Interview with Carlos García, Civil Engineering and Building Technical Officer and Rocío de la Rosa, Business Development Consultant at Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA)

What does an EU level replication plan consist of?

One of the main objectives of HP4ALL is to facilitate the EU-wide stakeholders’ early consideration of its findings and the seeding and adoption enhancement of its proposed practical recommendations, particularly throughout the BUILD UP Skills and Construction skills community and the three HP4ALL Observer Countries (Croatia, Portugal, Romania) who will follow the HP4ALL project closely and seek to apply learnings within the timeframe of the project. This will also help create interlinkages and knowledge transfer between different regions around the EU.

To this end HP4ALL will carry out a Replication Plan consisting of a number of knowledge transfer and replication facilitation actions targeting, mainly but not only, the heat pump technology main stakeholders:

Clusters, through a set of train-the-trainer sessions to showcase and allow the discussion of possible adaptation and implementation pathways for the most promising, proven and validated, experiences detected during HP4ALL implementation through different sources (stakeholders engagement, expert groups, surveys, workshops, etc.). A practical handbook will be also prepared and widely publicized.

Public officers and policy makers, through a set of capacity building dynamic workshops for 45 attendees in each HP4LL represented region, wherein procurement/specification issues relevant to heat pumps adoption will be addressed, with a view to facilitate public officers to include skills requirements in their procurement documents. In parallel, broader audience events will be also conducted, particularly a pan-European symposium for public administrations.

All these measures will provide a starting point for improving the legislation in force and triggering new legislative initiatives.

How is CTA going to perform that?

CTA will lead in close collaboration with the rest of the HP4ALL consortium the design and implementation of the already mentioned EU Replication Plan and Roadmap.

It will also involve Andalusia as one of the three Pilot Regions (together with Austria and Ireland) wherein to implement the HP4All Package by organizing:

1.      One of the train-the-trainer sessions for cluster managers and innovation agents

2.      One of the dynamic workshops for public bodies

3.      The awareness campaign in Andalusia for home and building owners and tenants.

CTA will also contribute to the implementation of the HP4ALL dissemination and communication campaign through its participation in three online webinars to share the project progress and results.

CTA, as a 15-year-old regional innovation-oriented industry cluster and public-private partnership, has got a long-standing experience in working as an interface between business and administration for technology and innovation policy formulation and implementation, and as such is the ideal organization in Andalusia to develop and implement the replication roadmap.