Skilled to be a Fire Expert Erasmus Project

Project Title

Skilled to be a Fire Expert

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

BACKGROUND
Every year, Europeans are surprised by some major catastrophic fires in buildings, such as the Grenfell Tower and Notre Dame fires. Lately, more common are fires caused due to modern lifestyles, e.g. on waste disposal sites, batteries for electric vehicles, etc. While the general public is focused on intervention response, Fire Experts are looking for the causes of these fires and how to prevent them from recurring. Analysis of major fires which are causing huge economic, environmental and cultural damage, indicates that response of industry and fire safety community to new fire risks is too slow.
The exchange of knowledge on an impact of new products & services and research results on fire safety related issues among Fire Experts seems insufficient. Fire Experts are not just the Fire Engineers, involved in design of new buildings, but also all the other experts working on fire safety during entire life-time of buildings, such as architects, civil, mechanical, electrical and other engineers, working in design firms, people from construction and other industries, responsible jurisdictions, fire departments, etc. The access to this broad community of Fire Experts lies in the hands of Lecturers & Trainers at Universities, Fire Protection Associations and other VET providers of fire safety knowledge. They can present the meeting point of fresh incoming information, process it with their knowledge in a non-commercial way and distribute it among Fire Experts.
Remark: the estimation is that there are several hundred Lecturers & Trainers in each participating country, and at least ten times more of engineers and others, working as so called fire experts. The problem is that the definition of fire expert is not the same in different countries.
Since “Two heads are better than one”, the respond of fire safety community to new fire threats should be based on data from as wide information base as possible, include all available human resources of VET providers and provide means for suitable process and flow of knowledge and solutions.
OBJECTIVES
In this context, in order to respond the need of properly processed and fast flow of information on new fire safety challenges, needed for better and faster response of Fire Experts, the objective of this project is to develop a tool for Lecturers & Trainers of Fire Experts: Online Learning Platform for Fire Expert Trainers (The Platform) on designing the fire safety of buildings based on state-of-the-art knowledge. Important goal of the project is to establish ongoing connection between the online platform and VET providers which usually have at disposal to latest knowledge.
ACTIVITIES, METHODOLOGY, PARTICIPANTS AND RESULTS
The Platform will be managed by logged-in Lecturers & Trainers from different countries, but accessible to all people, available in English, and, in long-term, depending on activities of users, in national languages. It will provide state-of-art knowledge about outcomes on new approaches from different fields of fire safety, i.e.: Risk Assessment / Prevention of fire spread to adjacent buildings, taking into account new products for facades / Fire resistance of structures and spread of fire inside the building including new products for linings, use of wood, etc. / Evacuation including people with disabilities / Fire detection and alarm systems / Smoke control / Automatic fire extinguishing systems / Arrangements for firefighters: water supply and access of emergency vehicles, at landfills. Training courses for each field will be prepared by carefully selected experts with relevant knowledge coming from universities, fire associations or companies from three EU countries, with a total of six partners.
The Platform will include an online training course for logged-in Lecturers & Trainers of Fire Experts, and a toolkit (set of tools, procedures, and supporting materials) for effective response to new challenges.
In order to assess how effective is the Platform and all it’s tools in improving of competences, it will be tested with Lecturers, Trainers and Fire Experts from three EU countries. The Lecturers & Trainers will put in practice what they have learnt by carrying out some courses with Fire Experts. Using the results from the testing, the partners will define the necessary improvements to ensure that the Platform delivers the target outcomes.
LONG TERM BENEFIT
The project will be implemented by a transnational and transectorial partnership involving organisations from VET providers, HE Institutions and Fire Prevention Associations from partner countries.
Beyond the partners, the Platform have the potential to be exploited by a wide range of organisations and individuals because it will be published as an OER (Open Educational Resource) under the Creative Commons license “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)”, thus allowing anyone to freely use all the content as as well as to modify it and build upon.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 171135 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI & Country: SI

Project Partners

• SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU
• INSPEKTING d.o.o.
• Slovensko združenje za požarno varstvo
• VYSOKÁ ŠKOLA BÁŇSKÁ – TECHNICKÁ UNIVERZITA OSTRAVA
• Majaczech, z.s.