Selling to the lowest bidder
Architecture firms in Warsaw are suffering a crisis of confidence blaming their woes on what they view as a drawback in the tendering process.
Competitive bids are the bread and butter of architectural and project management firms. Yet many architects said it's unclear if the bidding process provides the right results because of poorly informed clients or bidders out to undercut competitors with knock-down pricing.
Mieczyslaw Jaskowski is managing director and chairman of SAP-Projekt, a Warsaw-based company offering architectural and project management services. He said problems for architects in Poland stem from the tendering criteria.
"I hope that in the future the architectural services market will integrate and investors will change their criteria for the selection of designers without using price as their main guide," Jaskowski said.
The company recently took part in the design of the Warsaw Trade Tower and the M1 retail center in Marki, and has six regional subsidiaries to increase its national coverage.
"The development of daughter companies throughout Poland has been the most important event in our company in recent years," Jaskowski said. "(This is) alongside the reorientation of our services exclusively toward serving investors and representing their interests."
Andrzej Bulanda, a partner in Warsaw architectural firm Bulanda i Mucha Architekci, said unfair competitors are responsible for the negative effects of the tendering process. "The problem for a company like ours, which employs 20 people and has a recognized name, is (price) undercutting from unknown, anonymous architects providing low-quality designs," he said.
SAP-Projekt's Jaskowski agreed. "There are numerous incidents of price undercutting for designs, which is unfortunately connected with a significant reduction in the quality and punctuality of the design," he said. "Investors only become aware of this once the construction process is underway and this has an enormous influence on the effectiveness and punctuality of the construction process."
Marek Garlinski, chairman of Prochem, is also critical of the selection process for public orders. "Prices generally dictate decisions in public tenders and it's not possible to provide a quality product at a low price," he said.
Prochem, which was set up in 1947, is a holding company whose subsidiaries deal in capital investment, auto-industry waste management, real-estate development and traditional architectural and project-management services. The company provided engineering and supervision for the Brama Zachodnia (West Gate) office building under construction on Aleje Jerozolimskie, designed by Miroslawa Markiewicz and Andrzej Wozniak.
Meanwhile, the 102-year-old Association of Polish Architects (SARP) has gone some way to remedy the tender issue by introducing its own standards for architectural competitions. "This is a good formula, but it's not used often enough," said Stanislaw Soltyk, chairman of architectural firm Soltyk & Soltyk Architekci. "It's based on the comparison of architectural solutions first and price second."
But SARP is not the sole architects' organization in Poland. The Chamber of Construction Design, a member of the National Chamber of Commerce, is a professional network whose Web site claims that it "unites about 400 firms and establishments and is the biggest organization of this type of Poland today."
"The regulations of these groups are a good idea," Garlinski said. "But it's one thing to set rules and another to enforce them."
To date, there's no consensus on the effect of the European Union (EU) entry on professional standards or the future of individual companies, and Bulanda isn't optimistic about accession. "The competition will increase, the market will slow down and foreign companies will enter the market with new EC (European Commission) laws," he said.
But Garlinski disagreed saying there is hope for improvement, with EU membership set to unleash a more stable flow of investment. "I expect things to improve by the middle of next year," he said, adding that several factors would soon help the industry. "There will be certainty about our European Union membership, we expect an improvement in the global economy and there will have been a general election in Poland."
And Garlinski hopes a new government will improve the image of Poland for investors. "I expect a new government to bring about not so much a change in investment climate but of investment policy," he said. "We need pro-investment policy, clarity and cohesion."
But despite the problems with the tendering process, Bulanda said there are more fundamental problems for architects in Poland. "(There are) a lack of clients with high expectations about architecture, a lack of a professional board of architects, professional insurance and a lack of highly educated and motivated architects on the market willing to work," he said.
