Business Breakfast Fitting out without stressing out!

Tétris stands wide open

Industry experts discussed how interior design projects could be undertaken in ways that were transparent, credible and convenient for the client during a business breakfast organised by Eurobuild Conferences and Tétris Poland.

Around 70 market representatives including investors, tenants, advisers and architects arrived at the meeting organised in the Stixx restaurant on Europejski square in Warsaw. The opening question – ‘How to survive a large interior design project?’ – was also the topic of the meeting and suggested that interior design is rather difficult and demanding. Radosław Krawczyk, the president of the board of Dil Polska Baumanagement, a company that specialises in managing investment processes in the construction industry, looked at whether this was indeed the case when he gave the first presentation. Drawing on his many years of experience in working on large projects, he pointed out the traps that await those involved in such projects as well as their possible solutions. To put it simply, a fit-out is like buying a dress or a suit – in the majority of cases it is better to go to a store and buy something you like off the peg rather than to wonder about how to sew it up yourself. “Success occurs when the client makes those decisions that are the simplest and at the same time the most important to them and they don’t have to deal with the problems,” he explained.

Next, Rajmund Węgrzynek, a managing director at Tétris, took to the floor and pointed out the benefits of design and build in his presentation. “Compared to the traditional model, where the architect, the contractor and other subcontractors are separate companies, design and build can create considerable time savings. It speeds up decision-making and the various analyses. When arranging a medium-sized office, it can shorten the work by around 35 days. That’s really a lot,” he said. The morning session also included a presentation about implementing open book projects. This time the microphone was handed to Paweł Brodzik, another managing director at Tétris. Unlike what most often happens on the market where the contractor receives a lump sum for a project within which their margin is hidden, in the case of open book projects we have transparency in regard to expenditure. The contractor’s margin is established upfront, the customer can view all the other expenses and they decide on them by choosing how the project is to be implemented. “It’s a transparent mechanism, because the costs are disclosed and can only be reduced. It is a credible method because a company such as Tétris clearly specifies its remuneration. It’s not a secret so we can focus on optimising the budget,” said Paweł Brodzik.

After a coffee break everyone met up again for a panel discussion. Sitting on the panel were not only the contractors and the advisors who had spoken earlier but also tenant representatives – Agnieszka Karwacka, a director and partner in Deutsche Bank and Joanna Gajewska-Sokołowska, the chief operating officer of the EMEA Center of Excellence at JLL.

Rajmund Węgrzynek did not hide his pleasure at the meeting and stated that it was a good time to talk about a fit-out project model that was not so widespread in Poland. “It is possible to implement a project while maintaining high quality standards, providing full transparency and keeping the client’s interests in mind all at the same time. Our market is already mature enough for this. Keeping the process uncomplicated – which we can understand as putting on the table all the information about the client’s budget, their requirements and their limitations – allows a contractor to operate effectively and reduce unnecessary risk. It’s in the interests of all the parties: the client, the consultants and the contractor,” summed up Rajmund Węgrzynek.