Inside Bucharest’s office hotspot area: How Romanian construction staff work efficiently when Swedes make the rules

As he swipes his security card through the system, Richard Burleigh, the general manager of Skanska Construction Romania enters the construction site of the company’s Green Court Bucharest office compound. We’re in Floreasca, the Romanian capital’s office hotspot. All throughout the area, glass office buildings line up near fresh construction sites. Back in the on-site offices, Marcin Lapinski, president of Skanska Property Romania, gets ready for a staff meeting. He’s recently finalized a nine-month negotiation to bring Orange to their project. The first building is almost done, 90 percent occupied, and work has started on the second building’s structure. Behind us, workers orderly line up to enter the Skanska construction site after their lunch break. Nobody’s eating sunflower seeds, nor drinking beer out of two-liter plastic bottles, like they do on so many other construction sites in Romania. They just had lunch in the site’s canteen, and are now back to work on the well-organized construction site. It’s all a rare sight in Romania, where construction work tends to be a little messy. But on this particular one, there aren’t some bricks here, some rebar there, and some rubble and dirt in some corner. Nor the usual workers sitting in the shade and waiting for the work day to end. Instead, the Swedish construction group has established its Scandinavian discipline rules for the EUR 46 million construction site where 500 people currently work. Everyone swipes their cards through a security system to get in. Visitors leave their ID details, so every person who enters is registered. Elsewhere, vehicles which bring supplies and specialized machinery enter the site. The construction ground itself is split into two different areas. The administrative one, where the “offices” and the canteen for workers are located, and the actual construction site. To get from one to the other, workers and visitors first go through the work safety training. This is brief for visitors, and lengthier for workers. New workers on the site get a 40 to 45-minute presentation each morning before starting work. Training teaches workers and visitors how to avoid accidents, what is going on in each part of the site, which are the dangerous areas and the main hazards like walking behind moving machinery or staying under the crane when it’s lifting things. Should an ‘almost accident’ happen on site, workers know they should come forward about it, so that site managers update the safety and working regulations. Helmets make the difference not just between life and death, but also between people with different responsibilities. On site, supervisors wear white helmets, workers wear blue and visitors – red. Training over, it’s time to get the safety equipment - helmet, boots, protection glasses and reflective vest, and the access card. “This system lets us know how many people and exactly who is on site at any given time,” Richard Burleigh says while swiping his own card through the system. Before coming to Romania, he’s been managing operations for Skanska in Poland and in the Middle East. Here he has 500 workers on this site, all Romanian. “The workers are skilled and have a production oriented mentality. They want to work hard and they want to do good work,” he explains while saying hello to a group of people. They’re not in any way different to workers elsewhere. Of course, in order for things to go well, the contractor needs to work on planning, and this takes a little bit more in Romania, where there are not as many construction sites as in Poland, for example, so workers aren’t that well familiarized with procedures. “Keeping the site clean and organized, we call this housekeeping. Yes, there are challenges, but we are general contractor and we are the ones who must organize things. We have to create the procedures and the rules and to make sure we have the right people to enforce them. We can’t leave this to blue collar workers or there would be chaos,” Burleigh explains as we walk through the site. However, Skanska relies on Romanians for this as well. The site manager, who coordinates the 500 workers is a 35-year old Romanian. The safety manager is also Romanian and he looks even younger. “We are all local,” says Burleigh. The workforce is provided by local contractors, who take care of different phases of the project. Some are now working on the structure of the second building, others, on the interior finishes of the first building. “All materials come from local suppliers. Only the façade is done by a team from the Czech Republic, but still with materials from Romania,” the manager explains. Work on the building now standing tall with its 12 floors started in late 2013. Skanska had bought the land in the Barbu Vacarescu/Floreasca office area an year earlier. This first building should be ready in autumn this year. It has 19,200 sqm of office space and is already 90 percent occupied. Telecom operator Orange decided to move 1,500 of its employees to the building. They will occupy 8 of the 12 floors. Schneider Electric too leased some space. Skanska Properties Romania, the developer of the project, negotiates the leasing contracts. “With Orange, negotiations took between 6 and 9 months,” says Marcin Lapinski. When deciding on such large relocations, companies are looking for more than just rental costs. “They are looking for very good, friendly and healthy environment for their employees, but also for buildings which offer them visibility, and also with good location,” Lapinski explains. Location wise, the Barbu Vacarescu/Floreasca area is the place to be right now for office developers in Bucharest. The area became the hot spot for Bucharest offices in recent years due to its easy access to public transport - the Aurel Vlaicu metro station is just nearby, other means of public transport are easily available, but also due to the opening of the Promenada mall, which offers new amenities for people who work in the area. Two large office projects opened here in the last two years: Austrian group Raiffeisen’s Sky Tower, with its 37 floors, now the tallest building in Bucharest, and the BOB and BOC office buildings, owned by Globalworth Real Estate, a listed company controlled by Greek investor Ioannis Papalekas. Next to Sky Tower, a 24-storey office building is in the making: Globalworth’s Bucharest One. But it’s no longer just the location that convinces tenants nowadays. They are also looking for buildings which use green technologies that contribute to reducing operational costs. Skanska’s Green Court Bucharest is being developed using such technologies. It includes energy efficient façades, air recycling solutions, efficient lighting systems and charging stations for electrical vehicles. The first building and the underground structure of the second building cost Skanska some EUR 46 million. The costs for the next phases of the projects aren’t public yet. Once finished, this project will probably be sold. This is the group’s business model, to develop buildings and then sell them. So they’re always analyzing potential land purchases and new projects. “We are looking for some extra land in different parts of Bucharest. Of course we are looking in those areas where there are some other office buildings, we don’t have the ambition to open totally new areas. We are looking at two or three areas,” Lapinski says. But the company is not rushing to start a new development just yet, he adds. Now working only on this office project, Skanska may start developing new operations on the Romanian market in the future, such as residential projects, similarly to Poland. But this will depend on the outcome of its current projects here and on how things will evolve in the future, Lapinski explains. On the long-term, they could also start working on others’ buildings in Romania, as a contractor. “The construction market is improving. We see appetite for new projects on the retail and industrial segments. But there is a lot of discussion before these projects actually happen,” Richard Burleigh says as we exit the construction grounds.