Breakthrough technologies supporting technological sovereignty in construction (RIA) -

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Integrate breakthrough technologies derived from other industries: examples include additive manufacturing; human robot collaboration; autonomous vehicles in construction activities; autonomous maintenance, diagnostics and monitoring;
• Demonstrate the impact of the use of these new breakthrough technologies on the efficiency of resources (raw materials, water etc.), the reduction of waste and embodied CO2 emissions;
• Demonstrate the safety of these breakthrough technologies on a construction environment in cooperation with workers;
• Demonstrate a reduction of dependency for importing breakthrough technologies related to additive manufacturing, human robot collaboration or autonomous vehicles;
• Increase the wellbeing of the construction workforce concerned.

Scope

There is a global trend for higher digitalisation in the construction sector. In this context, there is a major need to ensure that construction activities in countries in Europe do not depend on breakthrough technologies the industry concerned needs to import from outside Europe to remain competitive. Currently, the construction sector is among the least automated and digitised and the most labour accident-prone sectors in the Europe. Therefore, the use of technologies such as additive manufacturing, autonomous vehicles and human robot collaboration in a construction environment is crucial to increase the degree of digitalisation of the sector. In addition, Member States are facing a shortage of skilled labour force in construction activities. In the same vein, a higher degree of digitalisation would make the construction sector attractive for younger generations and construction sites a safer working environment. Proposal consortiums are encouraged to include a wide range of stakeholders from SMEs to large construction firms.

The projects should:

• Develop, test and promote the necessary technologies, devices and systems for an highly automated construction site;
• Demonstrate all developed solutions in at least four diverse construction sites (such as roadwork, bridges, tunnels, different types of buildings, etc.) across different countries in Europe;
• Develop solutions for monitoring the wellbeing of the workforce and prevention of accidents taking into account gender and intersectional perspective;
• All solutions developed should be evaluated by the users (site management, workforce, etc.) through surveys or other means;
• Proposals should consider the development of learning resources for the current and future generations of employees, with the possibility to integrate them in existing curricula and modules for undergraduate level and lifelong learning programmes;
• Identify additional breakthrough technologies bearing an emerging serious risk of import dependency;
• Contribute to the development of new relevant standards or update of existing ones.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged, in particular with Japan or South Korea in view of the cooperation on digital technologies.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

International Cooperation

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