HAUTE ECOLE ICHEC - ECAM - ISFSC

Their core work

HAUTE ECOLE ICHEC - ECAM - ISFSC is a Belgian federation of three higher education institutions — a business school (ICHEC), an engineering school (ECAM), and a social work school (ISFSC) — combining business, technical, and social science expertise under one roof. In EU research projects, they contribute competences in innovation management, financing instruments, and human-centred design, applied to the intersection of cultural heritage and sustainable development. Their practical work involves analysing how historic buildings and cultural assets can be repurposed economically while remaining viable investments, and how tourism around cultural heritage can be redesigned around community needs rather than mass consumption. They bring a business-school lens — funding models, open innovation frameworks, circular economy logic — to problems that most heritage research treats as purely architectural or historical.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (CLIC, 2017–2021) focused on the built environment — how circular economic models can guide the adaptive reuse and investment in physical cultural heritage sites. The single early keyword (212930, a CORDIS classification code) offers little detail, but the project title points squarely at real-estate and investment logic applied to heritage buildings. By the second project (Be.CULTOUR, 2021–2024), the focus shifted visibly toward people and processes: human-centred design, open and collaborative innovation, europeanisation, and the tourist experience itself. The trend is a move from physical assets and financing toward human systems, co-creation methods, and cultural identity — suggesting growing interest in the social and participatory dimensions of heritage management.

They are moving from asset-level financing and reuse models toward participatory, human-centred frameworks — a direction that would suit consortia working on community engagement, co-design, or responsible tourism policy.

How they like to work

They have participated only as consortium partners across both projects, never taking the coordinator role — consistent with a higher education institution that brings specific disciplinary depth rather than project management infrastructure. With 26 unique partners across 16 countries from only 2 projects, they work in broad, diverse consortia rather than repeating the same small network. This suggests they are valued as a specific functional contributor — likely for business modelling, innovation frameworks, or social science methods — rather than as a generalist coordinator.

Despite only two projects, the organisation has built contact with 26 distinct partners across 16 countries, indicating participation in large multi-partner European consortia. No geographic concentration is visible from the data, pointing to pan-European rather than regionally focused collaboration.

What sets them apart

ICHEC ECAM ISFSC occupies an unusual niche: a multi-faculty Belgian institution that combines business, engineering, and social work expertise and deploys it at the junction of cultural heritage, circular economy, and innovation management — a combination rarely found in a single organisation. Unlike pure humanities universities or pure engineering schools, they can translate between financial viability, technical feasibility, and community impact within the same consortium team. For a project needing someone who understands both investment logic and human-centred co-design in a cultural or urban heritage context, this institution covers ground that would otherwise require two separate partners.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CLIC
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 409,438) and the foundation of the organisation's heritage-circular economy profile, addressing how adaptive reuse of cultural buildings can attract viable private and public investment.
• Be.CULTOUR
  Marks a clear methodological shift toward human-centred design and open innovation, signalling the organisation's capacity to contribute co-design and community engagement methods alongside its business school expertise.