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Sustainable Energy Skills in the Construction Sector 2.0 on Sustainable Places 2021

On the 29th of October 10, EU Horizon 2020 sister projects took the chance to meet and talk about potential synergies to stimulate future public and private investments in energy-based habitat renovation.

The European Construction sector faces unprecedented challenges to achieve ambitious energy efficiency objectives, that can be met only if successful training initiatives and supporting policy instruments are put in place, acting as a springboard to stimulate the demand for energy efficiency skills. The objective is to increase the number of skilled building professionals and/or blue-collar workers across the building design, operation, and maintenance value chain (designers, architects, engineers, building managers, technicians, installers, blue-collar workers including apprentices, and other building professionals), with a specific focus on the engagement of SMEs. Recourse to skilled professionals/workers both for renovations and new constructions of buildings and district-scale solutions should be made more attractive and easier for companies and homeowners alike.

These challenges gathered INSTRUCT, BUSLeague, TRAIN4SUSTAIN, HP4All, The nZEB Roadshow, PRO-Heritage, CraftEdu, BIMzeED, ARISE and SEEtheSkills projects on Sustainable Places 2021 conference during 90-minutes workshop: Sustainable Energy Skills in the Construction Sector 2.0, which is the second joint meeting of this group established in May 2021.

Just after the overview of the workshop presented by Mohaddeseh Maktabifard from R2M Solution, we had welcomed Amandine DE COSTER from EU Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Our special guest had a speech about the BUILD UP Skills initiative, its history since 2011, main focus areas and targets. All projects presented introduction of the learning units and/or training modules developed, target groups, progress, number of trained professional and lessons learned, and future plans as follows:

  • INSTRUCT: Ioan Petri, Cardiff University
  • BUSLeague: Marion Jammet, Irish Green building Council
  • TRAIN4SUSTAIN: Uli Jakob, JER
  • HP4All: Padriac O’Reilly, LIT
  • The nZEB Roadshow: Dragomir Tzanev, Eneffect
  • PRO-Heritage: Gerald Wagenhofer, UBW
  • CraftEdu: Jiri Karasek, SEVEn
  • BIMzeED: Jose Lucas, ITEC
  • ARISE: Paul McCormack, Belfast Met
  • SEEtheSkills: Lihnida Stojanovska-Georgievska, UKIM

In the end the discussion was wrapped up with a Q&A session. This event will be followed by the publication on MDPI portal and the next meeting with some of the projects is planned on 14th October 2021 at The Joint Conference CIB W78 – LDAC 2021. Join us there!

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