GreenConServe

GreenConServe sets out to improve the innovation support framework for green service innovators in the construction sector. The project is to design, test and implement a two-step voucher scheme providing access to technical and business support to service innovators in the construction industry in Norway, France and Germany. It involves a public-private partnership with professional associations organising trainings and national innovation agencies providing public funding for the vouchers. The long-term impacts aim at developing a truly European market for comprehensive innovation support services.

Around the physical construction works, a host of knowledge intensive service companies is active in the planning, design, integration of disciplines, monitoring and management of building works. These innovators are crucial for the sector’s paradigm shift to a situation where the built assets are service arenas designed to supply and facilitate a set of environmental and other functional performance services throughout its total life-cycle.

The innovation potential for sustainable construction is tremendous. Yet, too few companies innovate. We face a bottleneck in the innovation value chain calling for public action due to its complexity, the high number of actors involved and a chicken-and-egg situation where supply and demand for innovative construction services currently meet at sub-optimal levels.

While ultimately benefiting SMEs, the aim of the project is not to support SMEs directly, but rather to create an optimised supportive framework for service innovators in cooperation between national innovation agencies, technical and business innovation professionals, and influential market players.

Activities

• To describe the specific sector needs for innovative services in a 15-year perspective

• To collect and adapt a sector-specific technical and business support toolbox

• To reach and recruit potential voucher applicant SMEs through a series of innovation training workshops to 375 SMEs in Norway, France, Germany, UK, Finland

• To specify and implement an innovation voucher scheme for access to technical and business expertise for SME innovators

• To promote the widest use and market uptake of sustainability and innovation-enabling standards

• To investigate and promote the use of Structural and Cohesion Funds for voucher-based innovation support platforms

• GreenConServe will further establish a “LIONS”-group of influential players in the construction sector (large companies and public procurers) and associate them to the activities in view of access to first-users for innovative services to come out of the support. 
  

GreenConServe brochure published

Green service innovation vouchers presents GreenConServe's experiences from testing voucher schemes for sustainable construction service innovators. The brochure presents the findings and outcomes of the GreenConServe project, including case studies demonstrating how the vouchers were used in the different countries involved and recommendations for future voucher schemes.

Please download the brochure here.

Partners

Greenovate! Europe EEIG G!E, Belgium

OSEO, OSEO France

Innovation Norway / Innovasjon Norge, IN Norway

Norwegian Defence Estates Agency / Forsvarsbygg NDEA, Norway

Project Management Jülich/ Projektträger Jülich, Jülich Germany

Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment, CSTB  France

German Council for Sustainable Building, DGNB Germany

Polish National Energy Conservation Agency/

Krajowa Agencja Poszanowania Energii S.A., KAPE Poland

Catenda AS, Norway

Mediaconstruct, MC France

Institut for Applied Building Informatics e.V., IABI Germany

Contact

Katharina Krell

Managing Director

Greenovate! Europe EEIG

Rue d'Arlon 63-65 - 1040 Brussels - Belgium

Email

Tel +32 2 400 1005 - Fax +32 2 400 1009