The project SKRAT (Strategic practices for Know-how Retention AndTransmission within organizations) will develop substantial innovation inone of the most urgent fields of the development of the Europeanvocational training system: the management of demographic change byimproving the environment for life long learning within companies.Generational change endangers the knowledge base of companies. Withhigh rate of early retirement knowledge gets lost, productivity suffers.SKRAT will use EQVET reference system methodologies in an innovativeway to facilitate the intergenerational transfer of know how in the metalindustry. This will improve the retention rate of older workers but alsohelp to transfer experiential knowledge to younger workers, therebyimproving the learning system of companies. This will be used to achievethe following objectives -Retention of distinctive competences of olderworkers, avoiding a “know-how exodus”, - Holistic approach in HRD,under the perspective of retaining know-how and generating additionalknow-how by intergenerational professional exchange.-To allow theacquisition of fixed competences for specific positions right from theirholders. In this context, the definitions of skills knowledge andcompetences as defined in the context of ECVET will be strongly used.SKRAT involves a strong partnership with a high impact in the relevantfield, consisting of social partners, social partner training organisations,training providers and consultancies with proven access to SMEguaranteeing an high short and long term impact of the results andtransfer of products. The needs of end users will be studied in thenational research but also through the involvement of advisorycommittees in each country. The results of the project will be: a testedmethodology for retention and transmission of know-how in turnoverprocesses, consisting of user friendly practice-oriented tools andprocedures based on an ECVET oriented reference system for identifyingand explicating implicit knowledge; a user-friendly methodological guidefor training consultants, managers and workers representatives ; acomprehensive report on companies and employees needs in the field ;Study cases will be generated from the testing experiences; a GoodPractices Handbook (paper, digital media and web-based) presentingstudy cases from the field test ; A high quality website.