SMART goes North!
2nd Transnational Project Meeting

NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology, hosted the second TPM of the European project SMART, on Sep 11-12 2025. Located in Trondheim and holding the record as largest university of the Nordic country, the educational pole has been the most suitable location for a 2-day that let the partners from all over the EU discuss and update each other on the progresses of the initiative focusing on AI and enabling technologies.

Under the coordination of the host, NTNU Prof. Patrick Mikalef, the agenda let the representatives of Spanish SGS Tecnos SA (consortium leader), Greek e-School, Lithuanian Tech Park Kaunas and Italian Confindustria Veneto SIAV bring news and updates on the various project WPs, deepening the activities already performed and planning the forthcoming ones alongside the project timeline. In particular, great attention has been given to the research and the inquiries put in place to investigate and analyse the needs of strategic European SMEs managers and experts concerning AI, technology adoption and the perceived impact on the labour market. This collection of replies will serve as foundation for the development of a curricular manual for training (WP3), combined with the deep review of Industry 5.0 conducted to map the specific features, emerging trends and dynamics of this working environment and its training system.

Thanks to the data gathered, the Consortium will later be able to establish a series of learning priorities and gaps to be addressed via the SMART training programme to be created, in accordance with the project objectives. Importantly, the group decided upon some key features of the educational set – i.e. its comprehensive approach about the use and functioning of AI and enabling technologies, the integration between skills and learning priorities divided per complexity levels, the set of hands-on solutions and concrete instructions to be easily applied by the learners form SMEs.

Fresh air and a confirmed great collaboration between the partners helped the meeting finish even earlier than planned, giving the participants the chance to visit the pretty town of Trondheim, famous for its colourful wooden stilt houses serving as storage back in time, for its majestic gothic Cathedral and it splendid University – embodied by its oldest and greatest seat, the Stiftsgården, whose construction dates back between 1774 and 1778. Also favoured by a bright and slightly windy day, some members of the group took a walk along the town rivers and hilly up-and-downs, ending up the day with a social dinner in a typical restaurant established where butchers and fishermen used to have their business back in 1950s.

All in all, this meeting was the chance not only to write some common lines regarding the approach towards and implementation of the SMART project, but also to deepen the mutual knowledge and to reinforce the collaboration and the shared goals.