Earlier this week, the international Housing 4.0 Energy project consortium (virtually) convened for an Online Steering Group Meeting. The virtual meeting, which took place online due to restrictions that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic, had the main intentions of providing project management and communication information/actions in addition to updates on pilot progress, the H4.0E Digital Platform, the H4.0E Online Course and project monitoring.
During the first day of the lunch-to-lunch online meeting, project management presentations covered general planning considering COVID-19 pivots, financial briefing and risk analysis. Following updates on the H4.0E digital platform development from Open Systems Lab, EIfI-Tech provided a comprehensive overview of communication deliverables and tasks, during which discussions were held on pivots due to COVID-19 in order to ensure future project presentations at international conferences and knowledge transfer with other EU projects and initiatives. Day one ended with an overview on Work Package Long-Term Effects. The regional stakeholder group meetings for long term engagement, NWE-wide implementation plan, H4.0E Ambassadors programme, H4.0E guidebook, transnational visits and workshops and H4.0E Final Conference were all important topics discussed during the presentation.
The project-wide animation will visually demonstrate the short-term and long-term objectives and goals of the project. The animation video (coming soon) will be available in three languages: English, German and Dutch. Stay tuned!
The second day of the virtual transnational meeting was focused on pilot updates from each of the four H4.0E pilot regions. Presentations were provided on the current state of play in each of the pilot regions by the Province of Flemish Brabant / Kamp C (Belgium), the Municipality of Almere (the Netherlands), 3 Counties Energy Agency (Ireland) and EIfI-Tech (Germany). This was followed by a presentation from South West College on the development of the H4.0E Online Course. Covered topics regarding the online course included the training packages, translations of the training material, regional agendas for the training programme and lists of target groups for training sessions in the construction sector (i.e. construction companies, architects, engineers, social housing authorities, construction and housing industry players, home owners). The meeting concluded with a discussion on monitoring (equipment, methodology) from TU Delft. Each H4.0E pilot will be tested, demonstrated and monitored for varying combinations of energy and low carbon solutions, building techniques, and construction material, all standardised for EU use, to ensure successful project implementation and future scalability.
At the May 2020 Online H4.0E Steering Group Meeting, South West College (SWC) provided an update on the Housing 4.0 Energy Online Course, which will be available on PC, tablet and smartphone.