On 22–24 October, Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk) hosted a joint meeting of the board of the Association of Construction Universities (ACU), the presidium of the Federal Educational and Methodological Association (FEMA) for the enlarged group of specialties and fields of study (EGSF) 08.00.00 "Construction Technique and Technology" and the council of the Industry Consortium "Construction and Architecture".

The participants discussed training personnel for the Russian construction industry. According to Denis Paramonov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Russian Student Squads, it is the construction squads and their successful experience working on national construction sites, as well as abroad, that enable students not only to master blue-collar jobs but also to become part of the construction industry while still studying.

Andrey Nikulin, Dean of the SPbGASU Faculty of Civil Engineering, presented a report on the topic "Justification of the need to train restoration engineers in EGSF 16 "Construction and Housing and Utility Services" within the framework of the ongoing reform of higher engineering education" and noted that in 2026, SPbGASU will host the first recruitment of applicants in the field of study 08.03.01 Civil engineering, profile "Restoration of buildings and structures".

"Russia has over 150,000 architectural and cultural heritage sites, and Saint Petersburg boasts the largest concentration of them in the country—9,035. The Leningrad and St Petersburg Schools of Restoration have eighty years of experience in restoring and preserving architectural heritage sites. New methods, materials, and technologies require restorers to possess engineering expertise, which will enable them to make professionally sound decisions at every stage of the restoration cycle and, most importantly, to establish a lifecycle management system for the restoration site for decades and even centuries to come, based on digital solutions," noted Andrey Nikulin.

Participants in the joint meeting noted the undeniable importance of reviving the training of restoration engineers at SPbGASU, which was already underway at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries and provided the Northern Capital with high-level specialists, including Aleksey Mikhailov, Chairman of the Committee for the State Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP), and his deputy, Ekaterina Kozyreva, who are both qualified restoration engineers.

The meeting included a seminar for heads of university information modeling technology centers, where Denis Nizhegorodtsev, Director of the SPbGASU Educational Center for Digital Competence, spoke. He presented an innovative methodology for developing digital competencies at the secondary, vocational, higher, and continuing education levels, with key components including digital construction classes, TIM championships, an elective course on project work, a TIM elective, and comprehensive defenses of TIM projects as final qualifying works.

According to Denis Nizhegorodtsev, "the key to the growth of the TIM sector in Russia should be a more intensive transition of large customer companies to working with domestic software, which would significantly increase the speed of adaptation of SPbGASU graduates in design organizations."