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Время возможностей

By Ludmila Izyurova

Moscow

 The year passed was pretty tough for the construction industry. However, with market plunged, new players came and new services were launched. Sergey TORBEEV, director of the Construction Consulting Department, Russintek, told us about last year trends in the construction supervision sector and its future prospects.

Q: Sergey, how has the economic crisis affected this year results?

- In general we are satisfied with our results and even see some growth. Russintek team has doubled as we got more new projects. We have not dismissed any of our employees and are not going to do this. In total the market is now seeing growth in demand for technical supervision, surveys and evaluations. Customers have realized their necessity.

We have already prepared projects for the next year and most of them are commercial. We pitch in tenders and different contests and auctions. The last tender we won was surveying building of the Academy of Science. We serve public contract as well. Thus, this year we participated in “Repaired House for Responsible Owners” program. We want to work on it next year. In addition, it has been recently announced that municipal allocations for Moscow city planning will increase soon. So, as you see we are pretty satisfied with our prospects.

Q: Aren't you afraid your service segment may cut down?

- Not at all. With current economic decline (I prefer not to call it “crisis”) major constructions cannot be that easily suspended.  Investors have already spent their money on them and it will be even more cost effective to finish construction. So whatever crisis is, construction will go on automatically for about 6-9 months. Again, not all developers have credits, so they will keep on working for sure.

Let's see at the warehousing property market, where Rossintek had most of its latest contracts. Demand in this market is still several times higher than the offer. And it is still the lessor's market, but not the lessee's.

Another interesting feature of the construction market is that with low economic stability we all can see around quality requirements are getting more and more strict. It's not allowed to make mistakes hoping the growing market may cover it. It is obvious that people will invest in high quality projects only and tech supervision is just some “must have” service for both constructors and developers.

Q: Is tech supervision may help individuals?

40% of our clients are individuals. They more often ask us for evaluating their individual housing constructions. In summer number of them increased, and by December we received just unbelievable number of works and services necessary for forensic examination. We expect we will have just as much private orders as we had even with real estate prices reached the bottom and lots of private investors willing to convert their money into houses. This is where they may need our support.

Q: What Russintek's services were most popular this year and what are your 2009 plans?

- We have been intensively promoting investigations, evaluations, technical supervision and project management. We believe they will also be same popular as they were. In addition, complex services are becoming more and more popular. For example, we partnered with SeverTrans company where we did their warehouse evaluation and Tikkurila with surveys done.

Q: It proves that constructors eventually attained to complex services, right?

- The market is no doubt ready for this. Moreover, it is more cost effective, which is very important in the new economy caused by the global recession. When it comes to large scope of work and serious projects there are no any other options.

Q: What short term goals does Rossintek set to achieve?

- In the current economy recession we are focused on restructuring and business process streamlining. We are trying to implement up-to-date management procedures to improve our efficiency for the benefits of our clients.

In the longer term we look into the future positively. Our company is actively operating in the market even with all this economic recession around. I believe that we have time of opportunities and it is very important to notice and take advantage of them.

In general we reached all our targets and proved that our services are needed now and will be even more needed in future. We understand there will be lots of trials and errors, but we are ready to progress and offer new services.

Q: What can you wish to our readers for the New Year coming?

- I want to wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! May happiness, peace, wisdom and patience be with you and your families! Have vast business plans, be strong in implementing them and drive your financial growth. 2009 is going to be a tough, but we believe that together we can overcome all difficulties and open up new vistas. Rossintek team is always ready to share our safety, professionalism and good mood with you.

“IT v stroitelstve” paper, #24 (79), 2008