Improving competences of engineers and workers in the AEC industry for delivering NZEBs

Abstract

The energy performance of buildings directive requires from the European Union Member States to ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEBs) and after 31 December 2018, new buildings occupied/owned by the public authorities should also have the NZEB performance. The large-scale deployment of NZEBs represents a challenge for all the stakeholders involved in the construction sector, where the lack of adequate competences is identified as one of the main obstacles. This article aims to provide a solution to overcome the deficient competences related to NZEB to increase them by using roadmaps derived from Horizon projects – Fit-to-NZEB and Net-UBIEP. Fit-to-NZEB aims to increase the knowledge of architecture, engineering and construction engineers and workers in deep energy retrofit through the education in European qualifications framework levels 3–7, while Net-UBIEP seeks to develop the schemes for using building information modelling (BIM) throughout the whole building life cycle to increase energy performance. The results from both projects show that it is inevitable to act soon to make the energy efficiency targets possible to fulfil. The integrated design process and strengthen control on the construction site should be carried out perfectly as they are the most critical parts in delivering NZEBs and all this managed by BIM to minimise information loss and to improve the design of details. To achieve this, professional competences of all the stakeholders in delivering NZEBs must be improved which could be done by implementing the knowledge from these projects.