Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BUSLeague (Dedicated to stimulate demand for sustainable energy skills in the construction sector)
Période du rapport: 2021-12-01 au 2023-02-28
With many sectors turning towards sustainable energy use, the construction industry demands a skilled workforce and experienced capacity building. The EU-funded BUSLeague project adresses and controls these challenges. The project paved the way for an European recognition of energy skills in conjunction with improving training methods and techniques already demonstrated by EU and national initiatives such as BUILD UP Skills and Construction Skills. BUSLeague focused on a combination of mutual recognition of energy skills, awareness raising, capacity building and legislative changes. SMEs will be involved by engaging local and regional workforces.
The overall aim of BUSLeague was to address and overcome the challenges of the stimulation of demand for energy skilled workforce (demand side), along with hands-on capacity building to increase the number of skilled workforces across the building design, operation and maintenance value chain (supply side). BUSLeague worked on this objective by paving the way for a cross European recognition of energy skills, through developing and implementing means needed for this recognition, such as a harmonised qualification framework and a register of trained and recognised people. Together with these activities has been worked on the upscaling of successful training methods and techniques which have already been developed in previous EU and National initiatives such as BUILD UP Skills, and Construction Skills. BUSLeague focused hereby on a blend of four elements: mutual recognition of energy skills, awareness raising, capacity building and legislative changes.
Implementation is done at country specific and regional levels; based on a blend of measures to stimulate demand complimented with hands-on and practical upskilling of involved local and regional workforce. In this way engagement of SMEs was ensured and results could be adapted to country specific needs and challenges. BUSLeague consisted of a coalition of former BUILD UP Skills and Construction Skills projects. The partners experienced that their belief that by working together the national implementation plans and developed means will improve and become more attractive and effective, is true. Strengthening the BUSLeague team by experienced anthropology researchers and educational technology researchers worked well to prove the impact and to optimise the blends for stimulating demand and optimising learning transfer of applied learning means and materials.
The overall aim of BUSLeague was to address and overcome the challenges of the stimulation of demand for energy skilled workforce (demand side), along with hands-on capacity building to increase the number of skilled workforces across the building design, operation and maintenance value chain (supply side). BUSLeague worked on this objective by paving the way for a cross European recognition of energy skills, through developing and implementing means needed for this recognition, such as a harmonised qualification framework and a register of trained and recognised people. Together with these activities has been worked on the upscaling of successful training methods and techniques which have already been developed in previous EU and National initiatives such as BUILD UP Skills, and Construction Skills. BUSLeague focused hereby on a blend of four elements: mutual recognition of energy skills, awareness raising, capacity building and legislative changes.
Implementation is done at country specific and regional levels; based on a blend of measures to stimulate demand complimented with hands-on and practical upskilling of involved local and regional workforce. In this way engagement of SMEs was ensured and results could be adapted to country specific needs and challenges. BUSLeague consisted of a coalition of former BUILD UP Skills and Construction Skills projects. The partners experienced that their belief that by working together the national implementation plans and developed means will improve and become more attractive and effective, is true. Strengthening the BUSLeague team by experienced anthropology researchers and educational technology researchers worked well to prove the impact and to optimise the blends for stimulating demand and optimising learning transfer of applied learning means and materials.
The first result of the BUSLeague project is the qualification for recognition of skills. With this qualification people and organisations can describe and ask for the skilled craftsman they need for their energy transition projects and develop trainings to get craftsman with these skills, both blue-collar and white-collar. To adapt the qualification to the needs from the field, a stakeholder consultation process was held. This qualification is made public and already in use in other projects and the development of trainings.
The second result is based on research by the project partners to the barriers (technical and legal) to the use of "energy efficiency/nZEB" training clauses and pilots to work with them in their countries. Experiences were gathered and all information was combined in guides on procurement policies and financial mechanisms with the energy efficiency clauses. The results were disseminated to governments and resulted in procurement procedures and adapted financial mechanisms that still use the training clause.
To increase the demand for quality energy efficiency and hence further incentivise building professionals and construction workers to upskill, awareness campaigns were carried out at DIY/Hardware stores as a place where to interact with the public willing to carry out an EE renovation. As a third result, experiences and materials are collected in a guide on awareness raising and brought in practice in most of the countries, ongoing after closing of the BUSLeague project.
The fourth result is a broad collation of relevant upskilling content and resources (curricula, presentations, handbooks, demos, e-tools, methods etc.) from previous national and European projects, both digital and physical that the BUSLeague team identified, assessed and collated in some public deliverables together with means for recognition. This collation was used to develop practical training to train people from SMEs for the skills as described in the qualification framework. To hold them available after the project duration, collaborations with training centres, content providers, product manufacturers etc. are established.
As a fifth result, every of the 6 BUSLeague national teams (NL, FR, BG, SP, IE, AT) developed and implemented a National Implementation Plan (NIP) to adapt the developed means to and use them in the local context of each of the partners, every. This in order to build up and disseminate the collection of evidence-based stimulation of demand and upskilling measures. In all countries activities from the National Implementations go on after the project duration, such as trainings, legislative changes, awareness rising, and collaborations with different groups of stakeholders.
Alongside these activities, effectiveness of the project was evaluated both from the ethnographical and educational perspective to understand the value of the means and methods. This leads as a six result to the Evaluation123 method for assessing trainings from an educational perspective. This method, made public, is developed in a way that it could be used independently.
The project started besides the development of the qualifications framework with a short-term ethnographic research across the building design, operation, and maintenance value chain. This research was continued during the implementation. This leads as a seventh result to a lot of ethnographic insights in both the value chain and in working in practice on stimulating demand for and upskilling of craftsman for the NZEB built environment.
To foster learning from each other and dissemination of lessons learned in the EU network BUSLeague worked with an internal learning community, including presenting results to each other on every consortium meeting. Results from the National Implementations are shared in published stories and used to enrich the results with experiences from the field.
During the whole project was worked on a proper communication and dissemination of the experiences and results by the consortium. To sustain the results of the project, the partners developed plans for dissemination and exploitation on national and European level. All partners are involved in other national and EU-projects related to the same topics, including the BUS-projects to develop the new roadmaps on skills. In this projects BUSLeague results are disseminated and used now and in the future.
The second result is based on research by the project partners to the barriers (technical and legal) to the use of "energy efficiency/nZEB" training clauses and pilots to work with them in their countries. Experiences were gathered and all information was combined in guides on procurement policies and financial mechanisms with the energy efficiency clauses. The results were disseminated to governments and resulted in procurement procedures and adapted financial mechanisms that still use the training clause.
To increase the demand for quality energy efficiency and hence further incentivise building professionals and construction workers to upskill, awareness campaigns were carried out at DIY/Hardware stores as a place where to interact with the public willing to carry out an EE renovation. As a third result, experiences and materials are collected in a guide on awareness raising and brought in practice in most of the countries, ongoing after closing of the BUSLeague project.
The fourth result is a broad collation of relevant upskilling content and resources (curricula, presentations, handbooks, demos, e-tools, methods etc.) from previous national and European projects, both digital and physical that the BUSLeague team identified, assessed and collated in some public deliverables together with means for recognition. This collation was used to develop practical training to train people from SMEs for the skills as described in the qualification framework. To hold them available after the project duration, collaborations with training centres, content providers, product manufacturers etc. are established.
As a fifth result, every of the 6 BUSLeague national teams (NL, FR, BG, SP, IE, AT) developed and implemented a National Implementation Plan (NIP) to adapt the developed means to and use them in the local context of each of the partners, every. This in order to build up and disseminate the collection of evidence-based stimulation of demand and upskilling measures. In all countries activities from the National Implementations go on after the project duration, such as trainings, legislative changes, awareness rising, and collaborations with different groups of stakeholders.
Alongside these activities, effectiveness of the project was evaluated both from the ethnographical and educational perspective to understand the value of the means and methods. This leads as a six result to the Evaluation123 method for assessing trainings from an educational perspective. This method, made public, is developed in a way that it could be used independently.
The project started besides the development of the qualifications framework with a short-term ethnographic research across the building design, operation, and maintenance value chain. This research was continued during the implementation. This leads as a seventh result to a lot of ethnographic insights in both the value chain and in working in practice on stimulating demand for and upskilling of craftsman for the NZEB built environment.
To foster learning from each other and dissemination of lessons learned in the EU network BUSLeague worked with an internal learning community, including presenting results to each other on every consortium meeting. Results from the National Implementations are shared in published stories and used to enrich the results with experiences from the field.
During the whole project was worked on a proper communication and dissemination of the experiences and results by the consortium. To sustain the results of the project, the partners developed plans for dissemination and exploitation on national and European level. All partners are involved in other national and EU-projects related to the same topics, including the BUS-projects to develop the new roadmaps on skills. In this projects BUSLeague results are disseminated and used now and in the future.
In order to strenghten the dialogue between EU-projects; BUSLeague joined a group of collaborating Sister projects. This group started as an initiative from Sustainable Places 2020. As part of this several articles are written together, including one that was presented at Clima 2022. BUSLeague took also part in a Horizion Results Booster project to stenghten dissimination of the results.
Reached is energy saving of 27 GWh/a (proposed: 13 GWh/a) due to a nearly double amount of trained people and organisations that take up BUSLeague means.
Reached is energy saving of 27 GWh/a (proposed: 13 GWh/a) due to a nearly double amount of trained people and organisations that take up BUSLeague means.