Reaching a Sustainable Built Environment: Our Analysis
We just published the Report: “European roadmap: BIM applied to energy performance”.
The report provides inputs to develop a roadmap to achieve the correct development of a workforce ready to face the challenges of climate changes. The report starts recalling the requirements already defined in the European directives dealing with energy performance, the use of renewable energy sources, and digitalisation. Then, starting from the outputs of the previous deliverables, the roadmap summarises the knowledge, the skills and the competences needed both on the demand side and the offer side to obtain more resilient buildings to climate change with a decreased use of natural resources.
The roadmaps intend to ensure that current and future stakeholders interested in increasing the competences in the energy and digital domains, guarantee that existing and future training materials are adequate and continuously adapt to change. The roadmaps start from an in-depth analysis of the status quo in the participating countries.
The roadmaps should allow any company, public administration, and individual to fill the gap of competences and take advantages of all innovative energy and digital technologies.
In all the partner countries there is legislation supporting both the use of renewable energy sources and the improvement of the energy performance. Digitalisation is not always compulsory, but there are many initiatives to increase the competences in this domain starting from the public tenders where the use of BIM is becoming required in many countries. Consequently, we expect a huge future increase in the demand of digital competences needed in all the supply chain.
To provide the basis for the development of national roadmaps we considered a matrix where we suggest the level of knowledge/competence of the different targets for each technology. Digitalisation should be considered an instrument and not a final goal and should be applied by any blue and white collar of the building supply chain during its whole life cycle.
The goals of the directive are the same in every country. However, some countries are a few steps ahead in its implementation. To ensure the achievement of the same level by all, it is essential to promote the implementation of new technologies on both the demand and the offer side.
Based on a survey circulated among the project partners, we can make some interesting assumptions.
There is a strong correlation between the quality of the national VET (Vocational, Educational and Training) and LLL (Life-Long-Learning) systems and the use of technologies related to energy performance in buildings. North European countries developed more reliable training systems, and as a consequence they also make a better use of RES and technologies for energy efficiency. There is a persistent need, in all countries, to facilitate the use of more innovative technologies, which are still rarely taught in formal training.
In the following two diagrams we can observe the level of implementation of the different technologies considering the average of the different countries.
The ARISE platform can provide the support needed to achieve a higher maturity level in any sector and for any target as it is based on micro-competences. Thanks to the platform, the new technologies can be introduced directly by their producers. They can use it as a mean to provide training materials to be able to design, install and maintain new equipment and/or materials that can improve the energy performance of buildings.
The implementation of digitalisation shows that the problem is more related to the lack of a full maturity on the demand side. Designers are usually ready to implement digitalisation as it facilitates their work, but if the demand of public administration and both public and private owners does not increase, it cannot be fully implemented in the supply chain. The consequence is that the owners cannot profit from the benefit of managing all the information linked to their assets in order to decrease the cost of management and maintenance.
In the following diagram we can observe the different levels of maturity as average of the situation in each of the partners’ countries.
If the constructors do not implement the model received by the designers with the information of the products and equipment used and installed, the owner gets only marginal benefit from the BIM model produced by the designer. Therefore, there is a strong need to increase the comprehension of the benefits introduced by the full implementation of BIM in the supply chain. This analysis is also useful for training program developers and providers, providing them with directions on how to profile their programs.
In this case too, the ARISE platform can be beneficial as the European chapters of buildingSMART international are working for an agreement aimed at increasing awareness of the benefits of BIM along all the supply chain using the training materials developed for the individual qualifications available for free to everyone.
For more information, download the Report here.
