On the last day of collecting applications for participation, on March 23, a press conference dedicated to the project was held at Interfax. It took place a week after the return of a representative Russian delegation from the International Investment Exhibition MIPIM, which was held in Cannes. There, more than 20% of the announced projects were of Russian origin. However, as noted by the participants in the press conference, the moment is ripe for the transition from quantitative indicators to qualitative indicators in the Russian real estate market. Petr Shura, General Director of Building Media Group, organizer of the award noted at this stage of market development the need to work out a vector of its development. “Today we need a platform to identify the quality indicators of the domestic real estate market. In the West, this is the MIPIM exhibition. In Russia, we hope that the Building Awards will become such a platform,”he said.
The goal of the Building Awards is to identify and promote innovative technologies, to attract public attention to the best practices of companies - participants in the real estate market and government institutions. Ivan Sitnikov, general director of RosEuroDevelopment, a representative of the expert council noted that his experience of communicating with the heads of Russian cities shows that the authorities in the regions are ready to support the award, want to draw attention to the successful experience on the ground and learn from the neighbors. Andrey Cherkovets, director of the corporate block of Vneshtorgbank, also emphasized the communicative value of the award: “Today we need to establish elementary communication, exchange of information and experience between participants in the Russian real estate market, be it credit and financial companies or construction, architectural and development companies. And this is one of the tasks of the new award”.
The Russian real estate market, as noted by the participants in the press conference, is now most acutely experiencing a shortage of ideas and projects. Moreover, according to the organizers of the award, today it is necessary to encourage and promote projects that determine the future for 5 or more years ahead. Since it is the promising concepts, technologies and ideas that give impetus to the qualitative transformations of the market and the development of society as a whole. Thus, David O'Hara, General Director of DTZ-Russia, a representative of the award's expert council, pointed out that Building Awards will contribute to increasing the investment attractiveness of Russia. “For DTZ as an international company and for me personally, the appearance of the Building Awards in Russia is very important, since it is the innovation award that allows showing international investors the real success of Russia and drawing attention to Russian projects,” he said.
Currently, about 100 companies and personal participants from 18 regions of Russia have been nominated for the Building Awards. Experts will determine the laureates by May 20 of this year. Olga Arkhangelskaya, Head of Real Estate Consulting at Ernst & Young, a company invited to participate in the Building Awards as an auditor, spoke about the selection criteria for the winners. “Auditing companies were not involved in the real estate awards held earlier in Russia. I believe that this step testifies to an unconditional improvement in the quality of both the prize itself and the market as a whole,”she said. Among the tasks of her company in this project, Olga Arkhangelskaya singled out, firstly, providing an authoritative assessment of applications - the work of creating an expert council, which today includes more than 70 recognized top managers and specialists from companies in the real estate market, financial, insurance and government agencies, in -second, control over the objective vote count. In addition, in order to ensure maximum transparency of the process, according to the promise of Peter Shura, the evaluation criteria and analysis of the electoral process with comments and justification for the choice in favor of the laureates will be published in the Building Business magazine.
When asked by the AAS correspondent whether this award would be awarded to architects, Petr Shura replied that within the framework of this award, architects will be awarded as members of the team that proposed the most innovative project, but at the moment ID Building together with the ARX magazine are preparing a special award for architects which will be presented to the public in October this year.
The Building Awards website www.awards.building.su has been launched on the Internet.
