Quaternaire Portugal, together with Simbiente Açores, is working on an update to the Autonomous Region of Azores’s Tourism Planning Program (POTRAA), for the Tourism Directorate in the Azores.

Quaternaire Portugal is currently developing an Intervention Plan for the Rural Environment (PIER) in the Herdade da Mingorra, situated on the district of Beja, and occupying an area of 1400ha. The PIER is a specific type of a Detailed Plan solely focused on rustic land which aims to define: i) uses and regulations concerning various forms of occupation; ii) standards for construction, reconstruction, modification and demolition of buildings; iii) the framework for implementing new infrastructures and improvement of existing ones under environmental and energetic requirements; v) rules to the cultivation of new areas of vineyard or other crops; among others.

This is the third PIER Quaternaire Portugal is undertaking in Alentejo, to which it joins the current elaboration of a fourth.

On the first trimester of 2019, Quaternaire Portugal begun a counselling to the Portimão Municipality for the elaboration of a Plan for Management, Monitoring and Evaluation of the municipality’s PARU – Plan of Action for Urban Regeneration. It has been observed that this partnership will last until the end of 2020, when it is scheduled the physical and financial conclusion of the city’s PARU (as agreed upon contract with the CRESC Algarve Managing Authority).

The Plan is to become a reference in the management of Portimão’s PARU, in order to guarantee the best conditions to achieve the goals set, which may include the leveraging of public and private financing to complement the already funded operations. It’s the Plan’s role to establish an organics of the management process and the tools and actions to best materialize the project’s various dimensions, while reporting its results to the several partners of the endeavour.

It has been requested to Quaternaire Portugal by the Rectory of ISCTE-IUL to provide technical support in the creation of a new institute for research and interface with society, under the model of a Center for Enhancement and Innovation Transfer, to be named ISCTE – Conhecimento e Inovação (ISCTE – Knowledge and Innovation). Some particular aspects of this project reside in that this to-be-formed unit acquires its own legal status, and in that all current research departments of ISCTE-IUL and related research institutions are transferred to a new building (which currently holds the Institute for Mobility and Transports, in Lisbon). This building will be rehabilitated so that the institution’s desired physical and collaborative conditions are in place for the functioning of the new Center for Enhancement and Innovation Transfer.

The plan is to point out the basic concept, mission and objectives of the program, as it defines the framework for its functioning and organization, and sets orientations for the various areas of activity to be held at the Center for the Arts and Creativity. The current stage of this project, initiated in the last trimester of 2018, focuses on designing a Collection Management Program and a Museographical Program.

The reconversion and rehabilitation of Torres Vedras’s Old Municipal Abattoir and adjacent buildings in order to set up there the Center for the Arts and Creativity is under the authorship of José Simões Neves Architecture Office. The necessary funding is provided by the Strategic Plan for the Urban Development of Torres Vedras.

At the closing of 2018, the Chamusca Municipality hired Quaternaire Portugal for technical support in creating and elaborating an application to Alentejo’s 2020 Regional Operational Program, in order to establish the Tejo Interpretation Center in the territory. In broad terms, the main guidelines and objectives to figure in the application were the promotion of natural, historic and cultural patrimony that could attract tourism, through an offer based on quality and respect for local environment, nature and heritage, so that in the end it would strengthen the region’s identity as a remarkable territory.

Since 1995 CESAE has been a Professional Training Center under the tutelage of AEP - the Portuguese Business Association, which cooperates with the national Employment and Professional Training Institute (IEFP) under the Decree-Law nº 165/85. Still under its initial naming of CESAI (from 1985 to 1995) which based its work in the subject of informatics, the institution was able to assume the status of CGP, a Professional Training Center with Shared Management. After a reshaping which renamed it as CESAE, the center developed a remarkable work in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies, emerging from an informatics-based sectorial perspective into a much wider take on the computer sciences.

Under the Portugal 2020 Program new conditions of application to the subsidies for vocational training have altered the way the IEFP deals with its partners on the matter. Therefore Quaternaire Portugal has been challenged to study ways for a new strategic transformation of the CESAE to meet the new requirements of a CGP, reshaping the institution in training for a digital transition of Portuguese economy and society. The study accounts for the resources CESAE was able to pool during its existence and it is also a suitable opportunity to discuss what challenges and gains are arising skills-wise from society’s transformation into the digital age.

Quaternaire Portugal is currently responsible for this Study, focused on the system providing young people with training and education, and has the following goals: i) to support the implementation of new ways to organize the network of educational courses in the municipalities part of the Trás-os-Montes region; ii) to contribute to the improvement of quality in professional education; iii) to consolidate the collaboration between academic and professional education systems. The methodology taken in this study strives for an active participation of local and regional agents, as they are central elements throughout the process, and also combines diverse information sources in its making, from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. This analysis is bound to be completed by Autumn 2019.

The external evaluation of projects is one of Quaternaire Portugal’s spheres of expertise, and the company is currently working precisely on assessing LINK PME, a project promoted by AEP - the Portuguese Business Association. This is a collaboration between the PME (the Portuguese acronym for SME - Small and Medium Sized Companies) and other stakeholders in key fields for competitiveness such as digital economy, innovation and investment, and it includes three main sectors of activity: the Entrepreneurial Observatory, the Go to market/Portal LINK PME and Go to network/Portal LINK PME.

This study will last for 2019 and up to April 2020, gathering a combination of methodologies and sources of both a qualitative and quantitative character, such as non-participatory observation, surveys, interviews and a case study panel.

Quaternaire Portugal has been actively following the development of New Generation Policies on Housing and the instruments for its implementation, with the current Local Strategy for Housing (ELH) having a crucial role at a municipal action level.

Our proposed methodological approach does not make the ELH a subordinate to specific mechanisms from this policy, as it happens with the 1º Direito Program. Quaternaire’s approach is, without totally dismissing the former, much closer to the guidelines assumed by the Housing State Secretariat in which the ELH’s role is not only to solve cases of overwhelming destitution; it is also to identify and shape out what other housing needs and conditionings in an access to it exist so as to find solutions, through a mobilization of whatever instruments the City Councils have at their disposal for an effective public policy on housing.

The transfer of expertise on housing to local authorities deems it necessary that they have a better knowledge of their territory’s conditions and problems concerning the access to housing, so that they can better participate in their resolution. Consequently, this makes it necessary to equip local authorities with an overview and an intervention strategy on the matter. In the near future they will have the role of shaping housing policies, leaving central government as but a legislator, regulator and supervisor.

There is also the possibility to make financial incentives available in the promotion of access to housing. Should they indeed happen, it will certainly be in articulation with the existing ELHs.

With this context in mind Quaternaire Portugal has been approaching the market and collaborating with local municipalities, as to mobilize resources and working methods that can favour a participation of all relevant agents in the matter.