The construction sector is one of the main drivers of the EU economy, with a high share of turnover of regional companies and a large share of the total job market. These market actors play a huge role in achieving the EU’s climate and energy efficiency goals. Public procurement takes the single biggest share in financing renovations and construction projects. Both economically and socially it is a challenge to raise the level of construction projects in terms of sustainable energy, especially in today's circumstances with the energy-economic crisis and work migration. Comparability of national qualifications and sustainable energy skills is key for increased transparency and penetration power in the market. TRAIN4SUSTAIN aimed to stimulate further demand for skilled construction sector professionals (architects, contractors, SMEs and workers) through raising acceptance of regional and national qualifications and skills on the EU construction market.
Due to the continuing transformation process, low national capacities, work migration of young professionals, and the ongoing demographic changes in many of the EU27 countries, the loss of know-how and innovation capacity of the construction sector has intensified. Nowadays, there are big discrepancies across the member states in terms of the availability of and demand for skilled energy experts in the construction sector and their level of skills. The accession of new countries in the EU (e.g. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia) initiated a strong work migration of building professionals from east to west (e.g. to DE, IT, HU, CZ), where currently the construction sector is facing a lack of skilled experts due to the economic boom and also to reach the ambitious climate and energy efficiency goals of the built environment. Experts moving their field of activity into another country have again to rerun through the national qualification and training schemes in a foreign country, even if they achieved the same level of qualification (e.g. national certificates).
TRAIN4SUSTAIN tackled the issue of mutual recognition, so that training accredited in one country is recognised easier in another country. TRAIN4SUSTAIN analysed existing national qualification and training schemes, not only in secondary and higher education, but also market-based (e.g. sustainability certification schemes), and made them comparable among each other through a new Skills Passport. The Skills Passport can now become a market-ready tool to compare competences and skills on a transnational level, in particular also given that the measurement of competences was also transformed into a European pre-standard via a CEN Workshop Agreement (17939_2022).
TRAIN4SUSTAIN provided new tools and web-services to facilitate a practical exploitation of the developed Competence Quality Standards, a Skills Registry and a Skills Passport for the market. It harmonised and integrated the results of existing initiatives, competence schemes and standards to promote a common understanding of competence standards in sustainable energy in the EU. The practical usability and exploitation of the common qualification standards is enhanced through a European Skills Registry (ESR). The ESR is a web-based Platform providing functions for comparing various qualification schemes and learning outcomes and allow listing qualified experts on a match-making hub.
