BUILD UP

The European portal for energy efficiency and renewable energy in buildings

BUILD UP Skills

Launched in 2011 by the European Union, BUILD UP Skills is an initiative designed to strengthen the skills and qualifications of professionals in the construction and building renovation sector across Europe. The initiative has been supported by successive EU funding programmes: first under Intelligent Energy Europe, then Horizon 2020, and currently under the LIFE Clean Energy Transition framework. The initiative is managed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) of the European Commission.

BUILD UP Skills supports the EU Pact for Skills and in particular the Pact for Skills in the construction sector, signed by social partners in 2022. This Pact sets out the ambition to promote upskilling and reskilling of 30% of the workforce each year across the industry, meaning approximately 3,8 million workers each year by 2030.

The initiative’s scope covers all actors along the building value-chain: professionals (from site operatives to designers and project managers), employers and companies in construction and renovation, public authorities, building owners, and tenants.

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Key intervention areas

Skills intelligence : generating and deploying data, analysis and foresight about skills gaps and labour shortages to support the green and digital transition of the built environment.

Skills development : fostering the creation or upgrading of training programmes and qualification pathways covering all dimensions of building decarbonisation.

Skills uptake : promoting measures that stimulate demand for skilled professionals, for example through awareness and outreach activities, digital registers and credentials, and embedding skills requirements in public-procurement and renovation programmes.

Achievements and tools ready for roll-out

Over the years, BUILD UP Skills has supported a broad portfolio of projects that have tested and validated innovative tools, methods and institutional frameworks. These include:

Assessments of skills-gaps, stakeholder-endorsed action roadmaps and coordinated implementation frameworks.

In thematic priority areas such as deep renovation, nearly-zero-energy buildings (nZEB), heat-pump installation and servicing, Building Information Modelling (BIM), circular-economy construction techniques, and more.

Training on-site during renovation works, digital platforms, augmented and virtual-reality modules, blended learning implementations.

With an emphasis on engineering new skills and innovative delivery models rather than the organisation of large-scale generic training.

Awareness-raising campaigns, skills passports, registers of trained professionals, and the integration of competency criteria in public-procurement and renovation-funding instruments.

All these methodologies and tools are now available for replication and scaling-up at national and regional level. 

BUILD UP Skills offers a strategic framework for mobilising Europe’s construction workforce and helping it adapt to major transitions — from globalisation and digitalisation to green and social — to secure a sustainable, qualified and resilient building-sector workforce for the decades to come.

Access to the projects
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EU Exchange meetings are organised periodically to foster the exchange of expertise and experience across a range of country-specific and common challenges faced by the building sector in each Member State.

Discover more EU Exchange Meetings