The previous quarter was very successful for the Office Agency team, also thanks to our contract with Siemens. Helena Hurábová and Simon Orr were Siemens partners in renegotiating their current lease in City West. Jiří Karas, the Head of Siemens Real Estate Czech Republic, stood on the client's side for the whole time of negotiation and, therefore, we asked him a couple of questions about our cooperation.
What comes to your mind when you think of CBRE?
It is always, for me personally, Helena and Simon. These are the two faces of CBRE which we all recognize quite well. We do not see only Helena and Simon, but also the overall CBRE as a top professional company which really provides extremely good services for us as a customer.Why did you choose to work with CBRE?
That was basically and originally initiated by our headquarters in Munich. As we started the location concept here in Prague, we were looking for a company and a partner who would give us full support in this quite a big project from the regional perspective and we were recommended to use CBRE locally, and it was quite a very good experience.How did we perform? Did we add value to your business? How?
I could use only one sentence or maybe two words - extremely good. It was a really extremely good performance and we have achieved together, of course, a very big financial savings, which were calculated and introduced to our regional management and also to our HQ in Munich. Moreover, we have basically chosen the best option for Siemens, the current location, and we have finally decided to prolong the contract here in City West location.
Do you feel there is a difference between CBRE and our competitors? How are we different in your eyes?
It is a little bit difficult for me to compare CBRE and the competition because the project itself was from our perspective very big, and we really do not have any experience with any other company, which is a CBRE´s competitor. But basically, from the other projects which are from the project size perspective a little bit smaller, we can say that it is obvious that professionality of the CBRE company is extremely high.
Which aspects of our service would you like us to improve?
That is a little bit easier, we had started together to negotiate with the landlord about the location of the contract and at the moment we have finished this part of the job. We are currently in the phase when we also have to choose the project managers, general contractors, general designers, and all these other services, which we have to currently solve a little bit separately. So it would be nice and useful for us if we could use already gained deep knowledge about the location which CBRE has and to use it in a very smart way also in these professions.
Which new service or tools would you like us to provide you with?
We have to say that we have received everything what we expected to be given. However, what could be a little bit on top of the current service is a little bit deeper comparison of the market as we did it in the beginning. But as the project took almost two years, some data has changed and it does not influence only the market numbers themselves, but also the prices which are connected to the civil construction works. And all this data may be packed into one package which could then also bring us the additional services as we discussed before.
Would you use CBRE again or recommend us to others? Why or why not?
Yes, we would like to recommend your service to the others as well. We already did it because we have our colleagues also in other countries. And as we have our internal meetings, we are also discussing these topics. So we have already recommended CBRE, based on our very good experience. And I can only say yes, and it is almost impossible for me to answer not because I cannot find any real good reason for not recommending CBRE.
