European Forest and Environmental Machine Operator Certificate Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Forest and Environmental Machine Operator Certificate

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Agriculture, forestry and fisheries; Recognition, transparency, certification; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal)

Project Summary

Objectives
EMOC will develop and define common basic European skills standards and assessment procedures for machine operators referring to different types of machines. EMOC will offer a reliable instrument to verify that an operator has proven his or her skills in a Europe-wide standardised assessment. This will contribute to safety and health in forest operations, to environmentally sound forest operations and it will contribute to increase professionalism and to foster mobility of forest workers across Europe.

Background
Forest, landscape and horticulture operations – green operations – in Europe are carried out to an ongoing growing portion by contractors. Contractors offer their services increasingly all over Europe. This is particularly obvious when storm damage or other disasters lead to a very high labour demand. Operating forest machines safely and environmentally friendly requires high competences. Clients of contractors offering forest operation services have to ensure that a particular operator has proper skills and competences to carry out a task without accidental damages to himself, to co-workers or others and without environmental damages. However, until today there is no pan-European instrument for green operations available which reliably and transparently provides evidence if a machine operator has got the required skills and competences.

The project partners who represent training and education organisations from the six European countries Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and one Europe-wide operating organisation EFESC will carry out the project activities in 4 work packages:

1. Opening step is to classify different machine types used in the environmental “green” sector (eg. farm tractor, forwarder, harvester, skidders, riding mowers, etc.) regarding specific unique skills. This leads to the following step to define and develop the skills and competences and to transfer these standards to the different machine types.
An overview and mutual extraction of actual applied assessments, tests, checks or selection procedures of certain machines in various countries in combination with defined specific operator skills will be produced. This will be the main basis for WP 2. This work will be carried out by all partners involved; main activities will be adding information about own procedures to a standardised template to get a synopsis of relevant skills for operating different machines. The definition of specific and typical types of machines which can serve as models for subsequent standard development will be the vital base for WP2.

2. Partners of training centres will work closely together to elaborate common standards for three previously defined machine types which ensures high quality and integrates national achievements; i.e. integrate procedures and standards which are already used by partner organisations and other actors in the field of training and education of machine operators. This is the core and the most demanding task of WP2.

3. Developing assessment criteria and procedures will start, by identifying the already existing assessment criteria which are used by the project partners. The qualified overview of criteria and procedures leads to the teamwork to find out the common base for an assessment standard which will be defined in order to become acknowledged Europe-wide.

4. The final step towards a fully applicable certification scheme is to define the criteria which EMOC assessors will have to meet to be able to carry out competent assessments. Future EMOC assessors need to be fully familiar with the standards and procedures and have to obtain the skills to carry out assessments that meet the quality requirements. Assessors will be trained to get these competences. This will be done under the auspices of EFESC based on the experience in assessor qualification and training which has been gained in recent activities (e.g. training assessors for the European Chainsaw Certificate ECC). A program of training and tests of assessors will be designed. Training will be carried out at different places (indoor, outdoor, during real operations) depending on the tasks (different kinds of assessments of the different classified machine types).

Project results
EMOC will deliver instruments, tools and procedures for a certificate for European machine operators (EMOC). EMOC will help all responsible players in green operations to employ machine operators which can evidence that they have the skills which are needed for safe and healthy work and for nature and environmental friendly operations.

The credibility and reliability of EMOC will be guaranteed by integrating the standards and procedures into the well established management and governance structures of the European Forestry and Environmental Skills Council (EFESC).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 437179 Eur

Project Coordinator

KURATORIUM FUR WALDARBEIT UND FORSTTECHNIK KWF EV*KFW & Country: DE

Project Partners

• CONSORCI CENTRE DE CIENCIA I TECNOLOGIA FORESTAL DE CATALUNYA
• European Forestry and Environmental Skills Council
• mwmac Ltd
• BUNDESFORSCHUNGS UND AUSBILDUNGSZENTRUM FUR WALD NATURGEFAHREN UND LANDSCHAFT
• Ceska lesnicka akademie Trutnov – stredni skola a vyssi odborna skola
• Stora Segerstad naturbrukscentrum