EU community of "Integrated Home Renovation Services" practitioners

Topic description

Objective:

This topic aims at developing an EU community of skilled practitioners actively involved in the local/regional implementation of "integrated home renovation services" in order to pool efforts, generate economies of scale and encourage convergence towards best practices.

Indeed, the market offer for building renovation in the private residential sector is fragmented, composed of a myriad of micro and small companies, and mostly uncoordinated. Coordinating and simplifying this offer can incentivise homeowners, nurture trust in renovation and ensure that minimum quality requirements are met, thereby increasing the rate of energy renovations across the EU, in line with objectives of the "Renovation Wave" strategy. The EU provides direct support to local implementation of "integrated home renovation services" through the Horizon 2020 and the LIFE Clean Energy Transition programmes, and the ELENA facility.

In addition, the present topic is intended to provide additional support to build bridges between existing and emerging local/regional initiatives. By fostering international collaboration and incremental innovation among "integrated home renovation services" providers, the objectives are to facilitate acceleration and quality uptake of home renovation services across Europe, support convergence towards minimum quality levels and streamlined standards, consolidate findings, debate and present coordinated proposals to policy makers, increase market recognition and strengthen trust of end-users.

The community of practice to be established must be transnational and actively involve a variety of representatives of the most relevant implementations of "integrated home renovation services" throughout Europe.

Building on best practices, this community should support collective productions, incremental innovations and joint efforts to promote "integrated home renovation services". It should facilitate dialogue and insight sharing, fostering the emergence of a common culture among participants and beyond. Particular efforts and results are expected on, but not limited to:

• Strategic positioning and business model: assessing local market gaps, attractive offer development to homeowners (in terms of quality and price of services), possible sources of revenue, associated business models, most appropriate combinations of public and private interventions, potential and conditions for dissemination across Europe, etc.
• Methodologies and tools: how to streamline and optimise the processes to deliver "integrated home renovation services"? Which tools exist and which ones could be developed? Etc.
• Skills and training needs: which new skills or new professions are needed for the implementation and effective operation of "integrated home renovation services"? Conversely, how to motivate and secure career opportunities for skilled professionals in that field? Etc.
• Partnerships with market actors: what types of partnerships could be developed? How to secure partners' commitment to deliver quality and competitive services? etc.
• Quality assurance and consumer protection policies: what quality guarantees could be offered to homeowners? How to ensure consumer protection? How should disputes be handled? Etc.

This community of practice should consolidate findings from the various experiences across Europe and propose guidance and support to emerging initiatives. It should foster dialogue within the community and beyond on cross-cutting issues. It should support the development of coordinated proposals to policy makers and actively contribute to regulatory and legislative processes at local, national and European levels, in particular by highlighting concrete situations and difficulties faced when implementing "integrated home renovation services", practical challenges and best practices.

While being specifically focused on "integrated home renovation services" aspects, proposals shall demonstrate knowledge of relevant wider initiatives (e.g. Sustainable Energy Investment Forums, ManagEnergy, BUILD UP Skills, the Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills in the Construction sector) and leverage on their results.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 2 million would allow the specific objectives to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

• Establishment of a European community of practice gathering relevant stakeholders, deeply rooted in their ecosystem and actively involved in ongoing local implementation of "integrated home renovation services"
• Number, diversity and quality of stakeholders actively involved in the community. This could include, but not be limited to, public authorities, consultants, architects associations, craftsmen associations, homeowners associations, citizens associations, universities, training centres, financial institutions, etc.
• Number, nature and quality of planned collective outputs, distributed between the main categories outlined in the scope section above. In particular, guidance and support proposed to emerging initiatives
• Number, nature and target audience of communication materials
• Data and guidance made publically available in order to facilitate the uptake of "integrated home renovation services" across Europe. Evidence that the value of such integrated services is recognised by the market
• Number and nature of planned contributions to legislative and regulatory processes at local, national and European levels
• Investments in sustainable energy triggered by the project (cumulative, in million Euro)
• Primary energy savings/renewable energy generation triggered by the project (in GWh/year)
• Reduction of greenhouse gases emissions (in tCO2eq/year) and/or air pollutants