The construction industry plays an essential role in the European economy. It contributes to around 9% of the region’s GDP and provides 18 million direct jobs and solutions to social, climate and energy challenges. At HumanTech, we aim to help the sector become safer, greener and more competitive by advancing innovative human-centred technologies — from robotic devices and exoskeletons to a new breed of digital twins.

European construction faces challenges affecting its workers, the environment, and business competitiveness.

  • Slow technology adoption. The sector is very slow to incorporate new technologies, even though they could help solve many of its problems.
  • Workers’ safety and productivity. Construction accidents can be severe due to the type of activities workers must carry out, affecting their productivity.
  • Shortage of skilled workers, explained by the sector’s low attractiveness for young people and the growing need for specific skills, which education has difficulty satisfying.
  • Inefficient use of resources. Buildings account for about 35% of all the EU’s greenhouse emissions. The transition to a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy is vital to reduce its negative environmental impact.

How can technology help create practical solutions to these challenges? The 22 partner organizations that make up HumanTech, an ambitious initiative funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme, have started to work together to answer this question.

Technology as an ally to provide innovative solutions to construction challenges

HumanTech aims to to enable a safe, green, rewarding and digital work environment for a new generation of highly skilled construction workers and engineers.

These advances will include:

  • Robotic devices equipped with vision and intelligence.
  • Smart, unobtrusive workers’ protection and support equipment.
  • A new breed of Dynamic Semantic Digital Twins (DSDTs).

The project will also create resources to spread the knowledge needed to work with these technologies and thus increase the number of qualified workers in the sector.

  • Open educational resources on technologies for workers’ safety, well-being, and human-robot collaboration in construction.
  • Ten training sessions with 200 participants and 1 ‘Train the Trainer’ session for 20 educators and trainers.

We also intend to increase the adoption of exoskeletons in construction by 10x five years after the end of the project, decrease construction worker injuries by 30%, and reduce waste and CO2 emissions from the sector by a minimum of 20%.

We will validate our technologies in in Europe and Japan. These will allow us to evaluate the project’s advances and feed its technical developments.

22 partners, 11 disciplines, 10 countries

started working together on this groundbreaking initiative in June 2022 and will continue to do so over the next three years.

They are leading research institutes and universities, high-tech SMEs, large companies, and construction groups with expertise in disciplines ranging from artificial intelligence to extended reality.

Their multidisciplinarity, complementarity of knowledge and objectives, and excellent track record in research and innovative product development make them the ideal team for this project.

Learn more about HumanTech in our , , follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and contact us to explore collaboration opportunities!

*Header image by rawpixel.com on Freepik.