Each autumn a jury is selected containing regional management heads of leading companies active in the sector, reflecting a broad knowledge and experience of the real estate business, combined with direct knowledge and experience across the 10 countries covered by the sector’s main industry awards program organized each year in association with the Financial Times, the worlds leading business newspaper, and the sector’s foremost magazine Estates News. As usual the jury contains representatives of the major agents plus a rotation of developers, investors, bankers, project managers and other professional services.
The elected members of the Quality Awards Jury preside over the judging of hundreds of nominations for a total of 16 award for the outstanding real estate projects, companies and industry professionals in 2007. The short-lists for the awards are announced at the end of January following a rigorous scoring process, with the winners in each category announced at the prestigious CEE Quality Awards Gala held in Warsaw each February, the CEE real estate sector’s flagship black tie event attracting over 400 of the sector’s top professionals. The awards are given primarily for business performance in one of the world’s most exciting emerging markets, with an increasing number of domestically created companies such as TriGranit Development Corporation, CTP Invest, Echo Investment, Cefin Real Estate, HB Revis and Ogmios Centras now competing for honors with major international companies.
Last year’s major winners included the Rondo 1 office tower in Warsaw by Hochtief Projekt Development (CEE Building of the Year), Jones Lang LaSalle (CEE Real Estate Agency of the Year for the third time), and Lifetime Achievement Award winner Cor Van Zadelhoff, founder of DTZ Zadelhoff, however awards
Whilst for the most part obeying the general rule “if it aint broke, don’t fix it,” the fifth edition of the event also includes a number of changes including a new home, some new awards and even a new date.
Having reluctantly outgrown its original home at the Warsaw InterContinental Hotel, itself a previous winner of the CEE Hotels & Leisure Development of the Year award, the 5th edition of the annual Gala will be hosted at the more spacious, newly opened Hilton Warsaw Hotel – which will also be in the running for the award having opened its doors in March 2007. The day’s itinerary will also host the regular CEE Insight forum in the morning, focusing on one of the sector’s hottest strategic topics of the moment, The Green Debate.
The fascination with all things green will continue into the evening when the first winner of the new CEE Green Initiative Award will be announced for “mobilizing and encouraging energy efficient and eco-sustainable building design as a standard practice in Central & Eastern European real estate.” The award, which can be won by either a real estate project, a company or an individual for effective leadership of environmentally sustainable issues and practice in the sector, was proposed and sponsored by Colliers International, while another new award sponsored by Hypo Real Estate is only open to one category of real estate professionals, architects. The CEE Architect of the Year award is open to both companies and individual architects for outstanding achievement in 2007.
And while Warsaw’s first self-styled convention hotel promises more space for more guests, with tickets in previous years selling out early, the growing appeal of the event is creating new difficulties for the organizers in accommodating everybody’s diaries.
For what are described as “positive reasons” the organizers have decided after wide consultation to change the date of the event to 27th February, from the previously advertised 21st February. CEE Quality Awards and Imagine Events head Richard Hallward commented: “It was a difficult decision because normally changing the date of a major event is not a positive development and can be difficult to carry out. But we have been trying for some time to get into the diary of someone much more important than us, and the mountain has inexorably been forced to move to Mohammed. I can’t say who it is yet but they will bring a fair bit of charisma to both The Green Debate and the Gala, and we’re far enough out from the date for it to not be too strenuous on either organizers or participants.”
One of the main attractions of the annual CEE Quality Awards Gala each year is the presence of important figures in the regional and global real estate business, including previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners Eugene Golub (Founder & President, Golub & Co and Quinlan Private Golub), David Mitzner (Founder and President, Apollo Rida) and Sándor Demján (Founder and Chairman, TriGranit Development Corporation).
“With the Gala date generally picked the previous spring to accommodate the scheduling needs of busy international hotels,” continues Hallward, “important forum speakers and Lifetime Achievement Award winners are only picked in the autumn, which always puts the event date under a bit of pressure around Christmas time. This year we’re only too pleased to shift our plans, and will work with all pre-booked guests, sponsors and partners to make sure everyone benefits and nobody is inconvenienced.”
Bert Fol, General Manager of the Hilton Warsaw Hotel & Convention Centre, commented: “We’re only too happy to work with the organizers on this, it should be a very good event and we are offering some very attractive discounts for Quality Awards guests so we’re expecting a full house and accordingly advise people to book early.”
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source: europe-re.com
