Establishing Communities of Practice in the BUSUnited Project

17.12.2025

Establishing Communities of Practice in the BUSUnited Project

What do a paella, a rubber duck, and an orchestra have in common? They all represent some of the values and aspirations shared by the emerging community of BUSUnited CoP facilitators. CoP stands for a ‘Communities of Practice’, a concept commonly defined as “communities of people stewarding a specific domain of knowledge”. Within BUSUnited, we aspire to establish a whole cluster of such communities – BUSUnited CoPs, dedicated to speed up the transfer of skills and knowledge within the construction sector, all in close alignment and support of the EU’s Build Up Skills (BUS) initiative.

The task at hand implies a substantial facilitation effort, which is why future BUSUnited partners gathered in Brussels to establish their very own CoP – a CoP of CoP faciliatators – and explore their uniquely specific domain of knowledge: the facilitation of CoPs.

In the spirit of the CoP concept, IRI UL decided to initiate this shared learning journey by framing the “training” session as a CoP session. Participants were immersed in activities and facilitation methods, grounded in learning-by-doing. As activities progressed, participants got acquainted first-hand with various elements of facilitation skills, techniques, and methods. Everyone had a chance to contribute to the discussions, raise questions, voice opinions, suggest solutions, and most importantly – share their experience and knowledge. Both aspiring CoP facilitators and their colleagues were recognised as legitimate participants, contributing to the situated learning process focused on collective reflection around some baseline questions, such as: As CoP facilitators, what represents our shared purpose and goals? What is our shared vision of success? And which are some of the most important questions we don’t yet have a good answer to?

Through a combination of breakout-group discussions, short presentations, and open discussion, we made some invaluable progress towards consolidating our collective understanding of the points addressed. We learned that – as facilitators – we will support our CoPs on their way toward enlightenment and innovation in teaching and learning within the construction sector. Sometimes we will act as conductors, providing structure and guidance while each CoP member contributes their skill-specific melody to a concert, or providing rhythm to a BUS-themed ballet performance. At other times, we will simply open the floor to a jam session, encouraging situated learning and legitimate participation practices.

In terms of our shared visions of success, we all agreed that BUSUnited CoPs will be like a kaleidoscope – offering a diverse collection of unique yet complementary perspectives on related issues. As facilitators and challenge leaders, we will need to search for ways in which our communities can come together as puzzle pieces, but also to foster individual communities that are flexible, and resilient – as rubber ducks. Most importantly, however, we all wish that our CoP facilitation efforts will serve as reliable scaffolding to build something that lasts – communities of peers that come together spontaneously to eat a paella of BUS-synergies, sharing insights on specific topics or challenges as they cook.

Metaphors aside, our most significant achievement at the Brussels meeting is not a list of definite answers to a list of burning questions, nor it is a clear understanding of all of the steps that need to be taken to realise our project goals. If anything, new questions emerged, and some major CoP-facilitation challenges surfaced that most certainly need to be addressed. But that’s fine. In fact, that’s the point. If done right, CoPs are primarily about the learning process, and only second about specific outputs or goals. The most significant achievement, therefore, was that we have created space in which learning can take place – a community that invites and enables genuine peer-exchange on the topic of CoP facilitation, based on a culture of mutual trust, help and support. Such space is not only something we need to maintain and develop further within our CoP of facilitators, but something we need to replicate within other BUSUnited CoPs. Only thus will we make good progress towards realising the vision and ambition of the BUSUnited project.