UFIL Journal #3: how the project is about to begin its fourth and final year

UFIL started as a 3-year project (2018-2021), but in March 2021 it was granted a 1-year extension. This brings the project's completion date to the end of October 2022. The extension was primarily needed to complete the three residential courses of the innovation lab which are at the core of the project and whose implementation was importantly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. In fact, the pandemic did not allow to overlap the three courses as initially envisaged in the project’s design. If, indeed, the extension was necessary, it had the side effect to write off some of the other delays cumulated by the project in the first two years of implementation, and deadlines were moved ahead accordingly in the revised project’s timeline.

In Year 1, delays were structural and caused by the slow start of the ‘project machine’. In Year 2, activities were slowed down by the pandemic. In Year 3, implementation run at a reasonable speed, although in a 'COVID-19 modality’. In the same modality, at the end of October 2021, I finally had the chance to make my second visit to the project since its start. This gave me the opportunity to connect again with the ‘vibrations’ of the project, which I try to reflect in this journal.

Overall, during Year 3, the intensity of UFIL’s implementation challenges improved with respect to previous years. It is now clear that the project will have some success stories to tell and share with those municipalities that may wish to locally trigger a forest bioeconomy. The leadership of the project is maintained strong and is turning towards a policy commitment by the municipality to build on the results achieved by UFIL. Public procurement has progressed well during Year 3 and became flexible enough to serve the needs of training and coaching activities. Organisational arrangements within the urban authority keep on running smoothly and the co-management approach keeps on satisfying both the urban authority and the supporting Madrid-based partner.

Coordination mechanisms have been affected by the pandemic. If web-interaction among partners boosted during 2020, in 2021, remote interaction suffered from a sense of fatigue. It was evident that the gathering in Cuenca of all partners at the end of October 2021 was a very much needed occasion. Communication with target beneficiaries and users was still a weak aspect of implementation in Year 3, especially with regard to the capacity to reach out to citizens and rural communities. Engagement with local businesses slightly improved and networking with other stakeholders continued being good. Finally, UFIL never developed a structured monitoring system to inform on performance (of processes and partners) and on impact, which is in my view a weakness. An internal review was carried out in the mid of Year 3, but because of this delayed schedule its usefulness is unclear. The project regularly monitors the quality of teaching and coaching activities and is fast in changing and adapting its innovation lab’s work according to needs, but for the rest of its interventions UFIL keeps on applying a learning by doing approach. This has in my opinion affected the early identification of critical areas such as communication and reach out capability. 

• Brief recap on the Municipality of Cuenca and its UIA project

The Urban Forest Innovation Lab (UFIL) is implemented in Cuenca, a small-sized (about 55.000 inhabitants) city in the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain. Because of its very low population density (11.7 persons/km2 in 2019 - in the same year the EU27 average was 109 persons/km2), the province of Cuenca is part of the so-called ‘Southern Lapland’ of Spain. Mountainous areas and pine forests characterise its territory and it is always a pleasure to admire an impressive natural landscape from the height of Cuenca’s World Heritage historical centre.  

the city of Cuenca

The core of the UFIL project is the running of a forest innovation lab. The lab is hosted in some large rooms of the campus of the University of Castilla-La Mancha, located in the modern part of the City of Cuenca. Over the project’s timeline, the lab was structured into three residential courses. Each course was expected to be attended by a group of 35 students and to last 10 months. But changes to these settings occurred during implementation. For example, some of the students of the second course did not complete their journey due to personal reasons, and the third and last course (to be held in 2022) will be shorter than 10 months in order not to overlap with the closure of the project. Each course encompasses theoretical and innovative learning by participants as well as practical and prototyping work on innovations (products and/or services) which have to rely on the sustainable use of the forest resources of Cuenca. Lab’s activities are grounded on co-creation and challenge-based competitions. The latter are proposed by project’s partners and external companies. During the courses, participants develop solutions to the challenges but also identify and develop their own entrepreneurial ideas. It is on the basis of these ideas that they intend and are expected to become the future entrepreneurs of Cuenca and of its surroundings.

Since early 2020, the project's contextual conditions importantly changed. On one side, the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down/cancelled some activities. On the other side, the policy environment at the European and national levels became very favourable for projects like UFIL which comply with the European priorities set in the Green Deal and its related strategies (Farm to Fork, Biodiversity, Circular Economy, Climate Neutrality). In Year 3, this ‘politically correct’ profile of UFIL was further acknowledged, to such an extent that the project got recognised by the Spanish government as one of the 50 most relevant initiatives across the country in the area of entrepreneurship development.

• Where does the project stand at the end of October 2021?

By considering the recent 1-year extension, UFIL is a four-year project started on 1 November 2018. The kick-off of the project was slow and fewer outputs than expected were harvested in Year 1. During Year 2, the project successfully built over the lengthy preparatory work of Year 1. Still, it was again less effective than planned in implementing its work packages (WPs). If the COVID-19 outbreak is one of the most important reasons behind delays in Year 2, there were areas where the project was structurally weak. For example, it faced difficulties in engaging the local business community and in embedding its activities in the city and in the surrounding rural areas. In Year 3, the core of the project’s work remained on implementation and in particular on WP4 ‘Knowledge and spatial framework design’ and WP5 ‘Urban Forest Job and skills’. These are the two WPs related to the functioning of the innovation lab. Instead, implementation of WP7 ‘Business model and raising awareness’ did not make good progress. In Year 3, other evident weaknesses relate to WP3 on communication activities.

In brief, some of the milestones achieved during Year 3 include:

• The procurement process of machinery at Cuenca Maderas SA was completed.
• Procurement mechanisms for the innovation lab’s equipment by the University of Castilla-La Mancha have been finetuned to serve the scope of the training.
• 17 entrepreneurial ideas/groups were developed during the first UFIL training course. About ten of these ideas are expected to become registered businesses in the near future. These ideas were presented at a ‘Demo Day’ on 5 February 2021. The best three ideas were announced at an award ceremony in late March 2021. An additional award was provided for the Best Business Project by Globalcaja Cuenca Foundation.
• The second training course took place as scheduled and started in February 2021. It engaged 35 trainees out of which seven left at some stage. A total of 18 entrepreneurial ideas/groups are expected to come out of this second training course that will end in December 2021.
• Challenges to the second UFIL training course were proposed by four businesses (VIA AGORA, Grupo SUEZ, IKEA and CIBICA). With three of these businesses, UFIL signed cooperation agreements. 
• The call for the recruitment of participants in the third training course was launched in the third quarter of 2021. This last residential course of UFIL will start in January 2022. Its duration has been shortened from 10 to 6 months (up to July 2022).
• Incubation/acceleration of businesses designed by trainees kept on being implemented regularly.
• Communication activities kept on being performed, especially through the project’s blog and some business-related events.
• In October 2021, a brainstorming session on the future of the project was organised in Cuenca and attended by all project’s partners. It laid the foundations for the outline of the future model of UFIL.

On training activities, it is worth noting that the interactive approach pursued throughout the course finetuned into a satisfactory ‘COVID-19 modality’. Teaching activities during Year 3 kept on being implemented in presence and in remote mode. Remote teaching uses a web-based platform which was already envisaged in the project’s design and that got strengthened because of the pandemic. During Year 3, the second class of UFIL could use without restrictions the prototyping facilities of the innovation lab. More machinery and equipment were purchased and made available to trainees. Notably, students of the first training course continued being supported by the project, including in the use of the new machinery and equipment.

UFIL project lab where most of the equipment purchased by the project is stored

The UIA Permanent Secretary identifies seven main implementation challenges. Below is the summary of the intensity of these challenges according to the progress made by UFIL in Year 3. Not to miss the sight of this progress, the trend of each challenge’s intensity in Year 1 and Year 2 is recalled. Each challenge is then presented in detail after the summary table.

The project’s extension by one year waived some of the delays cumulated in the first two years of implementation, but it did not delete all the weaknesses which were at the basis of these delays. Namely, the project performed rather well in its third year with regard to the running of the lab but kept on not being sufficiently embedded in the territory due to insufficient communication and reach out activities. Its urban-rural dimension, which is supposed to be a characteristic of this project, is not evident enough, local businesses are not sufficiently engaged and community involvement is poor. This means that the project keeps on neglecting some of its target groups.

The project also keeps on making changes to its implementation modality (e.g. number of business challenges launched). The learning by doing approach continues prevailing and is not supported by a structured monitoring and evaluation system. The project monitoring system focuses on results and does not contain performance indicators (to assess quality of processes) and impact indicators (to assess the project’s impact on society). The earlier aspect prevented the creation of a learning loop where monitoring informs implementation and guides necessary changes; the latter aspect may jeopardise the project’s credibility upon its completion.

Project management focused in teh last year on revitalising a sense of shared responsibility among partners for both the project and its follow-up, a sense which was slightly deteriorated by the prolonged remote interaction. Coordination arrangements were simplified and participation by all partners tightened through partner’s direct involvement in key activities. Ideas about UFIL upscaling and future business model (sustainability) are now clearer, but still far from being concretised.

At the basis of the upscaling of UFIL there is the need to create an ecosystem of actors which are relevant to the forest bioeconomy sector. Ideally, and according to the quadruple helix approach for a successful interaction for innovation, this ecosystem has to include the public sector, the industry, the research and innovation community, and the civil society.

In Cuenca, so far, the only strong and committed actor is the public sector - and this aspect will influence positively the sustainability of UFIL’s activities at the end of the project. The industry is flowing around the project but is not convincingly caught. This may be a consequence of the partial success of the role of ‘sponsors’ envisaged in UFIL’s design for the launch of business challenges. The research community has only a teaching role in UFIL (University of Castilla-La Mancha and Polytechnic University of Madrid) but is not functioning as a direct source of innovation. Finally, the civil society has not been engaged enough in project’s activities (so far) and therefore, at this stage, has no possibility to contribute to the innovation process promoted by UFIL. 

The Municipality of Cuenca is a very active player in networking and new opportunities for collaboration and ecosystem development are likely to arise. Towards this scope, it is essential to change the perspective or scale from a local (municipality, province) level to a regional level. In fact, necessary actors for the ecosystem’s functioning may not be just around the corner, but they may be available in a nearby city or territory. 

wood testing machine