HiBiWood: Sustainable, High-Performance Building Solutions in Wood

The HiBiWood project promotes environmentally friendly, sustainable, high-performance building solutions in wood. In the near future timber buildings will form a much bigger part of
the European and international built environment. In the future sustainable high-performance buildings in wood will be designed and constructed with environmentally friendly wood
components, but some amount of steel and concrete construction materials will still remain to satisfy structural, fire prevention, moisture absorption and economic requirements.
Architects and engineering companies have already started designing high-performance modern wooden buildings. However, now higher education of designers and engineers mostly
focuses on steel and concrete buildings, and sometimes on low-rise wooden buildings. In order to satisfy the needs of the employment market, it is necessary to prepare students with
innovative applied skills in the area of design, construction and onsite construction management of high-performance building construction in wood. To educate a new generation of
students, it is necessary to develop and integrate an innovative multi-disciplinary BSc/BA study module.

Objectives:
1. To develop and deliver a new trans-disciplinary module on sustainable, high-performance wooden building systems, which meets the needs of the HEIs and employment market
representatives.
2. To improve competencies of students and teachers in problem solving and team work, innovative thinking, motivation, awareness of cross-professional project input and project
management by using PBL, learning by doing and blended learning approaches.
3. To educate all participants (students, teachers, entrepreneurs) in the field of the sustainable, high-performance building solutions in wood construction.
4. To ensure open awareness of the project results to local, national, EU level and international target groups.

In frames of the project four intellectual outputs will be developed: 1) Competency framework; 2) BSc/BA module “Sustainable, High-Performance Wooden Building Systems ” (9 ECTS); 3) E-learning platform; 4) Best Practices.
At least 18 teachers/trainers will participate in intensive training course in Finland, where competences on innovative project based learning, learning by doing and blended learning
approaches will be developed. New trans-disciplinary module and e-learning platform will be jointly developed by partners from five countries in consultation with business enterprises.
The new module will be tested in three intensive learning/teaching courses that will take place in Austria, Poland and Latvia. In total 75 BSc/BA students will be educated. Students will gain innovative trans-disciplinary knowledge in sustainable, high-performance building solutions in wood.
Stakeholders whose activities are related to construction and, in particular, wood construction, e.g. associations and private enterprises, will be involved in development of new module, therefore they will have an opportunity to share their expertise and include the topics that will help to acquire competences, required in employment market. In this way collaboration between academic and business sector will be strengthened.
At least 20 international and 40 local participants from HEIs, educational authorities and business companies will attend the international conference in Latvia, where innovative intellectual outputs will be presented. It will result in increased public awareness about the outputs of the project.