Managing a COST Action as a Project (2021)

Co-edited with Martin Brown, RESTORY. Managing a COST Action as a Project, tells the story of how we managed this 4-years endeavour, working together with 160+ brilliant researchers and practitioners to advance the progress towards a regenerative sustainability scenario in the built environment. The book is available for download and reading here. Technically speaking … my first book 😉

With contributions also by Jelena Brajkoviç, Daniel Friedrich, Lisanne Havinga, Roberto Lollini, Emanuele Naboni and Giulia Peretti, this publication has a two-fold aim: to summarize the main results from the COST Action CA16114 REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy (RESTORE, 2017-2021); and, to provide some insight into the project management strategies that are in place for our team, thereby ensuring that the Action will be properly and successfully developed.

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COST is the longest-running European framework (celebrating 50 years of ‘science without borders’ this year) supporting trans-national cooperation between researchers, engineers, and scholars throughout Europe. The RESTORE Action has been working for a paradigm shift towards restorative sustainability for new and existing buildings and space design across Europe, through active lobbying and mentoring, as well as through working groups, training schools and Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSMs), advancing the sustainability of restorative built-environment sustainability.

In this publication we will firstly provide an overview of what the RESTORE Action is, its challenge, main goals, structure, and main tasks. We will explore in greater detail how we addressed RESTORE, using an internationally recognized Project Management methodology. The voices of RESTORE active members will reflect their impressions and insights on the experience they lived within a COST Action.

Many thanks to our COST scientific and administrative officers, Estelle Emeriau, Giuseppe Lugano – who kindly wrote his foreword – Aranzazu Sanchez, and Katchamon Nimprang, and also to Max Panaro, President of IPMA Italy, for his introduction on why Project Management competencies are crucial for our economy. And finally, a special thanks goes to Ilaria Alberti from Eurac Research, Institute for Renewable Energy, for her tireless work in making RESTORE publications possible. This book is part of a series of 8 books that have been produced as outcomes from the Action. All the publications are freely available for download here.

RESTORE has seen some great experiences, milestones of achievement, opportunities to explore, although it has also gone astray, as might happen when addressing a new project. However, we have done our best to manage all the aspects, sometimes finding what we thought were brilliant outcomes or at least achievements that deserve to be shared, if only to see whether others thought likewise.

We hope these insights will be helpful for other colleagues involved in either current or future COST network Actions, and in general for professionals dealing with international research projects and initiatives that typically involve a large number of scholars and practitioners from different fields and expertise.

But RESTORE is not over, the great network we created will last beyond the Action’s end, as we transfer its legacy to Living Future Europe. Stay tuned 😊 #CostRestore

Book data:

• Books
• Design
• Education
• Green Building
• Green Communities
• Innovation
• People
• Project Management
• Standards
• Sustainability