FIEC Newsletter – 15 Φεβρουαρίου 2022

On 8 March, from 14h00 to 15h30 FIEC will organise the next webinar in the series Making the business case for green construction. Focussing on public works, the webinar will be dealing with the greening of civil engineering and infrastructure, including measuring CO2 performance and shifting to zero-emission machineries.The session, to be opened by FIEC’s Director General, Domenico Campogrande and moderated by Kaitlyn Dietz (ICLEI), will gather a panel of speakers from different organisations, ranging from the European Commission (Anna Lupi, DG GROW) to the City of Copenhagen (Claus Wilhelmsen) and SKAO – Foundation for Climate friendly procurement & business (Maud Vastbinder). The construction industry will also be represented, among others by FIEC’s Vice President, Piero Petrucco (IT-ANCE).

The Webinar is conceived to illustrate the business case for green public works and to send a strong signal to stakeholders in the construction industry about why and how to embrace the green transition to seize the right business opportunities.

The full programme will be published soon. Registration will be open from 21 February.

On 8 February at the EU Industry Days, the EU sectoral social partners, FIEC and EFBWW, in cooperation with EBC, launched a joint Pact for Skils in Construction.The Pact was initiated by the European Commission in the framework of the “EU Skills Agenda”, and developed by FIEC and EFBWW, together with EBC, to mobilise concerted efforts among private and public stakeholders for quality investment in Vocational and Educational Training (VET).

This initiative aims at upskilling and reskilling the construction workforce in particular as regards green and digital skills. It will benefit the European construction sector and up to 3 million of its workers across the EU.

Stakeholders’ commitments will revolve around 5 key principles:

On 9 February, FIEC and the EFBWW held a thematic workshop dedicated to the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in construction. This event was organised in the framework of an EU-funded social dialogue project and linked to the EU-OSHA campaign “Lighten the load“, in which both FIEC and the EFBWW are partners.Despite the overall reduction in the number of work-related accidents and illnesses, statistics indicate that further improvement is needed in the construction industry.

During the workshop, virtually hosted by the Slovenian social partners for the construction industry, speakers had the opportunity to share their perspectives and best practices with the audience. The event gathered occupational therapists, physiotherapists, company manager,  senior lecturers and sectoral social partners from the various EU Member States.

The deadline for responding to the expression of interest on the digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the construction sector has been extended to 4 March 2022.

This study, carried out by ECORYS on behalf of the European Commission, is aimed at developing supporting actions for construction SMEs in their digital transition, leading to increased productivity, efficiency and competitiveness. The project encompasses two main actions: (1) the development of a tailored digital maturity scan and an interactive handbook for the construction sector, and (2) providing in-depth trainings to companies, to further deepen the knowledge provided in the handbook.

We kindly invite interested SMEs to contribute to this initiative by filling-in the short survey that can be found by clicking on the button here below. By doing so, SMEs will have the opportunity to learn from their peers, share their own lessons learnt, benefit from free promotion, and be the first to be informed about planned support actions