Due to the increasing international cooperation between different industrial companies it is necessary to get insight into the requirements to the competences of maintenance staff. This project intends to contribute to the innovation of the vocational practice within the maintenance sector by upgrading the instruments by international consensus about educational material, and by designing a competence profile for the professionals. More specifically the project aims at making an inventory on the needed competencies of both engineers and managers working in the engineering and industrial maintenance sector, developing instruments, qualification structures and procedures to support human resources development, and gathering educational materials to help the development of appropriate competences, as well as establishing a certification system applied in Europe. Target groups of the project are maintenance managers, maintenance engineers and contractors.