Advice at every stage

Alex Hayes, Eurobuild CEE: Could you tell us something about Arcadis?

Jarosław Miziołek, executive director, Arcadis: The company has seven offices in Poland with 400 employees. We are involved in three fields – and the first of these is ‘places’. This means creating, supporting and improving intelligent, safe and sustainable places where people can live work, learn and develop. The second area is ‘mobility’, which covers everything related to transport. While the third area is ‘resilience’, which is focused on protecting the natural environment and water resources as well as creating cities that are climate change resistant. We’ve been active in Poland for 26 years. Arcadis started off in Poland in the area of environmental protection and we’ve been gradually building up our presence through takeovers. To start with, we bought a company engaged in environmental protection and then we branched out into other fields. The last big takeover by Arcadis in Poland was that of EC Harris.

What would you say your greatest success has been over this time?

JM: I think that our strength lies in our ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions and turn them into successes. I have had the pleasure of managing this company since 2018, when we employed around 100 people, while today we have over 400. This is without doubt our greatest achievement over the last few years. Moreover, we’ve been able to build up synergies with Western offices where they lack certain experts. We are able to quickly adapt to the local market, fill in these gaps, and take on projects for our colleagues in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. But we also have large projects that we are pursuing totally independently in Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania, and recently we won a large commission in Latvia. We have managed to generate a synergy with other offices in the west, where, there is a certain deficit when it comes to recruitment as it’s just difficult to hire specialists. We are able to adapt to these local markets quite quickly, fill these gaps and implement projects for our colleagues in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK; but we also implement, completely independently, a lot of projects in Sweden. Maciej’s team has also taken on projects in Estonia, Lithuania, and now we have won a large project in Latvia. These are all projects managed by our team in Poland.

Piotr Matkowski, places project management lead, market sector leader for manufacturing and technology, Arcadis: Our work involves staying ahead of the market sentiment and foreseeing the trends in the real estate sector. As engineers and consultants, we can see things that are not yet popular or required, such as ESG services involving decarbonisation strategies as well as calculating and reducing carbon footprints.

Since we’re on the topic of ESG, what services do you offer in this regard?

Dominik Dąbrowski, CRE head and construction management lead, Arcadis: We offer services that to a large extent help companies understand the strategy they should adopt to keep the harm they do to the environment down to a minimum. We help clients design and modernise buildings, so that the technical solutions meet modern standards and ESG requirements. When it comes to the warehouse market, it’s now difficult to find a building without solar panels, heat pumps or LED lighting. These are the market standards that investors expect.

JM: Clients come to us with different ESG issues. For example, some have problems with refinancing and taking out loans, since banks make specific ESG demands. Our clients say, “Look, we went to the bank for a loan but they have some requirements that we don’t know how to deal with. Please help us through this process.”

I wanted to ask about specific deals you’ve been involved in.

Maciej Tertelis, places director, property and investment sector, pan-European advisory, Arcadis: The largest transaction we’ve been involved in as a consultant over the last few years was CBRE’s purchase of a logistics portfolio in Poland. Also, we are active on the residential market, such as with Heimstaden and their further investment into PRS. We advise on the purchasing decisions for these types of investment and then we supervise the construction work.

JM: Last year Maciej’s team handled transactions worth EUR 23 bln.

MT: We work with 140 funds that we advise in their purchases of both individual properties in Poland and abroad as well as entire portfolios. Today we operate in 14 European countries and we’ve also started working in the US.

So your clients tend to be loyal to Arcadis?

PM: Of course, clients from different construction sectors and in particular those involved in offices, logistics and industrial construction as well as developers and funds are very loyal to our firm, particularly when it comes to extremely advanced technical buildings or large and complicated projects. Many clients are launching their businesses in Poland or continuing their projects with Arcadis. Beginning with the idea and the early planning stages of a project, the concept design, the permitting stage, the drawing up of the budget, the search for a property and the supervision. We stick by the client. This often continues with Arcadis managing the building during its usage stage.

What do you predict for the market? Should we expect there to be any new trends?

JM: I believe that over the next ten years the entire market will concentrate on sustainable development, ESG and data services.

MT: We can also be certain that logistics, accommodation and data centres will be key growth areas. These sectors are showing clear prospects for expansion and there will be significant demand for such services. We have an established position and skilled experts in these fields.

DD: We also regard Poland as an attractive market for investment coming in from other parts of the world in order to secure supply chains. Poland remains competitive in comparison to its neighbours when it comes to the availability of land, the costs of construction and the availability of labour. We are expecting significant investment activity from manufacturers in the near future.

I’m supposed to ask a more personal question to end the interview, so what are your plans for the summer holidays?

MT: It’s my clients who tell me when I can take a holiday (laughs).

DD: It’s Jarek who decides for me laughs).

PM: Dominik plans my holidays (laughs).

About Arcadis

Arcadis is a global company delivering sustainable design, engineering, digital and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. We employ more than 36,000 architects, data analysts, designers, engineers, project planners, water management and sustainability experts, all driven by the passion for improving the quality of life.