Abstract:

The project title is "Advanced Infrastructure for Knowledge Based Services for Restoring Buildings". It makes part of the funding program of Theme 4 - of the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission. It is a sub-program entitled Project Collaboration Aimed at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The project has a total funding of about 1.9 M € and a total cost of about 2.6 M €. It has fifteen partners from five countries: Portugal, Italy, Germany, France and Spain. The increasing number and complex work in the construction industry, particularly for the renovation, restoration and maintenance of buildings of old buildings, often belonging to buildings of architectural and cultural heritage, suggests a systematic and sophisticated approach allowing access to advanced and knowledge about the processes and materials of construction in this area. Innovative solutions using collaborative networks of knowledge and involving business partners, SMEs, and research and development (RD) need to be created and tested. Thus, SMEs that deal with the maintenance and repair of buildings are faced with two problems like:

a) Being able to respond to increasing demands for the implementation of the rehabilitation processes, application expertise, process technology and new materials, and ensure a high satisfaction of the work owners. All this is accompanied by pressure to reduce material and energy consumption and hence create a need for SMEs to have access to knowledge about other works and other contractors in the industry. To facilitate this ongoing access to knowledge components for application in different projects the project proposes an efficient collaboration between SMEs and RDs. Such knowledge will be of added value for purposes of learning and training. Innovative solutions in collaborative networks of knowledge are based on learning in a two-way procedure between SMEs repositories and RDs functioning.

b) Establish closer collaboration within the sector through an alliance of SMEs and RDs. This may create cooperative teams to handle complex works. Networking will ensure higher efficiency of processes and integration of services with added value for engineering rehabilitation. Solutions may support pace of economic development based on knowledge-based systems that have been developed using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This may be used in infrastructure, in tools and in services supporting the creation of integrated knowledge networks. Such systems need to be integrated with learning systems that must support the organization with training on topics specific to engineers and technicians. These solutions for users of ICT should be accessible, friendly and intuitive to use by SMEs in terms of cost and complexity.

The project has ended and presents four types of e-learning courses for professional continuing development. The four types are modular courses, innovation cases, complete cases and wikitraining. These types have been tested in several collaborative spaces and all types of companies and professionals have participated. The examples are available for evaluation and improvement.

Keywords:

Training, ICT, e-learning, continuing engineering education.