Promoting Cross-Border Wood Construction Business (KA1021)

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Welcome to the PROWO Karelia CBC micro-project home page. 

 

Project news

Project duration

1.10.2018 - 30.9.2019

 

Backround

Wood construction is one of the potential growers’ in the construction business sector and one of the big promises of bioeconomy which should be fulfilled. If succeeding, it might be a strong boost for local economies providing more profits and expanded labor markets both for experts and young graduates. That would remarkably support the employability and wellbeing in the cross-border regions. Furthermore, in Finland promoting bioeconomy and wood construction is one of the key goals set by the national government.

However, the potential of the wood construction business is still partly hidden and the resources under utilised. Furthermore, there are bottlenecks slowing down or even hindering the development of the business. The bottlenecks seem to relate to the politics, attitudes and questions of land use and zoning, difference in methods of structural design according to Russian codes and Eurocodes, absence of mutual understanding. There is a severe need for the key players in the partnering cross-border regions to find new ways to win the obstacles, expand the wood construction businesses and build an innovation hub bridging and growing the varied expertise bringing added value for all parties.

The universities in the regions play a key role in developing the expertise and networks supporting the businesses. In its best, innovation, research and education form an iterative development process where higher education organisation, businesses and business developers together find new ways to benefit all the actors. Yet, there is still work to do to identify the bottlenecks of the development in details and to find ways to fill in the gap between the higher education and businesses.

 

The project objective

The overall objective for the PROWO is to strengthen the business opportunities, markets and expertise in wood construction businesses across the border. Project aims at three goals: identifying and analysing in details the bottle-necks hindering the growth and full use of the potential of the wood construction business, building the network of key players to boost the business, and building common understanding on how to solve the problems. PROWO results will form the base for the for-coming development projects and activities. It also preliminarily starts to explore the possibilities for new business models, incubators and innovations yet these will be the key questions to solve in the future.

The target groups and beneficiaries of the project are the regional wood construction businesses, universities, business developers, administrational organisations, communities and the authorities dealing with wood construction issues.

 

Partners

Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Lead Partner)

Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education, Petrozavodsk State University (PetrSU)

 

 

 

Karelia University of Applied Sciences
Karjalankatu 3, FI-80200 Joensuu
 
Mikko Matveinen
project manager

mikko.matveinen@karelia.fi
+358 50 370 5830
www.karelia.fi/puurakentaminen