Good practice:

Training Institutions in the Building Sector

Following the global economic crisis in the building sector, contributions by companies to the sectoral support organizations were halved. To provide qualified services with shorter resources, a strong operation of reorganization of the training sector was performed. CNA has created a single system to unify local Training Institutions of the building sector, called RES – Edili Reggio Emilia Scuola, to incorporate all the provincial logic issues and training in the construction sector, involving all business associations and workers’ organizations in Reggio Emilia. The aim is to:
• provide qualified training services in the areas of initial training, higher education, lifelong learning and free access training;
• disseminate operational culture of traditional construction techniques and recovery;
• develop advanced technical training with particular reference to technological, productive and design innovation of the current cycle of building;
• enhance the safety culture among operators at all levels;
• support people and businesses in developing their professionalism and technical organizational skills.
This reorganization allows to form local shared standards in terms of quality of training, workplace safety, internal innovation and advanced materials.
RES also provides SMEs with an advanced free tool to constantly monitor their construction sites, “Construction Site Dashboard” in collaboration with Municipality of Reggio Emilia to enhance legality in the sector.

By merging training institutions, also in relation to organizational operations, each business association shared their internal resources optimizing their budget.

• Savings in terms of organization resources involved;
• Easy access for enterprises and consequent savings for them;
• Strong training support.

Between 2017 and 2020, 132 enterprises have benefited from the new training support for a total amount of € 196K:
• 2017: 204 businesses (same companies have attended several courses) for € 62K;
• 2018: 132 businesses for € 60K;
• 2019: 287 businesses for € 70K;
• 2020 (pre-Covid): 13 businesses for € 4K.

• Previous balance among associations and training schools;
• Simplification of the management figures;
• Simplification of the boards of directors;
• The whole merging process.

The model of unified system of training institutions of the construction sector is fully replicable in other European countries. However, it must be customized according to the specific territorial characteristics of the different European socio-economic context. The project contributes to improve systemic resilience towards frequent crisis of the construction sector by promptly responding to innovation needs that may help repositioning enterprises and anticipating shocks and changes.