Building a better place

Nathan North, ‘Eurobuild CEE’: CFE has been operating in Poland for 27 years now and you have been with the company for much of that time. Could you tell us something about the structure of your group and your role in it – and why it decided to come to Poland in the first place?

Bruno Lambrecht, the CEO of CFE Polska: CFE Polska is the Polish construction company of Belgian group CFE. I’m the CEO and we employ around 200 people. BPI Polska is the group’s development business here, while VMA, which is based in Wrocław, specialises in multitechnics – installations and the automation of buildings. Together, we employ around 400 people. CFE came to Poland because one of our clients in Belgium, General Motors, was starting its activities here and asked us to do the concreting work for their new factory in Gliwice. Shortly after that, we were commissioned by Leclerc and eventually built around ten of their supermarkets across Poland. Therefore, we have been mainly involved in industrial and retail projects here, as well as some residential, offices, hotels and leisure parks – and we’ve experienced steady growth throughout this time. However, we have never aimed at being the biggest player but the best one. So, we are a medium-sized company with annual revenue of around PLN 700 mln. And we are mostly active in the private sector.

And what has been your experience of the construction market here?

In general, the Polish economy has known some good and some less good years, but has always enjoyed periods of extraordinary growth – and the construction sector has made a massive contribution to this. The sector is very dynamic, but for the last few years has been struggling with issues common across Europe – a shortage of labour, inflation and the instability of the market. But the Polish market is very important to CFE – we believe in it and can see lots of growth ahead. And so, we intend to stay here and to continue to grow steadily.

How do you feel CFE has contributed since it entered the Polish market to the way buildings and infrastructure are constructed? Which significant projects have you built and what do you have in the pipeline?

In our early years here, we built office projects on the Al. Jerozolimskie office corridor in Warsaw. The successful cooperation we had with clients led to recurring orders, such as with Leclerc, Saint Gobain, Valeo, Panattoni, GLP and Matexi. We have also built all the Majaland leisure parks in Poland and will soon be starting work on its fourth one. Then there is Chmielna Duo, a residential development next to the NYX Hotel close to Warsaw’s Central Station. This project is a cooperation between BPI and CFE, so we are both the developer and the contractor. In the last five years, we have built over 1 mln sqm of logistics centres. We have also recently finished two large industrial plants for the battery segment. So, we are mostly focused on industrial projects at the moment, secondly on residential, and then on retail, offices and other projects. For each sector we have specialised teams. But regardless of the sector, our main focus is on our cooperation with our clients and creating wonderful things together!

Looking at your company website, what struck me is how genuinely serious you are about sustainability. You don’t really see this emphasis so much on other construction firms’ websites. It looks like you are not just paying lip service to ESG principles but have really taken them to heart. But in what concrete ways are you approaching these issues?

We, as a construction firm, and the sector in general have transformed the cities we live in. But as a sector, we also have a huge impact on the environment, so we have an obligation towards future generations to build in a sustainable way. In recent years, we’ve set up a knowledge centre together with VMA to provide clients with proposals for low-emission buildings. And we can proactively propose changes to plans to ensure these buildings are more sustainable. One example is the 37,000 sqm project we are constructing for GLP in Warsaw. This is the first large-scale logistics centre to be constructed in Poland with a wooden roof in order to reduce its carbon footprint.

Is wood really such a sustainable material if using it, say, leads to deforestation?

Yes, it is, because in our case we only use certified wood, so that each time a tree is felled it is replaced. And the young saplings these trees are replaced with actually absorb more CO2 than older trees. Thus, we believe very strongly in the future of wooden construction. To help us to grow in this field, we recently set up a new business line, Woodshapers, which will provide us with the wooden elements we are going to use in wooden construction.

And this is not the only new business line you have recently set up, I believe…

Yes, we have also recently launched CFE Pulse on the Polish market, which is aimed at helping clients revitalise their portfolios and thus increase their value. This business is focused on the energy transformation of buildings, upgrading them to current energy-efficiency standards, and increasing their value for investment funds. We offer funds and owners a consultancy to lower their carbon footprints and proposals for upgrading these assets, while also offering to carry out the work required for this. Again, this is supported by our knowledge centre and VMA’s building automation expertise. Right now, we are upgrading an existing shopping centre in southern Poland. I’m very proud of this. The life cycle, CRREM and carbon footprint analyses we offer are very much appreciated by our clients. And we can offer ESG consultancy with the hands-on approach of a contractor. Together with VMA we can provide real-time energy consumption monitoring, which is crucial because optimisation begins with working out how to reduce such consumption.

As well as the environmental aspects of ESG, there is also what seems to be a commitment to employing women in your company. Around 45 pct of your employees are female. Does this kind of approach distinguish you from more traditional firms on this market?

It was a very conscious choice to ensure a balance between men and women in our firm – and for a construction company we are surely above the market average in this respect. For younger women, it’s always something of a challenge to enter this sector at the start of their careers, so we support them by organising training sessions and workshops. I believe that even though this is traditionally a male-dominated sector, having a good mix of the sexes is the best way to ensure success. One of our site teams is even mostly female – five women working in a team of seven.

Coming back to your impact on cities, I read somewhere that your dream when you were younger was to build cities – but now it is to build a future for generations to come. Did you succeed in your first dream and how do you intend to accomplish the second?

When I was young, I just wanted to build cities. When you are a kid playing with Lego, it’s all about the buildings you can create. But when you get older, you learn that the most important aspect is the people who live in or use buildings. I’ve been living in Poland for about 20 years, and I can see how the quality of life of the people who live in or use our buildings has improved in that time. It’s really not about constructing the biggest or the prettiest buildings, it’s improving the work and lives of people is what gives me the greatest satisfaction – if you can see people coming into their workplaces and enjoying their jobs it vastly improves their lives. This can also be seen within our company, as many of our people have been with us for a long time, but we are also keen to bring in new, younger professionals to provide us with fresh ideas. Seeing people enjoy their work is what drives me and achieving this is my goal – not to be the biggest company around but to make the biggest and best difference to people’s lives.

A success story

Bruno Lambrecht was born in Belgium in 1971. He has been the general manager of CFE in Poland since 2009 and is now a member of CFE group’s executive committee. He has been working and living in Poland for more than 20 years and came to love his adopted country. He is a graduate of the faculty of civil engineering of KU Leuven University in Belgium, where he became a qualified civil engineer. During his more than 25-year career, he has employed his expertise in design, engineering and management in the construction sectors in The Netherlands, Belgium, the United Arab Emirates and Poland. Bruno is now a seasoned people manager and a true believer in success being achieved through partnerships and the continuous improvement of working methods. He was chairman of the board of the Belgian Business Chamber for several years and is still very active in the Belgian community in Poland. In 2015 he was presented with a Kreator Budownictwa [Construction Creator of the Year] award by the PIIB {the Polish Chamber of Civil Engineers], while in 2018 he received the award of Osobowość Branży [Top Industry Personality] for 2017 from Builder Polska.