Building on success

At the 2nd Eurobuild Awards some parts will be familiar, but we're doing a few things differently. The same:
the Hilton, Grażyna Torbicka and the Tenants' Awards. New: a people's vote, the Green Tenant Award and Kayah

The Eurobuild Awards is coming round again, on Thursday December 8th to be exact, and preparations are already underway. Last year's Awards, the first to be held, were more successful than we had expected, to be perfectly honest. Before the event there was a feeling in some quarters of the market - completely understandable in my opinion - best summed it up as follows: "Oh no, not another b****y awards event". Yet we felt strongly that the market needed - and deserved - something more transparent than what was on offer and we set out to try to provide it. As it turned out, it went pretty well. No-one fell off the stage, but more importantly, the way of choosing the winners seemed to work and we sold out of tickets well before the gala night. There were some surprises, most notably Wola Park winning the award in the 'Best Shopping Centre in Poland as chosen by tenants' category, but it got people talking and shook things up a bit, which was one of the things that we wanted to happen. Importantly for Eurobuild CEE, no-one could praise or blame us for that result or any other because we had no influence over it. For the 'Best Office', 'Best Shopping Centre' and 'Best Warehouse' in Poland categories, the winners were those who scored highest in a survey of tenants carried out by independent market research company Millward Brown, in which tenants rated various aspects of the project they were in. For the market awards section - which covered the rest of the awards - each category had its own jury of high-level professionals who knew the particular category very well, and the internet voting process was handled entirely by KPMG, who will oversee it again this year.

Something old, something new
We'll be doing it more or less the same way again this year, but enlarging it all a bit. For starters, there'll be about 250 more tickets available, meaning about 750 tickets in total. Assuming, and praying, that the global financial markets don't collapse completely and that there aren't any riots in Warsaw, we expect to sell out well in advance again this year if our pre-orders are anything to go by. The survey of tenants is once again being carried out by Millward Brown, who have in fact more or less completed the office and shopping centre surveys and are currently working on the warehouse survey. We kept the same questions as last year because we want the results, over time, to become a yearly record of the market. To do this we need to keep the survey questions and format standard. We've only added two questions, one asking tenants to rate their satisfaction with the building management over the previous 12 months, and the other asking them to say how confident they feel about their business in the year ahead. Concerning the projects, there remain 50 offices, 30 shopping centres and 20 warehouses to be rated. The majority will be those that were surveyed last year but to the list will be added new offices, shopping centres and warehouses opened between July 2009 and June 2010, because one of the conditions of the survey is that the project must have been in operation at least 12 months before the time of the survey. We're also adding two categories to this part. Since a section of the survey deals with the performance of the building's management, we've included 'Best Office Management Company' and 'Best Shopping Centre Management Company'. To be eligible for this a company must manage at least three offices or three shopping centres on the list. As last year, we'll also ask tenants to rank, in order of importance to them, different topics the questionnaire covers (e.g. location, costs, management, etc.) and we'll weight the responses accordingly so that questions that are more important to them are given greater weight than those that are less important to them.

Warehouse tenants missing in action
Last year Millward Brown learnt a lot about carrying out a survey in the real estate sector. "From our point of view the warehouse one was the most difficult because the people who decided which project to lease space in weren't actually in the warehouse and were difficult to get hold of," said Katarzyna Bednarek, who will be responsible for the survey this year. "In the office sector some of the building managers were suspicious about the survey and were unwilling to cooperate. The tenants themselves, however, were extremely willing to take part, as they were in the shopping centres too. Tenants were keen to get involved, either to say what needed to be changed or simply to praise the project itself." The survey process is as follows: first Millward Brown sends out the questionnaires by email. If they don't get the requisite number of replies they phone the tenants. If necessary, they then go to the companies and conduct face-to-face interviews, which is especially the case with the retailers.

Not every jury has 12 members
For the market awards section, which is judged by individual juries of market professionals, we've added a few more categories to cover all the major disciplines in the market, for example 'Best Engineering Consultancy' and 'Best Construction Company'. This year some will cover the CEE region, while most will remain Poland-only. A notable new category is the 'Green Tenant Award', which is sponsored by Colliers International. We'll be working with them and others to identify the tenant in the CEE region which has the best sustainable credentials, but the bigger aim is to promote sustainability amongst tenants and highlight the fact that it's really the occupier who is most responsible for making a building 'green', even more so than the developer. Last year there were 105 jury members and almost all voted, with the voting being carried out electronically. This year we expect a lot more to take part - there being no limit to the number of jury members per category, the main criterion being that the person must be manager or director level or above who knows the category in question very well. The other rule is one person per company per category. When the jury members vote we're going to ask them to explain briefly why they chose a particular company or project and we'll publish the comments - all non-attributable of course. As with an honest union vote, no-one else, Eurobuild included, may see how a jury member votes or what comment he or she makes. The other change is that there will be an initial short-listing of companies or projects done by the jury members, so there will be a maximum of seven nominees per category from which the jury members will choose the winner.

The people's choice
We're also introducing a third way of choosing the winners for three of the categories, namely the 'Outstanding Architectural Design of the Year Poland' for commercial real estate projects which have a building permit and on which construction has started in 2011, the 'Outstanding Business Achievement of the Year CEE' award for individuals in the real estate market who have done something special in the property market, and finally the 'Outstanding Non-Business Achievement of the Year CEE' award, for those in the market who have done something outstanding outside work like raising money for charity, promoting awareness of a good cause or completing an amazing challenge. This category is open to individuals or groups. Each guest will be given an electronic voting device and will vote for the winners on the night. If that means there'll be an element of good-natured campaigning, then great. Last year we wanted to add a charitable element but there simply wasn't time to organise it, so this year we're very pleased to be supporting the charity 'Fundacja Mam Marzenie', which translates as the 'I have a dream' foundation and fulfils the wishes of children with terminal or life-threatening illnesses. It can be anything from a trip to Disneyland to getting a laptop computer or being a policeman for a day. On the gala night we'll be selling raffle tickets for PLN 50 each with the chance to win some fabulous prizes in a lucky dip during the evening. If everyone were to give at least PLN 50 then we'd raise just over PLN 35,000. If this target is hit, 'Eurobuild CEE' will give PLN 15,000, reaching PLN 50,000 in total. There'll also be an auction, which we saw work so well at the recent Charity Beach Volleyball on the banks of Warsaw's Vistula River, and all-in-all we hope to raise a lot more than that. Finally, the entertainment will be top-notch again. Last year many were surprised that only a handful of people stayed in the gala room to watch the stunning Natasza Urbańska, most preferring to chat to each other in the foyer. This year we'll have that great Polish star, Kayah, and we feel sure that she'll keep the guests in the room. And the burning question: will hostess Grażyna Torbicka continue defying the laws of nature and look one year younger? This is more or less the gist of the Eurobuild Awards 2011. For more information and to see a full list of categories, please go to www.eurobuildawards.com. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me at richard@eurobuildcee.com.

Richard Stephens