In 2025, women represented just 19% of ICT specialists across the EU. Now consider that construction — already one of the least gender-diverse sectors in Europe — is in the middle of its biggest technological transformation in decades. BIM, AI-driven project management, drone surveying, smart sensors, digital twins. The question is not whether the industry is going digital. It already is. The question is who gets to be part of it. 

As of early 2026, the construction industry is no longer debating whether it should attract more women — it is confronting whether it can afford not to. Across mature economies, retirements are accelerating faster than replacement. In emerging markets, infrastructure demand is rising faster than workforce formalisation. In both cases, excluding half the available labour pool is no longer a cultural problem. It is an operational one.

And yet the numbers on the ground are still stark. Women make up around 15% of the UK construction workforce, but only about 1–2% of on-site trade roles are held by women. Women occupy just 9.2% of the highest-paid roles in construction, while 29% are in the lowest-paid quartile.

In France, women represent nearly half of administrative and technical employees but less than 2% of on-site manual workers. The pattern is consistent across Europe: women are present at the edges of the sector — in administrative roles, in some technical positions — but absent from the core, and increasingly absent from the digital core that is now defining the industry's future.

Here is what makes this moment different, though. According to the director general of the European Construction Industry Federation, the green and digital transitions represent an opportunity to attract more young people and women to the sector. A transition, by definition, disrupts existing hierarchies. Old gatekeepers lose some of their power. New skills become valuable. New entry points open up.

The opportunity is real. Whether the industry takes it is another question entirely.

The European Commission is pushing hard on this front — with initiatives like Girls go STEM targeting one million girls into STEM studies and professions by 2028, and a new STEM Futures initiative in 2026 focused on identifying and sharing successful education practices with a focus on girls and women. EU businesses used AI technologies at a rate of 20% in 2025, up from 13% in 2024 — and digital transformation is now a priority across industries, not just tech. Construction is no exception.

So what does this mean in practice? It means that the VET programmes training the next generation of construction workers need to look different. It means digital skills curricula cannot be designed in rooms where women are outnumbered ten to one. It means that showcasing initiatives that support women's visibility in emerging areas such as data centres and digital skills — and linking that visibility to the wider skills challenge — is not a side conversation. It is the main one. 

The tools exist. The funding frameworks exist. The evidence that diversity drives innovation has been settled for years.

What is still being built — slowly, imperfectly, but unmistakably — is the will to use all of them together.

This is not the future. This is the construction site of today.

And yet, the workforce being trained to work on that site is still being shaped by curricula, assumptions, and cultural habits that belong to a different era. The digital transformation of construction is accelerating. The gender transformation of construction is stalling. CoHER exists at exactly that intersection — and it argues that these two transformations are not separate challenges. They are the same challenge, seen from different angles.

When a sector undergoes rapid technological change, it faces a choice. It can replicate its existing inequalities into the new digital layer — encoding the same biases into algorithms, hiring pipelines, and training programmes — or it can treat the moment of disruption as an opportunity to rebuild on more equitable foundations. CoHER makes the case for the second option, clearly and without apology.

Digital skills are not neutral. Who gets trained, in what, by whom, and in what kind of environment determines who ends up working with those skills — and who gets left behind. In construction, where women are already dramatically underrepresented, the risk of a digital transformation that simply replicates existing exclusions is real and present. A sector that fails to bring women into its digital future is not just missing a moral opportunity. It is making itself less innovative, less resilient, and less competitive.

The evidence on this is consistent: diverse teams produce better solutions. Cognitive diversity — different perspectives, different problem-solving approaches, different lived experiences — drives innovation in ways that homogeneous teams simply cannot. An all-male construction workforce designing smart buildings for a mixed population is, by definition, designing with incomplete information. Gender diversity is not a social nicety. It is an engineering advantage.

CoHER's approach to digital skills is built around this understanding. The project does not treat digital literacy as a technical add-on to an otherwise unchanged VET curriculum. It treats it as an opportunity to redesign the curriculum itself — to ask not only what skills are needed, but who is being invited to develop them, and whether the learning environment genuinely supports their participation. A training module on BIM software delivered in a classroom where female learners feel like exceptions rather than participants is not truly inclusive digital education. It is inclusion in name only.

This matters because the construction sector is at a crossroads. The green transition, the digital transition, and the demographic pressures facing Europe's workforce are converging at the same moment. The industry needs more skilled workers than it currently has. It needs workers who can operate in digitally complex environments. And it needs those workers urgently. The talent pool it has historically ignored — women — is not a future consideration. It is an immediate solution.

Innovation, at its core, is the ability to see a problem differently. CoHER is doing exactly that: looking at an industry that has long defined itself by who it excludes, and asking what it could become if it led with who it includes. The digital tools are already there. The skills frameworks exist. The funding mechanisms — through Erasmus+ and European structural programmes — are available. What CoHER is building, above all, is the will and the methodology to use them differently.

The most innovative thing the construction sector could do right now is not adopt a new technology. It is open its doors — genuinely, structurally, and permanently — to the people it has kept outside them for too long.

İnşaat sektöründe kadınların durumu + düşündürücü ton. Rakamlar konuşsun, okuyucu sorgulasın.

İnşaatta Kadın Olmak: Görünmez Duvarları Yıkma Zamanı

Bir inşaat şantiyesi hayal edin. Vinçler, iskele, baret, iş eldiveni. Zihninizdeki o görüntüde kaç kadın var?

Büyük ihtimalle çok az. Belki hiç.

Bu bir tesadüf değil.

Rakamlar Ne Diyor?

Avrupa'da inşaat sektörü çalışanlarının yalnızca yaklaşık yüzde on ikisi kadın. Bu oran onlarca yıldır neredeyse hiç değişmedi. Türkiye'de tablo daha da çarpıcı: inşaat, geleneksel olarak en az kadın istihdamı barındıran sektörler arasında yer alıyor.

Peki neden?

Cevap basit değil — ama bu soruyu sormayı bırakmak da bir seçenek değil.

Sorun Yetenek Eksikliği Değil

Kadınların inşaat sektöründe az temsil edilmesinin ardında yetenek ya da ilgi eksikliği yok. Ardında şunlar var:

Kariyer rehberliğinde yıllarca süren önyargılar. "Bu iş erkek işi" diye başlayan cümleler. Mesleki eğitim programlarında kadın öğrencilerin kendilerini görememesi. Şantiye kültürünün tarihsel olarak yalnızca bir cinsiyet için tasarlanmış olması. Ve rol model eksikliği — görmediğin bir şeye ulaşmak çok daha zordur.

Bunlar bireysel engeller değil. Bunlar yapısal sorunlar. Yapısal sorunlar ise bireysel çabayla değil, sistemik değişimle çözülür.

CoHER Tam da Burada Devreye Giriyor

ConstructHer Future — CoHER — bu sistemik değişimi hedefleyen 24 aylık bir Erasmus+ projesidir. Avrupa'nın farklı ülkelerinden VET kurumları, sivil toplum kuruluşları ve sektör temsilcilerini bir araya getiren CoHER, yalnızca kadınlara değil; eğiticilere, işverenlere ve kurumsal yapılara da yatırım yapıyor.

Çünkü bir kadını sektöre davet etmek yetmez. Sektörün onu gerçekten karşılamaya hazır olması gerekir.

CoHER bu hazırlığı dört ana eksende inşa ediyor: toplumsal cinsiyet duyarlı müfredat geliştirme, eğitici eğitimi, mentörlük ağları ve sektörle işbirliği. Her biri ayrı bir tuğla. Hepsi birlikte bir temel.

Eğitim Dönüşümün Başladığı Yerdir

Mesleki eğitim ve öğretim — VET — sektörlere giriş kapısıdır. Bir gencin hangi mesleği seçeceği, hangi becerilerle donanacağı ve kendini nerede göreceği büyük ölçüde bu programlarda şekillenir.

CoHER, inşaat VET programlarını yeniden tasarlıyor. Yalnızca içerik değil; dil, görsel malzeme, öğrenme ortamı ve değerlendirme kriterleri açısından da. Çünkü bir ders kitabındaki tek bir fotoğraf bile — sadece erkeklerin çalıştığı bir şantiye sahnesi — o sınıftaki genç bir kadına sessiz bir mesaj gönderir: "Bu yer senin için değil."

CoHER o mesajı değiştiriyor.

Görünmez Duvarlar Yıkılabilir

İnşaatta en zorlu iş bazen en görünmez olandır: temeli atmak, zemin hazırlamak, ileride üstüne bina kurulacak o ilk katmanı döşemek.

CoHER de tam olarak bunu yapıyor. Görünmez duvarları tespit ediyor, ölçüyor ve yıkıyor. Bunun yerine bir şey inşa ediyor: eşitliğin sadece bir slogan değil, sektörün yapısal gerçeği olduğu bir gelecek.

Çünkü daha iyi binalar, daha çeşitli eller tarafından inşa edilir.

CoHER — ConstructHer Future, Erasmus+ KA2 VET programı kapsamında yürütülen çok ortaklı bir Avrupa projesidir.

Tego typu wsparcie może obejmować tworzenie sieci współpracy pomiędzy szkołami, pracodawcami i instytucjami szkoleniowymi, dzięki czemu uczniowie mają większy dostęp do informacji o rynku pracy oraz aktualnych wymaganiach pracodawców. Spotkania branżowe, wizyty studyjne na budowach czy wydarzenia networkingowe pozwalają młodym ludziom zobaczyć, jak wygląda praca w rzeczywistych warunkach i lepiej zrozumieć różne ścieżki kariery – od pracy na budowie po stanowiska techniczne i zarządcze.

Dodatkowo, nauczyciele i trenerzy również mogą korzystać z takich inicjatyw, wymieniając doświadczenia i dobre praktyki, co przekłada się na lepszą jakość kształcenia. W efekcie powstaje środowisko, które nie tylko uczy zawodu, ale także aktywnie wspiera rozwój kariery i budowanie profesjonalnych relacji w sektorze budownictwa w Polsce.

01. Uzaktan Eğitim Kapısı
🔗 turkiye.gov.tr

Cumhurbaşkanlığı Uzaktan Eğitim Kapısı, Türkiye'nin resmi çevrimiçi öğrenme platformudur. Onlarca farklı alanda ücretsiz kurs sunmaktadır. Stajdan önce veya staj sürecinde özgeçmişini güçlendirmek isteyen gençler için ilk adres burasıdır. Dijital becerilerini geliştirmek, proje yönetimini keşfetmek ya da mesleki sertifika almak istersen platform; telefon veya bilgisayarından erişilebilir, devlet güvenceli içerikler sunar.

02. YTNK TV
🔗 ytnk.tv

YTNK TV, gençliği, inovasyonu ve girişimciliği odak noktasına alan dijital bir kanaldır. Sektör liderleriyle yapılmış video içerikler ve röportajlar sunarak iş dünyasında yolunu bulmaya çalışan gençlere kariyer ilhami verir. Hırslı Türk gençleri için üretilmiş, pratik ve motive edici bir platform olarak düşünebilirsin.

03. GSB — Gençlik ve Spor Bakanlığı
🔗 gsb.gov.tr

Gençlik ve Spor Bakanlığı, Türkiye'deki gençleri hedef alan geniş bir program yelpazesi yürütmektedir: spor buralarından gençlik kamplarına, sosyal projelerden istihdam destek girişimlerine kadar. 15-29 yaş arasındaysanız, senin için tasarlanmış bir GSB programı büyük ihtimalle mevcuttur. Web sitesini düzenli olarak takip et; yıl boyunca yeni fırsatlar açılmaya devam ediyor.

04. Europass
🔗 europass.europa.eu/tr

Europass, Avrupa Birliği'nin beceri ve nitelikleri belgelemek için sunduğu ücretsiz araç setidir. Tüm AB üye devletlerinde ve ötesinde tanınan standart bir CV, Beceri Pasaportu ve sertifikalar oluşturmanı sağlar. Uluslararası staj, Erasmus+ hareketliliği veya yurt dışında iş arayan Türkiyeli gençler için iyi hazırlanmış bir Europass profili, bugün yapabileceğin en pratik şeylerden biridir.

05. Euroguidance Türkiye
🔗 euroguidance.iskur.gov.tr

Euroguidance, Avrupa genelinde kariyer rehberliği merkezlerinden oluşan bir ağdır; Türkiye şubesi bizzat İŞKUR tarafından yürütülmektedir. Avrupa'da çalışma, eğitim ve staj konularındaki bilgilerin kapısıdır. Almanya'da nasıl staj yapabileceğini, Fransa'da hangi niteliklerin tanındığını veya Erasmus+'ın kariyer yolculuğuna nasıl katkı sağlayabileceğini merak ediyorsan başlangıç noktası burasıdır.

06. Kariyer Kapısı
🔗 kariyerkapisi.gov.tr

Kariyer Kapısı, Türkiye'nin resmi kamu sektörü kariyer ve staj portalıdır. Bakanlıklarda, kamu kurumlarında ve devlete bağlı kuruluşlarda staj imkânlarını listeler. Devletin içinden nasıl işlediğini deneyimlemek ve kamu yönetiminde bir kariyer inşa etmek istiyorsan bu platform seni ülke genelindeki doğrulanmış, resmi staj ilanlarıyla doğrudan buluşturur.

07. Ulusal Ajans (UA)
🔗 ua.gov.tr

Türkiye Ulusal Ajansı, Erasmus+ ve diğer AB programlarını Türkiye'de yönetmektedir. Destekli hareketlilik fırsatları hakkındaki tüm bilgilerin resmi kaynağıdır: yurt dışı stajlar, gençlik değişimleri, MEB hareketlilikleri ve daha fazlası. AB'nin mali desteğiyle Avrupa'da staj yapmak istiyorsan Ulusal Ajans'ın web sitesi, tam olarak nasıl yapacağını ve hangi programların şu anda başvuruya açık olduğunu anlatır.

08. YÖK — Yükseköğretim Kurulu
🔗 yok.gov.tr

Yükseköğretim Kurulu, Türkiye genelindeki üniversiteleri yönetir ve zorunlu stajlar, kredi tanıma ile akademik ortaklıklar konusunda kılavuzlar yayımlar. Zorunlu staj dönemlerine ilişkin hak ve yükümlülüklerini anlamak isteyen ya da stajın akademik kredi olarak tanınması hakkında bilgi arayan üniversite öğrencileri için temel çerçeve burada yer almaktadır.

09. MEB — Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı
🔗 meb.gov.tr

Lise ve meslek okulu öğrencileri için Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı, MEB programlarındaki staj gerekliliklerinin birincil otoritesidir. MEB, teknik ve mesleki liselerdeki öğrenciler için işyeri eğitimini koordine eder; bu, doğrudan müfredata entegre edilmiş yapılandırılmış bir staj biçimidir. Meslek lisesindeysen kurumsal evin burasıdır.

10. MYK — Mesleki Yeterlilik Kurumu
🔗 myk.gov.tr

Mesleki Yeterlilik Kurumu, Türkiye'deki ulusal mesleki standartları ve sertifikaları geliştirir ve yönetir. Bir MYK belgesi, işverenlere — Türkiye'de ve Avrupa genelinde — kendi alanında resmi bir standarda göre sınandığını gösterir. Stajyerler ve genç profesyoneller için staj sırasında veya sonrasında MYK belgesi almak, becerilerini görünür ve taşınabilir kılmanın güçlü bir yoludur.

11. TÜİK — Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu
🔗 tuik.gov.tr

Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu, istihdam politikasını şekillendiren verileri yayımlar: genç işsizlik oranları, sektörel işgücü rakamları, bölgesel emek piyasası analizleri ve daha fazlası. Öğrenciler ve iş arayan gençler için TÜİK değerli bir gerçeklik kontrolüdür — ve güçlü bir araştırma aracı. Hangi sektörlerin büyüdüğünü, nerede iş yaratıldığını ve hangi becerilerin talep gördüğünü anlamak, her staj arayışına stratejik bir temel kazandırır.

Nereden Başlamalısın?

Üniversite öğrencisiysen kamu sektörü stajları için Kariyer Kapısı'ndan, Avrupa fırsatları için Ulusal Ajans'tan başla. Meslek okulu öğrencisiysen MEB ve MYK senin temellerini oluşturur. Becerilerini uluslararası arenada görünür kılmak istiyorsan Europass oluşturmak bir saatten az sürer — ve yıllarca kapı açabilir. Kaynaklar burada. Bir sonraki adım sende.

A  —  Accessibility

In construction, accessibility is more than a ramp or a lift — it is the principle that every space must be designed for everyone. In the Erasmus+ world, accessibility means ensuring that vocational education and training programmes are open, reachable, and relevant to all, regardless of gender, background, or circumstance. For CoHER, the two meanings are inseparable: we build access into every wall we raise.

B  —  Blueprint

Every building begins with a blueprint — a precise technical drawing that guides each stage of construction. An Erasmus+ application is the project's blueprint: it maps objectives, timelines, partner roles, and expected outcomes before a single brick is laid. CoHER's blueprint traces a 24-month journey from systemic barriers to structural change in the construction sector.

C  —  Curriculum Development

At the heart of CoHER lies curriculum development — the deliberate redesign of VET programmes to embed gender sensitivity into every module, learning activity, and assessment method. Like laying a foundation, good curriculum work is slow, methodical, and invisible once complete. But everything that stands afterwards depends on it.

D  —  Dissemination

A finished building speaks for itself — you can see it, touch it, walk through it. Project results are less visible until dissemination does its work. CoHER shares its findings through publications, conferences, social media, policy briefs, and open-access toolkits, ensuring that what is built in one country can inspire construction — literal and metaphorical — across Europe.

E  —  Equity

Equality gives everyone the same brick. Equity gives each person as many bricks as they need to build to the same height. CoHER is built on equity, not just equality: it recognises that women entering the construction sector face steeper climbs, heavier loads, and fewer handholds — and designs its programmes to address those specific realities.

F  —  Foundation

No structure survives a weak foundation. CoHER's foundation is a robust transnational partnership, a shared commitment to gender equity, and an evidence-based methodology. In Erasmus+ terms, a strong foundation also means institutional trust between partners — the kind built through honest communication, transparent reporting, and mutual accountability.

G  —  Gender-Sensitive VET

Gender-sensitive Vocational Education and Training goes far beyond adding a module about diversity. It means rethinking language, imagery, learning environments, mentoring structures, and assessment criteria through a gender lens. CoHER's most distinctive contribution is proving that this transformation is not only possible in the construction sector — it is necessary.

H  —  Hard Hat & Hard Skills

The hard hat is the universal symbol of the construction site — a marker of presence, protection, and belonging. Hard skills are what the helmet protects: the ability to read technical drawings, operate machinery, manage a site, and understand building materials. CoHER ensures that women not only wear the hat, but carry the skills and confidence to lead the site.

I  —  Inclusion

Inclusion is one of the cornerstone principles of the Erasmus+ programme — and for CoHER, it is the reason the project exists. The walls of the construction sector are not built only of concrete and steel; they are reinforced by centuries of cultural bias and institutional inertia. Dismantling those invisible barriers is what genuine inclusion demands.

J  —  Job Shadowing

Spending a day alongside a female civil engineer, a site manager, or a master tradesperson — this is job shadowing at its most powerful. As a recognised Erasmus+ mobility format, job shadowing offers participants a live, unfiltered view of what a career in construction actually looks like. In CoHER, it also makes role models visible: proof that women belong on every level of the sector.

K  —  Key Competences

The eight key competences defined in the European Framework — from digital literacy to civic engagement to entrepreneurship — form the backbone of CoHER's curriculum design. A modern construction professional needs far more than technical knowledge: they need to communicate across cultures, adapt to green building standards, and navigate an industry in rapid transformation.

L  —  Load-Bearing Wall & Learning Outcomes

Remove a load-bearing wall and the structure collapses. In project design, learning outcomes serve the same function: they carry the full weight of educational intent. CoHER defines clear, measurable outcomes for every training activity — what participants will know, what they will be able to do, and what attitudes they will carry with them into the industry.

M  —  Mentorship

The apprenticeship tradition in construction is centuries old: knowledge passed from master to apprentice, hand over hand, tool by tool. CoHER reimagines this tradition through a gender-aware mentorship model — pairing young women entering the sector with established professionals who offer not only technical guidance, but solidarity, strategy, and lived experience.

N  —  National Agency

Every Erasmus+ project is anchored to a National Agency — the body responsible for managing and monitoring the programme at country level. CoHER's partners work in close dialogue with their respective national agencies, ensuring compliance, quality, and transparency throughout the project lifecycle. Think of the National Agency as the building inspector: rigorous, essential, and ultimately on the side of quality.

O  —  Output

A construction project's output is a finished building — something you can measure, photograph, and hand over. CoHER's outputs are equally concrete: training modules, educator guides, mentorship toolkits, policy recommendations, and an open-access digital platform. All outputs are published under open licences, freely available to VET providers across Europe.

P  —  Partnership

No building rises without an architect, an engineer, a site manager, and a skilled workforce. No Erasmus+ project creates lasting change without a genuinely collaborative partnership. CoHER's consortium brings together VET institutions, industry associations, civil society organisations, and research bodies — each contributing a different expertise to the same shared structure.

Q  —  Quality Assurance

In construction, the wrong concrete mix is not discovered until the structure cracks — often years later. Quality assurance in project management prevents exactly this: each activity is planned, monitored, evaluated, and improved in real time. CoHER operates both an internal quality mechanism and an independent external evaluation, ensuring that no fault line goes undetected.

R  —  Resilience & Reinforced Concrete

Reinforced concrete is neither concrete nor steel — it is what happens when the two work together. Concrete resists compression; steel resists tension. Separately, each has limits. Together, they become something extraordinary. CoHER builds resilience the same way: by combining individual empowerment with collective support networks, creating women who can withstand the pressures of a demanding industry.

S  —  Scaffolding & Stakeholder

Scaffolding is temporary. It goes up to enable the building, then comes down when the structure can stand alone — and that is exactly the point. In education, scaffolding describes the guided support given to learners until they no longer need it. CoHER provides this scaffolding to women at every stage of their VET journey. Stakeholders — employers, trade unions, sector bodies — are the ones who hold the scaffolding steady.

T  —  Transnational Cooperation

A good practice developed in one country is only as powerful as the network willing to share it. Transnational cooperation — the defining feature of Erasmus+ — allows CoHER partners to test ideas in different national contexts, learn from each other's failures as much as their successes, and build solutions that are robust enough to travel across borders.

U  —  Upskilling

Construction is not what it was a decade ago. BIM (Building Information Modelling), green building certification, smart sensors, and sustainable materials have transformed the sector. CoHER's upskilling programmes equip women — both newcomers and those already in the workforce — to lead this transformation rather than be left behind by it.

V  —  VET — Vocational Education and Training

VET is the arena in which CoHER operates — and the vehicle through which lasting change in the construction sector becomes possible. Across Europe, VET programmes train millions of people for skilled employment every year. Yet women remain dramatically underrepresented in construction VET pathways. CoHER works to change this, not just by adding women to existing programmes, but by transforming the programmes themselves.

W  —  Women in Construction

Across Europe, women represent roughly 12% of the construction workforce — a figure that has barely shifted in decades. Behind that statistic are systemic barriers: gender stereotyping in career guidance, unwelcoming site cultures, lack of flexible working arrangements, and an absence of visible role models. CoHER treats this not as a pipeline problem but as a structural one — and structural problems require structural solutions.

X  —  Cross-Sectoral Impact

X marks the unknown. In mathematics, it is the variable we are solving for. In CoHER, the unknown — and the ambition — is the project's cross-sectoral impact: ripple effects that extend beyond construction and VET into employment policy, urban planning, gender equality legislation, and social cohesion. We do not yet know how far the waves will travel. That is precisely why we keep building.

Y  —  Youthpass & Recognition

Youthpass is Erasmus+'s tool for recognising non-formal learning — a document that makes visible what participants have gained beyond a classroom. CoHER adopts this spirit of recognition across all its training activities: every woman who completes a CoHER programme receives formal documentation of her competences, acknowledged across European borders and by industry partners.

Z  —  Zero Barriers

This is where CoHER is headed: a construction sector with zero barriers to entry based on gender, origin, or background. Not a slogan — a structural target. Every training module, every mentorship session, every policy recommendation produced by this project is a brick laid toward that goal. Because the most important building CoHER will ever complete is the one that finally makes everyone feel they belong inside it.

It's not a separate profession — it's a layer of knowledge added on top of any trade or role. An electrician with green skills installs EV chargers and solar systems. A project manager with green skills plans for carbon reduction targets. A site administrator with green skills handles sustainability documentation and compliance.

Why it's worth to consider?

One effective way to develop these competences is by introducing real-life project simulations into VET programmes. Learners can be placed in small teams and given a realistic construction scenario, such as planning and completing a simple building project within a fixed budget and deadline. Each participant can take on a different role, for example site coordinator, safety responsible person or team member in charge of materials. Throughout the process, students naturally need to communicate with each other, coordinate tasks, and make joint decisions. Unexpected challenges can also be introduced, such as delays in materials or changes in project requirements, which forces the team to adapt and solve problems together.

What makes this approach particularly valuable is that soft skills are not taught in isolation but developed in practice. Communication becomes part of everyday teamwork, leadership emerges when students take responsibility for decisions, and problem-solving happens in real time rather than in theory.

After completing the project, reflection is also very important, as it allows learners to discuss their experience, analyse what worked well, and consider how cooperation and communication could be improved in the future. In this way, VET programmes can better prepare learners for real working environments, where success depends not only on technical knowledge but also on the ability to collaborate, adapt and communicate effectively with others.