Bringing professionals from across the world together

By Emma Peterson.

IFD’s Connection Forum united international experts to discuss innovation, workforce development, technical standards and the shared future of the trade.

Recently, International Federation of the Roofing Trade (IFD) hosted their first ever Connection Forum in Vienna, Austria. This Forum was specifically designed by the IFD team to create a space dedicated to sharing ideas and collaboratively working to improve the roofing industry on a whole. To learn more about this, we invited Sabine Rothschuh, IFD’s general secretary, to join us for an episode of Roofing Road Trips®.

This year’s Connection Forum was split into two days. The first day was primary filled with speaker presentations from around the world (our very own Heidi J. Ellsworth was one of those presenters!). This was an incredibly valuable day as it gave attendees the chance to learn from each other. As Sabine described, “We can all learn from each other about innovating, training and so forth...Because, while every country is unique, we’re all facing the same overall challenges; we need more trained workers, we need to raise the standard, etc.” She continued, “The first day of the Connection Forum was really focused on building trust and communication so we can learn from each other.”

As for the second day, that was designated time for “technical focus” and “future approach” discussions. Sabine explained what this meant, sharing, “IFD prides itself in providing the roofing industry an international platform where experts collaborate, learn from each other and can collaboratively develop international technical guides and standards.” This is what that second day of the Connection Forum was focused on – being that space for those conversations and meetings to happen. As Sabine put it, “At the Connection Forum, we were bringing experts from different countries together. [It made sense to make a space for them] to exchange practical knowledge and experience.”

Overall, both days of the Forum proved to be invaluable opportunities for attendees to learn, grow and collaborate for the betterment of the entire roofing trade.

Listen to our entire conversation with Sabine or Watch the recording on YouTube to learn more.