The highlight of the month was the International Event and the project meeting, taken place on 14-15 April in Vilnius, Lithuania. The program started with the International event on 14^th of April, 2011 in the premises of the Lithuanian Exhibition Centre LITEXPO.

The international event was organized under the Student Conference of “Science – Future of Lithuania. Engineering Systems for Buildings”. Back to back to the 18^th International Exhibition on Construction and Renovation – RESTA, which is the biggest exhibition on energy efficiency in buildings in the Baltic States. Hundreds of participants got together for the event, covering a wide range of stakeholder groups e.g. representatives of VGTU, students, professors from 8 foreign universities, local and external technical experts.

The event proved to be an exceptional moment of encounter between the project actors and the general public, so as to share achievements, promote best practices and obtain major impact in an awareness-raising action.

The main focus was on energy policy issues and project activities, like the outcomes of the first level audit, second level audit, how universities see these activities, training courses and the forthcoming summer school in Valencia. An outstanding attention was shown to this latter one. Students raised several questions, mostly about the program, the dates and the selection procedure.

The highlight of the event was doubtless the presentation of Mr Vaicaitis, a student from VGTU and not only because of his great presentation skills and the content, but because it clearly showed the high interest and active participation of the students in the workshop and in the project in general.

The international event was followed by a one and half day long project meeting where partners focused mostly on how to fulfill the EU requirements of the project and the organization of the summer school.

Apart from that, projects activities were ongoing in the universities. In March and April HCU have been preparing the start of the second training course that started on 5^th April. This course will be similar to the first one, but they will work on the two other buildings. 18 students attended the first meeting with an introduction into the research project USE Eff and the contents of the training course. They will develop an energy efficient design for a conversion of the building in Averhoffstraße 38.

On April 26 the first intermediate presentation took place. The students presented their analysis of the existing situation. Each of the six groups had one topic (survey of the building, urban analysis, energy demand of the building, use of solar energy, construction of the building, possibilities for renovation/retrofit...)

At Brunel the Summer School was announced to the students and the selection of student to travel to Valencia has started. Brunel students have responded very positively to the USE-Efficiency projects. The teachers’ cross over was very successfully attended by all students of the course and a few from other courses and other departments of the university.  Many students have been asking about ‘how to train to become professional energy auditors’ and there is a strong competition to carry out their dissertation on energy audit topics based on ‘problem based’  Brunel university buildings using the national EPBD software SBEM.

An article about the project will be included in the annual newsletter of the Schools Design Group of CIBSE (Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers).  The newsletter will be distributed electronically to more than 7000 people and also some copies will be printed (about 1000).

In April AUTH finished the second level audit and a part of student’s mini project evaluation with the conclusion of the 2nd level audit of the selected buildings, the submission of the technical reports of the student groups, the final presentations of the reports and the selection of the two best groups to participate the summer school in Valencia.

From the original 10 student groups of 5 students each, only 8 groups concluded the process of the 2nd level audit and submitted the final report. The report presentations were scheduled in two days, with 4 groups each day. The evaluation committee consisted of 5 professors and teaching staff members of the AUTH. All final technical reports and the oral presentations were in English. The selection of the two best group projects was based on an evaluation of certain weighted criteria in a proper scoreboard. Each project has been evaluated for its technical consistency, integrity, quality of the presentation, use of language. Similar criteria applied for the evaluation of the oral presentations. The final results were published in the students website (with more than 3000 members) and were sent to all participants by e-mail. All students that participated the USE Eff course were urged to fill in an evaluation sheet for the course contents. The evaluation results will be published in the USE Eff web-site.

The press release for the International event has been distributed to up to 150 students, including the participants of the USE Eff course, using our current USE Eff students mailing list and was also posted in the students web-site in Greek (3000 members).

Universidad Polytecnica de Valencia, planned the time scheduling for partner contributions in task 1 of comparing the Universities different mini projects, relative to sharing best projects solutions and the preparation of the best projects compendium. They are organizing the summer school, continuing with the preparation of the logistic management and activities envisaged for the two weeks.

UPVLC is organizing a national event for May 28th 2011, which they are intended to broadcast through USE EFFICIENCY social network platform such as facebook and USE EFFIC website. The expected event participation is 30 professionals from different industrial areas and approximately 20 students interested in energy efficiency. Also, since the national event will be broadcasted a larger participation of people is expected online.

Finally, during April 2011 UPVLC has also had the visit of Prof. Angelo Spena (UNITOV) for the teacher cross-over event with a participation of 30 students from the energy efficiency course.