SBE16 Thessaloniki, Greece, 17-19 October 2016 “Sustainable Synergies from Buildings to the Urban Scale” Upgrading Qualifications of the European Energy Professionals in NZEB - The MEnS project E. Peñalvo-López, F. J. Cárcel-Carrasco, G. C. Christoforidis, A. Nousdilis, A. Riccetti, D. Melandri and G. K. Papagiannis

The Project MEnS: Meeting of Energy Skills An Horizon 2020 project – Coordination and Support Action (CSA) Dealing with Nearly-Zero Energy Buildings Design and implementation of a novel educational framework For energy & building professionals

Motivation and expected impact Building industry needs to be ready to deliver nearly-zero energy buildings using innovative technologies Existing training/qualification schemes don’t cover enough energy efficiency & RES issues, sometimes not attractive Close the gap between energy performance at design stage and operational performance Expected Impact: increase skills of managers/engineers increased energy savings/RES production increased employability of building workforce improved participation and skills for talented women in construction sector increased investments in innovative sustainable energy technologies

Main Goal Increase the NZEB skills Of at least 1800 building professionals - architects & engineers Enabling interaction between academia and market actors Focus on women & unemployed

Educational Framework 3 pylons: The educational courses “Front Meeting Skills”, a short-duration course based on real case studies The e-learning platform

Educational Courses (1/3) Level 7 European Qualifications Framework (EQF) Designed by 10 universities & 3 market players Common structure for all 10 EU countries Workload equal to 10 ECTS

Educational Courses (2/3) At least 40 building professionals per country per session 3 sessions will be held in each country

Educational Courses (3/3) Six Thematic Units: 1. NZEB description and policies 2. Energy performance of building envelope 3. Building services for NZEB 4. Integration of renewable energy generation 5. Energy investment evaluation 6. Building energy modelling

Front Meeting Skills 3-4 days intensive course 4 FMS planned London Cyprus 40 participants per edition 50% women/unemployed Real case studies Already held

Front Meeting Skills Cyprus FMS – July 2016 A mix of multidisciplinary presentations by distinguished speakers And group working upon a real case study of NZEB building

Front Meeting Skills Cyprus FMS – July 2016 Presentations of the NZEB case studies Presentation of ideas originating from the group working, towards NZEB transformation Groups are constructed to be multidisciplinary and have various working experiences

Front Meeting Skills Cyprus FMS – July 2016 And visits to NZEB sites To meet with energy managers, architects etc And to cross-check with the ideas born during the group sessions

Evaluation Demographic & course statistics Course questions in a 5-point scale Categories: Call for participants Objectives Content and materials Lecturers Global evaluation

Evaluation: First session (1/3) 400 professionals trained Around 50%: women engineers/architects Around 30%: unemployed More than 1200 hours of face-to-face distant learning (online/coursework)

Evaluation: First session (2/3)

Evaluation: First session (3/3)

Evaluation Conclusions (1/2) An overall positive view regarding most of the aspects of the course Introducing multidisciplinary approach has been achieved, reaching a high score Lectures were one of the strongest point in all courses The fact that the course is a post-graduate one is quite important to participants

Evaluation Conclusions (2/2) However Participants not sure about NZEB qualifications helping their career Reasons? National transposition of the EU recast Directive not yet completed in some countries Financial problems will slow down NZEB transition in some countries

Sessions in Greece (1/4) Organized and delivered by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 2 out of 3 sessions held January-July 2016 100 participants out of 400 applicants 3rd session call already announced http://diaviou.auth.gr/nzeb

Sessions in Greece (3/4) Participants divided in multidisciplinary teams Project to accomplish: Transform a University building into NZEB based on a realistic financial scenario

Sessions in Greece (4/4) Evaluation for participants in 2 steps: Team project presentation & evaluation by instructors and other teams Personal knowledge test Test results – average score: 78% - 1st session 91% - 2nd session All project assignments were well above average

Evaluation in Greece (1/3) EMPLOYMENT STATUS

Evaluation in Greece (2/3)

Evaluation in Greece (3/3) Out of 85 total participants in the evaluation procedure

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!