"The ""BLENDED MOBILITY WITHOUT BORDERS"" project brought together vocational institutions from the partner countries of the CREDCHEM project funded by DG Education and Culture and the Erasmus Plus project VOCFLO (florists), as well as new partners in the chemical industry, e.g. from Spain.The mobility project set itself the task of further consolidating, testing and, if necessary, expanding the results of CREDCHEM and VOCFLO (learning units and measuring learning outcomes). For this purpose, apprentice mobilities were prepared in terms of content and organization. BLENDED MOBILITY WITHOUT BORDERS thus supported the further testing and introduction of ECVET in the chemical sector and in floristry. This was done by using proven CREDCHEM learning outcomes units for the work process oriented training in chemical labs and the VOCFLO learning outcomes units as well as using the Web 2.0 based learning platform ChemNet.The mobilities served to further deepen the relationships with the selected educational institutions, to exchange experiences among teachers as well as between apprentices and pupils, and to initiate impulses for a stronger cross-border cooperation. Each year, approx. 15 high-performing trainees for chemical and biological laboratory technicians, pharmacists and florists were sent to partner institutions in CZ, SK, IT, ES and NO, for a maximum of two week. In addition, so-called staff trainings were carried out to improve personal, technical and sometimes social (intercultural) skills of educational staff.As part of these mobility activities, the respective tasks for completing the corresponding CREDCHEM / VOCFLO learning outcome units are worked on at the partner institutions. Processing was done by using ChemNet. The platform serves on the one hand to document work progress and as a communication platform.The project BLENDED MOBILITY WITHOUT BORDERS supported the initiative ""Establishment of a European educational alliance for the chemical sector"" (CREDCHEM-Network), as well as the anchoring of the EU network for floristry (VOCFLO).The mobilities strengthened the European dimension of vocational training, promoted the technical, linguistic and IT skills of the participants, increased transparency between the European professional qualifications and supported development common tools for quality assurance in VET.The results of BLENDED MOBILITY WITHOUT BORDERS were integrated into the structures of the existing CREDCHEM-NETWORK and VOCFLO and were transferred into the training structures of the participating countries."

EU28 currently generates 461 million tons per year of ever more complex construction and demolition waste (C&DW) with average recycling rates of around 46%. There is still a significant loss of potential valuable minerals, metals and organic materials all over Europe. The main goal of HISER project is to develop and demonstrate novel cost-effective technological and non-technological holistic solutions for a higher recovery of raw materials from ever more complex C&DW, by considering circular economy approaches throughout the building value chain (from the End-of-Life Buildings to new Buildings). The following solutions are proposed: - Harmonized procedures complemented with an intelligent tool and a supply chain tracking system, for highly-efficient sorting at source in demolition and refurbishment works. - Advanced sorting and recycling technologies for the production and automated quality assessment of high-purity raw materials from complex C&DW. - Development of optimized building products (low embodied energy cements, green concretes, bricks, plasterboards and gypsum plasters, extruded composites) through the partial replacement of virgin raw materials by higher amounts of secondary high-purity raw materials recovered from complex C&DW. These solutions will be demonstrated in demolition projects and 5 case studies across Europe. Moreover, the economic and environmental impact of the HISER solutions will be quantified, from a life cycle perspective (LCA/LCC), and policy and standards recommendations encouraging the implementation of the best solutions will be drafted. HISER will contribute to higher levels of recovered materials from C&DW from 212 Mt in 2014, to 359 Mt in 2020 and 491 Mt by ca. 2030, on the basis of the increase in the recovery of aggregates, from 40% (169 Mt) to more than 80% (394 t) and wood, from 31% (2.4 Mt) to 55% (5 Mt);. Similarly, unlocking valuable raw materials currently not exploited is foreseen, namely some metals and emerging flows.

Background The project Blueprint for the Construction Industry gathers 3 EU umbrella sectorial organizations, along with 9 national sectorial representatives and 12 Vocational and Education Training providers (24 partners in total) from 12 EU countries with the aim of working together towards the development of a new sectorial strategic approach to cooperate on skills in the sector, and support a better matching between skill needs of companies and skills provided to workers by training centres.ObjectivesThe Skills Blueprint for the Construction Industry project aims at setting up a sustainable sectorial Alliance between key stakeholders in order to reduce skill gaps between the industry requirements and sectorial training provision, and also to contribute to support growth, innovation and competitiveness in the construction industry developing a sectoral skills strategy that will allow to better anticipate skill needs, addressing the current and future labour market shortages in the sector.ImplementationThe Construction Blueprint Project has a duration of 4 years, and is structured in different phases (denominated Work Packages -WPs-). Although these WPs are independent and have their own tasks and objectives, however, all of them are closely interconnected and co-exist at the same time. At this stage only WP2 has been finalised, since the other are initiated but whose finalisation is foreseen in the second half of the project, or are transversal WPs, ie. are implemented during the 4 years timeResultsAt this stage, the main results are: PESTLE Analysis, StatusQuo Report on Sectoral Skills, Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan, Interactive Map of good practices, SSA portal and website, LinkedIn group, all of them publicly available at https://constructionblueprint.eu/results/ (in English language)

Urgent accelerated action is required to adapt to unavoidable and ongoing climate change. Climate-resilient investments must be substantially scaled up. Public budgets will not be able to address the adaptation financing challenge alone, financing from the private sector will also be necessary. CLIMATEFIT contributes to bridging the resilience financing gap by providing critical insight and building the capacities of Public Authorities (PAs) to attract and orchestrate various public and private funding & financing sources, and of Financing and Investment Entities (FIEs) to discover and access resilient investment opportunities. CLIMATEFIT will experiment on a mix of 20 territories in Southern, Eastern and Northwestern Europe in their transformational pathways towards climate resilience. The journey will start by taking stock of funding & financing barriers and enablers gathered in the Financing Landscape taxonomy. CLIMATEFIT will create an ingenious Manual for leveraging finance to, 1) co-design 20 innovative investment strategies allowing to identify sources of funding 2) develop 10 credible and scalable investment plans to help better negotiate and articulate financing streams and define investment concepts, and 3) pilot 4 bankable, tailored investment cases. CLIMATEFIT will build a Pathway for FIEs to accelerate finance, test refined methods to reward climate-resilient investment and apply smart adaptation funding and financing solutions. It will establish Local Resilience Taskforces (LRTs) composed of PAs and FIEs that propose a catalytic and systemic approach to resilience financing. Led by WCF, the high-level consortium will build capacity, co-create solutions with PAs and FIEs, and inform EU adaptation and sustainable finance policies. Finally, CLIMATEFIT aims to boost resilience financing in Europe by consolidating the dynamics in LRTs, and to promote and scale its research findings through the European Network of LRTs and its user-oriented One-Stop Shop.

As an employer organization ÉVOSZ makes accessible its continuing vocational training courses abroad for the vocational teachers, practical trainers and vocational training experts working of the country’s various institutions rather than for its own employees. The most important objective of our proposed project is to promote the increase of the standard of our domestic vocational training. To this end, we are intending to provide an opportunity for the participants to learn new professional and pedagogic skills and to become acquainted with the well-established foreign examples promoting replacement of specialists of the sector. In the framework of five mobility programmes on various themes we plan to implement continuing vocational training of total eighty-fives participants. In Germany we plan to organize practical training courses on masonry, on formwork carpentry and on carpentry. We intend to present good examples of promoting replacement of construction skilled workers, the cooperation of sectoral social partners in encouraging vocational training both in Germany and in Belgium in the framework of one-week study tours. In July 2016 twenty participants in the formwork of carpentry training will receive an opportunity to obtain knowledge of the options for application and use of modular formwork systems by coordination of the Carpentry Competence Centre in Biberach. They will visit the modular formwork system producer PERI Company and will have practical training organized by PERI.In August 2016 in the framework of two-week workshop practices at Erfurt Practical Training Centre 25 masonry teachers and trainers will practice the construction of special wall structure elements which is trained in Hungary only in theory. In September 2016 ten vocational training experts will study the activities of the Vocational Training Committee of Germen Construction Federation (ZDB) as well as the cooperation of sectoral social partners in in vocational training in Germany and the initiatives of the partners to popularize construction professions and to promote replacement of skilled workers. They will also visit a Construction Training Centre where they will be informed about the curriculum and methodology of practical training in the frame of German dual training system. In November 2016 ten vocational training experts will study the cooperation of sectoral social partners in VET in Belgium. They will get acquainted with the Building Heroes interactive video program promoting replacement of specialists in the sector, with orientation of young school-leaving and problematic youngsters into the world of labour, and with the initiative promoting training of entrepreneurship in VET. In April 2017 twenty carpenter trainers and teachers will study the reconstruction of roofs according to the newest energy efficiency requirements at the workshop at the Carpentry Training Centre in Biberach. As a result of these motilities the participants’ vision will expand and become more shaded in the course of performing their practical activities in practical training centres, as well as during their visits to various educational institutions, companies manufacturing building materials and construction sites. All this will supplement their future education-instruction activities and their efforts to improve vocational training with new, creative education-methodology ideas. Participants in our masonry, formwork carpentry and carpentry projects will acquire new professional skills and pedagogic and educational methods for vocational training in the construction industry. By using their new skills acquired in the course of their work, they will assist in raising the standard of vocational training in the construction industry as well. As a result of their study tours in Germany and Belgium VET specialists might obtain knowledge of some well-established initiatives in the construction industry promoting replacement of specialists. Moreover, they will also be informed about the receiving country’s vocational training system for the construction industry, the organizational setup and the supervisory and financing system thereof. The course of implementation of our five mobility projects will be evaluated in each phase jointly by the representatives of ÉVOSZ and the host partners, who will provide also for the necessary changes in the program, if any. The outcome of the project will be presented, or made accessible, to the wide public by the sending and receiving parties, along with the participants in the individual mobility programmes, based on the pre-determined dissemination plan.