BUILD UP

Every month, BUILD UP highlights publications that are covering a specific topic. The topic of the month for December is ‘Building envelope and facade technologies for efficient buildings’. Our Editorial Board is eager to receive your discussion papers, news, and articles now. Become a contributor!

The construction industry employs 13 million people across the EU27 and is a major driver of economic development. Unfortunately, it seems to be failing at attracting younger generations. Blerta Vula, BUILD UP’s Ambassador, expands on the 5 main reasons for this and gives some key points that the construction sector must address to meet the demand for skilled workers and solve this problem.

Digitalisation and digital technologies present a great opportunity for Heritage Conservation, particularly regarding our Built Heritage and its sustainable use. This can be for finding the least invasive solution for structural restoration or implementing conservation-compatible and future-proof solutions in energy retrofit of historic buildings. Professionals are needed who can understand and quantify the complex physical processes required with the help of digital tools and will collaborate with their analysis to interdisciplinary dialogue before any conservation-related decision is made. The co-operative M.Sc. on Digital Technologies in Conservation (Digitale Denkmaltechnologien) at the universities of Bamberg and Coburg aim to provide these skills.

Under the theme "Accelerating the clean energy transition – towards lower bills and greater skills", the European Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) 2023 will take place in Brussels and online on 20-22 June 2023. The calls for hosting a policy session and having a stand are now open.

Luca Angelino, Project Adviser at the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) gives some clues about how the European Build Up Skills initiative can help stakeholders through the EU to strengthen the framework for qualification and skills in the construction sector, with the focus on sustainable energy. Check our YouTube channel!

Our BUILD UP Ambassadors are the engine that expands the borders of our platform— high-ranking professionals who selflessly share their knowledge with our community and spread our values and mission nationally. Check the requirements to join our ambassador team!

Director of the consultancy UBW Unternehmensberatung Wagenhofer GmbH, Gerald Wagenhofer has been dealing for 10 years with EU projects in the area of cultural heritage and talks about the key skills a qualified worker of cultural heritage must have or the main differences across Europe.

A growing workforce crisis has been affecting the construction industry across Europe. Construction has an image problem which is holding recruitment back when it is most needed. Mike Hayes, editor of the construction industry magazine Construction Europe, looks at possible solutions to the growing workforce crisis.

Building regulations are an important tool for decarbonising the EU building stock and reach neutrality and energy efficiency targets by 2050. Policy efforts should primarily focus on energy efficiency (especially operational carbon of buildings) and measures to decarbonise heating and cooling.

Innovative techniques and technologies are more and more present in the construction sector globally. Hence, and according to the Future of Jobs report, there is a need to upskill and train the workforce, and at the same time to solve the issue of innovation and change resistance which is still affecting the construction industry. How should companies overcome these issues?

The STEP project´s key aim was to advise consumers on energy savings and implementing energy efficient solutions based on their location. The project also organised specific online and on-site training for frontline workers who were responsible for directly raising awareness among households.

Renovate Europe addresses the need to further invest in a skilled workforce in the renovation sector to reach climate neutrality and meet social goals. The main challenges are attracting workers, upskilling those already in the industry, and offering specific training programmes in-line with evolving digital trends.

Ten EU Energy organisations urge the European Commission to revise the EU heating & cooling strategy. They highlight that there is an urgent need to accelerate the roll-out of renewable and clean heating technologies in buildings and industry to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and respond to the energy crisis.

This centre for construction skills learning has been delivered by EBBA together with the London Legacy Development Corporation. The school provides the opportunity for local people to be sponsored through practical education and training. The result is an innovative and sustainable solutions and adaptable architecture.

The Louise Otto-Peters school in Hockenheim, Germany, was the first educational institution to be granted support under the ‘Efficiency House Plus – Educational Buildings’ funding programme. The newbuild combines three different school types under one roof (a pre-vocational training programme, a vocational upper secondary school, and a geriatric nurse/educator training programme) which are attended by up to 280 students in total. The school building is conformant with the Efficiency House Plus standard.

The NEBULA projects will build upon the New European Bauhaus Unlocked through Built4People partnership (B4P) endorsed Local Actions.

StreamSAVE aims to assist Member States in their efforts to deliver rapidly scalable savings and increase their chances of successfully meeting energy efficiency targets under Articles 3 (it states how each Member State shall set an indicative national energy efficiency target) and 7 (it refers to the energy saving obligations for Member States) of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). A series of activities, divided into three categories, will be carried out with the intent of improving energy-saving methodology capacities and skills of stakeholders across Europe.

The EU taxonomy is a classification system, that establishes a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities. This could play an important role in helping the EU scale up sustainable investment and the implementation of the European green deal.

The SuperTandem project aims to develop sustainable materials and manufacturing processes for the development of high-efficiency, flexible, all-Perovskite Tandem photovoltaic modules with low CO2 footprint.

On 8th November, BUILD UP hosted the webinar ‘Leveraging on standardisation for building data aggregation and analytics’, a workshop organised by the BIGG project in collaboration with their sister projects MATRYCS and BUILTHUB.

Moderated by Adrian Joyce, Director of the Renovate Europe Campaign, this session focused on the needs of today’s workforce in terms of building renovations and highlighted funding opportunities in the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2021-2027 to help regions and cities step up to the challenge.

The BUILD UP Skills Advisor app is a free tool for practitioners and skilled workers to look for opportunities for training in Europe and some specific EU countries. It also contains a community managed content repository, and can facilitate the use of micro-credentials for personal recognition and lifelong learning.

The European Skills Registry (ESR) is a web-based platform providing functions for comparing various qualification schemes and learning outcomes and allows the listing of qualified experts in a central experts database which is connected to a match-making hub.

Hosted by the Environmental Performance and Design Lab - EPDL, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion IIT, this lecture series focuses on recent advancements in building envelopes from a holistic perspective on sustainability - in which energy efficiency, visual comfort, solar control, solar harvesting, well-being, and biophilia are entwined.

The rehabilitation regulations, the Xaloc offices, the figure of the rehabilitation manager and agent, strategies, taxation or innovation and transfer will be some of the topics to be addressed in this Spanish conference on rehabilitation. It will be also possible to follow it online (sessions are in Spanish only).

This conference aims at providing new points of view on the current state, upcoming challenges, and innovations in the field of building envelope design, manufacturing, installation, operation, and dismantling. The broad scope is to ease the path towards nature‐compliant, human‐centred comfortable and efficient buildings. It is structured in four thematic chaired sessions with keynote speakers, merging international and South‐Tirol perspectives!

The BAU, the World's Leading Trade Fair for Architecture, Materials and Systems, takes place every two years. Everyone involved in the international community for planning, building and designing buildings comes together here, including architects, planners, investors, representatives of the industrial and commercial sectors, the building trades, etc.