6th Newsletter
February 2018

Welcome to PROF/TRAC’s last newsletter!

The PROF/TRAC team finished a successful 3-years project this month with many achievements to be proud of. The project outcomes were presented in a successful event in Brussels on the 20 February, engaging many stakeholders in interesting discussions.
PROF/TRAC developed a European Qualification Scheme with minimum skill levels recommendations for the professions involved in the design, construction, refurbishment, and operation of nearly zero energy buildings. The scheme offers a skills mapping methodology adaptable in each country, and a BUILD UP Skills advisor-app Advisory App to assess skills and match training needs with course offers.
PROF/TRAC trained 128 certified trainers from 23 countries, who are now ambassadors deploying the courses across Europe. The Train-the-Trainer course is published as recorded webinar series available to all experts along with the open Training Material Repository collecting materials for courses.
The certified PROF/TRAC ambassadors organised several courses in Europe and have trained 1,389 professionals in 3 years. PROF/TRAC courses will roll-on also after the project, REHVA member associations are committed to keep up the trainings, at least 50 courses are foreseen in the next 5 years with 1.700 more professionals to be trained.
Read our final PROF/TRAC newsletter featuring the final project outcomes and future development of the PROF/TRAC Platform and Qualification Scheme.

Anita Derjanecz
REHVA Managing Director.

In coincidence with the Project's conclusion, the PROF/TRAC website has been updated in order to facilitate the use and dissemination of the Project's results and to foster its after project life. The new design and displacement of the contents will help the viewers to identify useful information (as the complete list of PROF/TRAC Certified Training Providers) and tools (the online PROF/TRAC Train-the-Trainers course, the nZEB Skills and Qualifications scheme, the PROF/TRAC Training material Repository).
The new layout is meant to allow a more immediate and useful consultation of PROF/TRAC resources and outputs. PROF/TRAC has reached solid achievements suitable for fostering new developments and eventual future cooperation with other H2020 Projects dealing with nZEB building skills and CPD trainings. The updated website is a fundamental platform for promoting these features and implementing an active after project life. Consult here the PROF/TRAC website: www.proftrac.eu

The PROF/TRAC European Qualification Scheme on nZEB skills aims at overcoming market barriers towards a successful design and construction process of nearly Zero Energy Buildings. It targets professionals with a higher education degree in the construction sector, the so-called white-collars. The qualification scheme is the outcome of an intensive consultation among national experts in PROF/TRAC partner countries. This work resulted in the definition of harmonized work fields, nZEB skills, nZEB skills levels and a description of qualifications across Europe. The result constitutes a solid basis to compare the nZEB skills requested to different professions and to the same profession from one country to the other. Proof of this, is the motivating news that the results of the PROF/TRAC European Qualification Scheme is already applied in two new H2020 projects, NET-UBIEP and BIMplement.Net-UBIEP aims at increasing energy performance of buildings by wide spreading and strengthening the use of BIM, during the life cycle of the building. The use of BIM will allow to simulate the energy performance of the building using different materials and components, both the to be used in the building design and/or in building design refurbishment. In Net-UBIEP the PROF/TRAC European Qualification Scheme on nZEB skills is crosslinked to BIM skills that are enabling effective and efficient realization of nZEB's, including quality insurance. BIMplement has as goal to foster interactions between different trades and professions enabled by a flexible qualification methodology for integrating technical, cross-trade and BIM related skills and competences into the workplace learning environment. In BIMplement the PROF/TRAC European Qualification Scheme on nZEB skills is used for white collar occupations and extended with blue collar occupations.

More than 300,000 Valencian energy certificates, together with Bulgaria, France, United Kingdom and Italy, available for the first time on an online platform where they can be geolocated as well as being checked for their energy refurbishment potential.
The Valencian Regional Government's Ministry of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the National Territory through the Valencia Institute of Building (IVE) takes part in the research project ENERFUND - An ENErgy Retrofit FUNDing rating tool funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission.
The collaboration in between administrations, in this case the Valencian Regional Government's Ministry of Housing, Public Works and Integration of the National Territory represented by the Valencia Institute of Building (IVE), and the Valencian Regional Government's Ministry of Sustainable Economy, Manufacturing Sectors, Commerce and Employment represented by the Valencian Institute of Enterprise Competitiveness (IVACE), both affiliated to Generalitat Valenciana, has allowed to geolocate the Energy Certificates of more than 300,000 real properties in the European project ENERFUND’s framework.
More information: IVE; ENERFUND; App.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 649473.

The sole responsibility for the content of this newsletter lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Communities. The Executive Agency of Small and Medium Enterprises is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.