The lack of knowledge has been reported to be one of the major obstacles for the utilization of recovered and secondary materials in earthworks and infrastructure projects, even though the first trials of utilization have been completed more than 40 years ago. In Finland several national research and promotion projects on secondary materials have been launched during the past years. The goals of the current demonstration and promotion project UUMA2 (2013-17) are to create educational material and to improve knowledge and to share it. The experiences from demonstration projects and other projects has revealed a need to have a comprehensive course for all operators on the field. It was also noticed that the common language between the material producers, authorities, designers and constructors is missing.
To fulfill the needs for knowledge shearing a special educational course was created. The design of the course started in year 2016 and the first course implementation initiated in September 2017. The goals of this special course are: to promote the use of recovered and secondary materials in earthworks, to create links between operators of the field, to educate future professionals and to find common language. The course have turned out to be a success: more than 100 participants registered take part with many more interested. To improve the impact of the course on present practices, the regional and municipal environmental and technical authorities were provided a possibility to participate part virtually; and as a result around 65 remote participants have taken part.
Tampere University of Technology and Aalto University are jointly organizing the course together with industrial and institutional partners, such as Ministry of the Environment, Finnish Transport Agency, Ramboll Finland Oy. The course is aimed both to the university students and experts on the field. The core of the course consists of six intensive days organized once per month. The topics of the course include e.g., material requirements for typical applications, properties of various secondary materials, such as demolition wastes and ashes and slags from energy and steel industry, legislation, environmental risks and permission processes. The topics are presented and discussed by the best Finnish experts in the each field, involving also both the producers and users of the secondary materials.
The course includes also group exercises in which the participants make a plan for utilization of secondary materials in a real-life infrastructure project. The eight person groups are compiled so that each group has, if possible, one or two representatives of the various parties: students, authorities, material producers, designers and contractors. This is one important tool in creating common language and interaction between different parties. The results of the group work will be presented to other participants during the last intensive day as a poster presentation.
Feedback is collected after each intensive day. So far most of the participants have been satisfied with the course. Hence the interest on the course seems to continue, it is likely that the course will be repeated in years 2018 – 2019. In the final paper the feedback is analysed and effectiveness and future plans of this kind of education are discussed. Hopefully, as the result all the participants will gain a wider knowledge of structural requirements and material properties, and improved understanding of both possibilities and limitations of the use of secondary materials.
Regulations and legislation , Other (please speficy on the next page)
