BKSTONE PROJECT

Higher Education –Enterprise platform for fostering, modernisation and sustainable growth in natural stone industry in Western Balkans 

BKSTONE project has the main objective of fostering the modernization and development of the stone sector in Western Balkans partner countries through strengthening the relationship between the higher education institutions and the industry, and internationalizing curriculum and methods.
To meet the requirements of current international demand of natural stone products according to EU standards, the partner countries industry has to perform important changes in quarrying methods, processing methods, quality controls following European and international standards (p.e. CE marking, ASTM, etc.), marketing strategies, international trade, e-commerce etc. These changes require the participation of all local agents, including the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and Vocational Education and Training (VET) organizations, which should develop their training strategies to meet the challenges explained in the rationale of our project in terms of quality, delivery and especially relevance, in response to the industry needs. 

The specific objectives of the project to achieve the main goals are:
– To contribute through the outputs of the project to develop National/Regional innovation strategies for specialization in the natural stone sector.
– To put in value each country/region’s strengths, competitive advantages and potential for excellence in the stone sector through benchmarking existing training initiatives and incorporating elements into the educational materials to be developed in the project.
– To support technological, as well as practice-based innovative training based on the approach and format of the courses to be developed.
– To contribute to get stakeholders in the stone industry fully involved, encouraging their participation in the conception and testing phases of the development of materials.
– To promote among students active and constructive learning as a necessary means to work in the stone sector, testing new possibilities in partner countries like Tertiary VET levels.
– To create a network platform involving Stone Sector representatives, High Education Institutions (HEI) and VET organizations of EU programme and Partner Countries based on the full implementation of the project 

 List of Partners:  

1. Polytechnic University of Tirana (Coordinator of the project)  

2. University of  Elbasan "Aleksandër Xhuvani"  

3. University of Gjirokastër "Eqrem Çabej”  

4. University of Sarajevo  

5. University of  Mostar  

6. University Mediterranean Podgorica  

7. University of Pristine  

8. Kolegji Ndërkombtar për Biznes dhe Teknologji 

 9. University of Coruña  

10. IES Ribeira do Louro  

11. Asociación Empresarial de Investigación Centro Tecnológico del Mármol y La Piedra  

12. Universita Degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza  

13. C.P.I.P.E. - Escuola Edile di Padova  

14. National Technical University of Athens  

15. Transilvania University of Brasov  

For more information, please follow the web site: Project website: https://bkstoneproject.com/