show us.
In the first article, we asked whether owners could get back the building knowledge they already paid for. Then whether they could trust it. One test remains:
Can you keep that knowledge when the people and technology that created it are gone?
Proprietary Is Not the Problem
There is nothing inherently wrong with proprietary software. Consultants and technology companies should protect their applications, algorithms, workflows, and methodologies.
But those are different from the owner’s accumulated knowledge.
The identity of an air-handling unit, its maintenance history, and its relationships to spaces, systems, sensors, work orders, controls, and other assets belong with the owner’s facility information.
Owning the software that manages building intelligence is not the same as owning the building intelligence itself.
An Export Is Not an Exit
Most vendors can export data. But portability is not the same as exporting a CSV, BIM, IFC, file, or database dump.
The operational value increasingly lives in the relationships: which equipment serves which space, which sensor belongs to which system, which identifiers represent the same asset across BIM, GIS, CMMS, BAS, and enterprise systems, and what history must remain attached.
Show me whether the evidence, provenance, relationships, and level of trust leave with it.
If those disappear with the application, the owner may have received the data but lost the knowledge.
The goal is to preserve identity, context, relationships, trust, and meaning as information moves among systems and future technologies.
Owners do not truly control their data until they can replace the application and keep the meaning.
The Real Test Is Whether the Pieces Can Change
The real test is whether independently developed systems can communicate through shared identities and semantics, and whether one can be replaced without breaking the building’s knowledge.
If everything only works inside one proprietary dashboard, the owner does not have an interoperable digital twin. The owner has another silo.
Buildings Outlive Software
Buildings can last 50, 75, 100 years or more while software, consultants, standards, owners, uses, and physical assets change.
The digital twin has to survive those transitions.
Our Semantic Bridge work treats this as a lifecycle problem, not a handover problem: maintain enough spatial, asset, system, relationship, and operational context for the building’s knowledge to continue evolving.
If replacing a platform means rebuilding years of relationships, mappings, and history, the software has become more than a tool.
It has become the container for institutional memory.
If the building itself can move, the intelligence around it cannot be locked to one system.
Can We Measure This?
The Digital Twin Maturity Assessment Framework we are developing is not yet published, but we have already tested and presented it through Become the Building workshops, webinars, and real-building assessments.
Two dimensions are especially relevant here: Proprietary System Openness and Temporal Continuity , whether systems can exchange information openly, and whether identity and meaning survive changes in software, consultants, and lifecycle stages.
Increasingly, these can be tested against actual evidence , and some checks can even be automated.
Can the data leave? Do the identifiers and relationships survive? Can another system pick up where the last one stopped?
That is a much more useful test than simply asking whether a platform is “open.”
Can Your Tool Join In, and Leave Cleanly?
This same question can be tested in the Become the Building BIMStorm.
Reading an API is not enough. Can another application use the same rooms, assets, persistent IDs, relationships, and context, contribute what it learns back, and eventually be replaced itself?
True interoperability is proven when the next application can take over without the owner losing identity, relationships, and meaning.
That is the BIMStorm challenge: join the ecosystem, add something useful, preserve the shared meaning, and leave cleanly.
Try Mission 1: Keep People Comfortable →
The Exit Test
Perhaps every digital twin procurement needs one simple demonstration:
The exit test should be part of the entrance test.
Before signing the contract, choose a representative part of the environment , a building, a few spaces and assets, their identifiers, relationships, and some operational history.
Then say:
- Show me how I can fire you.
- Show me how the data leaves.
- Show me whether the identifiers, relationships, history, and evidence survive.
- Show me whether another consultant or application can continue where you stopped.
- Do not show me another slide about interoperability.
- Show me the exit.
The Consultant Worth Keeping
This does not have to be adversarial. The best consultants should welcome the question.
Imagine telling an owner:
Work with us because our tools and expertise create value. And from the first day, we will make sure you can leave us without losing your knowledge.
That is a stronger relationship. The consultant stays because it continues creating value, not because leaving is prohibitively difficult.
Applications will change. Consultants will change. Technologies will change.
What matters is whether the knowledge underneath survives , the identities, relationships, history, and meaning that allow the next person or system to continue the work.
Like an aspen grove, continuity is living infrastructure. It can persist through change, but only if the underlying system is deliberately protected, maintained, and renewed.
That is the owner’s responsibility: require it, test it, and keep it alive.
Call to Action
Before hiring your next digital twin consultant, systems integrator, AE firm, or technology provider, ask one question:
Show me how I can fire you.
Not because I want to, but because that may be the simplest test of whether an owner really controls the knowledge in a building, asset portfolio, or digital twin.
The exit test should be part of the entrance test.
From Fire to Forest
Applications will change. Consultants will change. Technologies will change. Owners will change too.
What matters is whether the knowledge underneath survives, the identities, relationships, history, and meaning that allow the next person or system to continue the work.
Like an aspen grove in the Rockies, continuity is living infrastructure. Individual parts may change and seasons will change, but the system can endure if the roots are protected and renewed.
That is the real goal: not simply to avoid lock-in, but to keep the building’s knowledge alive through change.
Require it. Test it. Nurture it. Keep it alive.
About the authors:
Kimon Onuma, FAIA , Architect, President of ONUMA, and creator of BIMStorm, focused on connecting BIM, digital twins, building operations, and AI into usable owner intelligence. LinkedIn: Kimon Onuma
Zahra Ghorbani, PhD , Digital twin and built-environment researcher focused on digital twin maturity, AI, asset management, and measuring how connected building intelligence creates real operational value. LinkedIn: Zahra Ghorbani
Cover Photo by BÜNYAMİN GÖRÜNMEZ
Exit sign: Photo by Jarrod Erbe
Aspen Photo by Karthik Sreenivas
