First Veneto Workshop of CABEE with PAs

The event and the two workshops were made Friday 11th October 2013. From a public event, concerning the presentation of the CABEE project and issues, at the European level, on the assessment of energy and environmental sustainability, know as "From Ecobuilding to Districts energy", Urban Section of Veneto Region organised two Thematic Tables of discussions (workshops ), one with PAs and one with SMEs, on the theme "Development of tools and services to support the implementation of the energy and environmental sustainability of buildings and settlements".

SETTING and METHOD

The workshops with SMEs and Public Administrations (PAs), each with the support of facilitator, occurred in parallel and have seen a moment of joint conclusion.
From the CABEE life cycle of buildings and their neighbourhood, it was discussed, at first, on the needs of each phase and on the strengths and weaknesses of the practices and, at a later time, on the tips, suggestions and proposals regarding the definition of a structure of accompaniment for SMEs and PAs to provide a package of tools and services to support all phases of construction of sustainable buildings (new or renovation).
For the first time, PAs and SMEs meet to exchange ideas on the building issues, from the point of view of energy and environmental, to build sustainable buildings and to design possible solutions for the entire supply chain.

The participants have also wrote proposals and suggestions to submit at the next stage of the project CABEE in Vorarlberg, the CESBA Conference.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the workshop with PAs was to discuss innovative models (in form of public-private partnerships) to realize sustainable buildings and neighbourhoods, including all design phase, public tenders, buildings and monitoring of results.

STIMULATION WITH EXPERT KNOWLEDGE

Mr. Andrea Moro from IISBEE Italia introduced participants with the building life cycle and the different evaluation systems for sustainable building construction in Europe pointing out the work to create a common definition done by CESBA. Mrs. Angelisa Tormena from the SMEs eco-building cluster “Consorzio per lo Sviluppo della Bioedilizia” (CSB) introduced participants with the idea of building up a supporting structure which will be an interface among PA and SMEs starting from the current experience of support to PA by CSB in Veneto. Mr. Francesco Musco from the IUAV University of Venice presented to participants a comparative analysis of the EU, Italian and Veneto Region legislative and policy framework on the matter of NZEB and Urban Planning. Organized in a work group SMEs has then discussed in deeply needs/problems and possible service for the implementation of the different steps of the building life cycle.

WHAT HAPPENED: RESULTS AND SUGGESTIONS

When discussing sustainable constructions in Veneto public actors that play a relevant role are the local authorities (municipalities and provinces) the regional government (competences on energy, building and urban planning are shared among different departments) and the social housing agency (ATER).

The following are the main issues with regard to managing of sustainable construction project for public buildings emerging from the discussion:

– Finding financial resources: Considering the current spending review due to the economical crises, the main concerns are represented by the capacity of the small alpine municipalities to access financial resources for energy efficiency intervention in Public Building. A support in accessing funds from EU programs it is therefore welcome

– Purpose and target: lack of competences of municipal technician especially of small municipalities in the alpine territory to define sustainability elements for a new construction or renovation project.

– Design and tendering: The administrative complexity to design and manage a public tender is more relevant in a small public body (municipalities) where the technical offices are often represented by a single person delegated to all the ordinary and extra-ordinary duties of the institution. Among the main problems emerged there are: the definition of adequate specifications and indicators to capture the complexity of sustainable project and to define a system based on a public tender to guarantee the assignment of the work both with saving criteria and quality. In this case the Veneto Region could play a relevant role as common tender office or at least to define a model of public tender that each public body could adopt – especially of small dimensions – to speed up the processes.

– Project monitoring from the design to the construction: also monitoring phases are relevant. In particular the phase of control ex-post of the project is very complex. In this case the suggestion is to define a protocol/guidelines to support a long term monitoring (guidelines to support a quality certification ex-post).