Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TRAIN4SUSTAIN (ESTABLISHING FUTURE-ORIENTED TRAINING AND QUALIFICATION QUALITY STANDARDS FOR FOSTERING A BROAD UPTAKE OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SKILLS IN THE EUROPEAN CONSTRUCTION SECTOR)
Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2022-10-31
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.
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.
Taking advantage of the already available transnational energy skill qualification frameworks for building professions, for instance the Prof/Trac scheme or the ones produced by the BIM community, as well as the recently developed EU framework for energy and resource efficient buildings, TRAIN4SUSTAIN integrated the outputs of these projects and established a Competence Quality Standard (CQS). The TRAIN4SUSTAIN consortium completed the target to establish a methodology, the CQS (first milestone of the project), thus assessing the competence of blue- and white-collar workers working day-to-day in the construction industry became possible. In the framework of WP2, the project partners delivered a high-class system to evaluate and communicate about the building professionals’ skills and competences in sustainable energy. Moreover, the partners made an effort to apply the TRAIN4SUSTAIN’s CQS to map more than 300 qualification schemes in the project for gathering more insight into training schemes available on the market.
In terms of IT developments, the partners successfully translated the methodology and the concept of the CQS into an online tool, which aims to support the mutual recognition of skills and competence of workers and professionals in the construction sector. Launched in the mid-2021, the European Skill Registry is a platform where qualification schemes can be viewed and compared, professionals and project owners can be supported via a matchmaking hub that takes into account the competences of applicants to do the job. Moreover, a Skills Passport can be generated for registered users based on the collected Learning Outcomes (of analysed qualification schemes) and the gathered trainings throughout Europe. All these ready-to-market tools serve the need of skills validation and recognition in Europe.
The research also focused on gathering the obstacles and needs of the public sector towards the public procurement process as well as on the analysis of the attributes of procurement (e.g. Green Public Procurement) so that the gaps could be identified and recommendations and guidelines could be formulated in line with the project's ambition of supporting the uptake of the skilled building professionals. Following a pilot public procurement by the Generalitat de Catalunya, and in consultation with relevant stakeholders, the methodology of the CQS and the applicability of the ESR were assessed and updates to the guidelines were made.
Stakeholder engagement focused on gathering feedback from the construction sector via Local Project Committees (LPCs) in the five EU Member States where the partners were active. These LPCs and B2B meetings were held to explore the exploitation potential of the project results. Numerous events were organised -- mostly online due to COVID-19 -- to collect the opinion or expert view of construction professionals and public sector representatives of the benefits of project results. With a major effort, the consortium managed to complete the CEN Workshop Agreement on TRAIN4SUSTAIN’s Competence Quality Standard making it publicly available and ready to be adopted by the industry and take it to a CEN standard.
In terms of IT developments, the partners successfully translated the methodology and the concept of the CQS into an online tool, which aims to support the mutual recognition of skills and competence of workers and professionals in the construction sector. Launched in the mid-2021, the European Skill Registry is a platform where qualification schemes can be viewed and compared, professionals and project owners can be supported via a matchmaking hub that takes into account the competences of applicants to do the job. Moreover, a Skills Passport can be generated for registered users based on the collected Learning Outcomes (of analysed qualification schemes) and the gathered trainings throughout Europe. All these ready-to-market tools serve the need of skills validation and recognition in Europe.
The research also focused on gathering the obstacles and needs of the public sector towards the public procurement process as well as on the analysis of the attributes of procurement (e.g. Green Public Procurement) so that the gaps could be identified and recommendations and guidelines could be formulated in line with the project's ambition of supporting the uptake of the skilled building professionals. Following a pilot public procurement by the Generalitat de Catalunya, and in consultation with relevant stakeholders, the methodology of the CQS and the applicability of the ESR were assessed and updates to the guidelines were made.
Stakeholder engagement focused on gathering feedback from the construction sector via Local Project Committees (LPCs) in the five EU Member States where the partners were active. These LPCs and B2B meetings were held to explore the exploitation potential of the project results. Numerous events were organised -- mostly online due to COVID-19 -- to collect the opinion or expert view of construction professionals and public sector representatives of the benefits of project results. With a major effort, the consortium managed to complete the CEN Workshop Agreement on TRAIN4SUSTAIN’s Competence Quality Standard making it publicly available and ready to be adopted by the industry and take it to a CEN standard.
The CEN Worksop Agreement on TRAIN4SUSTAIN Competence Quality Standard was successfully implemented by October 2022. The CQS was also evaluated and developed to really fulfil its potential and be a benchmark tool. The CWA is ready to be used by the industry and to support the recognition of skills and push the market towards the uptake of skilled professionals who have up-to-date knowledge and experience in sustainable energy. Parallel with this action, the European Skill Registry was tested and further adjusted to follow the methodological development. In the pilot public procurement, the ESR has been applied and demonstrated to find the competitive edge of establishing skills requirements and evaluate the applicants based on the standards to foster the broad uptake of sustainable energy skills in the European construction sector.