Standing out from the awards crowd

Richard Stephens

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, Eurobuild is launching a new awards initiative with a difference 
– no jury. Occupiers choose 
the best projects

At a time when global economic storm clouds gather menacingly overhead, is it wise or even timely to launch another awards scheme? We believe it is, because our initiative is designed to find, recognize and reward the projects which have stood the test of time in Poland. They will be a reminder that quality survives – and thrives – whatever the environment.

How do you adequately judge projects and companies in the property market? This is a perennial question in the industry. Excellence should be highlighted and recognized, but just how do you do it fairly and transparently? If it’s not fair, and if the criteria upon which the decisions are made are not clear, then we firmly believe it shouldn’t be attempted. Companies’ and projects’ reputations are too important to be judged lightly.

Therefore Eurobuild CEE has come up with a format which we believe to be the fairest in Central & Eastern Europe. It’s not perfect, but, to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s comment about democracy, “it’s the worst, except for all the others that have been tried.” So who are the judges? The judges will be those notoriously hard-to-please end-of-property-food-chainers, the occupiers. Tough call? You bet. We recognize that their verdict is not definitive. The definitive verdict would have to take into account all sorts of factors such as rental values, technical specifications, location, property management, sale price, tenant-retention, yield and many others. The buildings would have to be judged both by independent experts looking in detail at all these aspects, having been given open access to all necessary information by all relevant companies in the market, as well as taking into account feedback from the tenants. In other words, mission almost-impossible. Yet there is one hard-and-fast truth: buildings have to be tenant-friendly or they’ll fail. Therefore we believe that the occupier’s verdict is the ultimate seal of approval for a building.

The Plan

How do we find these ‘best projects’? We are going to do this by commissioning a survey of tenants across Poland in the office, shopping centre and warehouse sectors. To carry out the survey Eurobuild has taken on leading independent international market research company Gfk Polonia. Agnieszka Kowalewska, project manager for Gfk Polonia, explains the process: “First we will meet individually with a sample number of tenants in each sector to formulate three questionnaires, each tailored for its sector. Then, together with Eurobuild, we will confer with experts in the market. After finding out by phone exactly the right person to fill out the questionnaires in each company, the questionnaires will be sent to office, shopping centre and warehouse tenants across Poland to fill in. Each questionnaire will consist of a series of questions relating to different aspects of the projects, questions to which tenants will give a mark on a scale. The scores given by tenants in each project will be totalled up, averaged, and the project will be given a score.” The winning project in each sector will be the project with the highest score. This will be the main award, but each sector will also be broken down into different categories, both by size and by location. Therefore there will be awards for best projects in a given city or geographical area of Poland (e.g. ‘best office in Krakow’, ‘best warehouse in western Poland’ or ‘best shopping centre in Warsaw/outside Warsaw’).

Serious work afoot

These awards will be much more than a stylish gala party. The survey will collect a lot of data about what tenants across the country think of different projects, data which we will collate into a report. This report will be the most comprehensive study to-date about what end-users in the Polish market think, and will be an invaluable source of information for the market. From the report, we will be able to say which shopping centre has the highest-rated management, for example, or which office has the best public transport access. In other words, the report will break down the different sectors into segments, showing the specific strengths and weaknesses of each project according to the tenants.

A criticism might be that it is not an entirely level playing field, given that tenants, especially office tenants, are usually not in a position to judge more than one building (concerning shopping centres, retailers generally have a number of shops in several schemes, so they are well placed to judge a range of schemes). We believe, however, that overall the best projects will rise to the top. Tenants who think highly of the building they are in will give it a high score. Unhappy tenants won’t.

Rethinking the CEE region

The winning projects will be announced at The Eurobuild Awards Gala on Thursday 21st May at Warsaw’s premier banquet venue, Politechnika Warszawska, (Warsaw University of Technology). This will be preceded by the Eurobuild CEE Seminar Day at the InterContinental Warszawa, where senior property and business figures from around the CEE region and Europe will discuss the pressing themes of today and tomorrow’s property market under the theme of “Rethinking Central & Eastern Europe in a turbulent global economy”. There will be several rooms with a diverse range of issues under discussion at any one time where attendees can watch or take part as they wish. And after soaking it all up, you can toast the winning projects with colleagues, clients and friends at the gala afterwards. ν 

For more information please contact Richard Stephens at richard@eurobuildcee.com