Industrial Ecosystem: Construction

Submitted by Veronika Muller on 04 September 2020

Summary of the European Alliance Against Coronavirus Daily Webinar on 3 September 2020

Antonio Parapella from DG GROW opened the session with an explanation of the concept of industrial ecosystems. They go beyond the traditional view of value chains and take the interdependences of stakeholders and systems into account. Taking the example of construction, the ecosystem includes the entire life cycle, meaning construction, maintenance, refurbishment and demolition of buildings and infrastructure, manufacturing of products and equipment, and other related services.

The construction ecosystem is suffering from the crisis, with 50% reduction of activities of contractors in Q2/20, and 25% in Q3/20. EU instruments for the recovery of the construction ecosystem include:

  • Circular Economy Action Plan (March 2020)
  • Renovation Wave (October 2020)
  • Pact for Skills (July 2020)
  • Financial support for building renovation: the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Just Transition Mechanism, Cohesion funding, InvestEU, LIFE, Horizon Europe and the Modernisation Fund.

Victor Ferreira, Cluster Habitat Sustentável, shared an overview of the challenges their cluster is facing. They are dealing with the critical situation of the construction ecosystem that results from the crisis and are working on solutions for environmental questions and workforce-related difficulties. Clusters help to rethink and change “business as usual” to transform the ecosystem.

Enrique Cobreros García and Carmen Devesa Fernández, AEICE, confirmed that the challenges were already on the table before the pandemic, but are now put on the spotlight. They approach the challenges concerning health and wellbeing, environment, and digital transformation with short-term help for the companies and long-term actions to intensify innovation (H2020 projects, national and regional calls), collaboration (workshops and congress) and opening up to other sectors.

A recording of the session is available here.  

These are the presentations shown during the meeting: 

20200903 EU - Construction Ecosystem_Antonio Paparella.pdf ClusterHabitat_ PT_ ECA_VictorFerreira_03092020.pdf

Find information and recordings of previous meetings on the Role of Clusters in Accelerating the European Recovery (since September 2020) here. For European Alliance Against Coronavirus webinar summaries of March - July 2020, please follow this link.

Finally, please find information on the upcoming agenda here.

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