Part of the winning CBRE, at Thursday night's awards. Photo / Alex Matthews
The international commercial real estate Behemoth CBRE — along with this country's market leaders, Colliers International and Bayleys — were among standouts at the annual RICS Awards, in Auckland on Thursday night.
An audience of 200, who included the elite of New Zealand commercial property, engineering and surveying professionals, attended the event at the Hilton Hotel on Auckland's Princes Wharf.
The standard of submissions was very high, creating quite a challenge for the panel, says judging panel chairman Peter Harris.
"Entries demonstrated outstanding professionalism, commitment and a strong client focus. We were also pleased to see unique market expertise, and an eye on sustainability issues. The depth of experience in the industry is world-leading," Harris said.
The host, media personality Kerre McIvor, said the awards celebrated the people, projects and teams shaping the built environment. There were 13 winners across 12 categories, covering teams and individuals. And this year the awards celebrated for the first time the profession's diversity with the inaugural "Women of the Built Environment Award", won by Courtney Doig, of Colliers International.
This was presented by Massey University construction professor Robyn Phipps, who said the award encourages female professionals, including consultants in property services, real estate and property management in both the private and public sectors.
"Courtney has blazed an impressive and arguably unrivalled track record as an investment sales specialist [in] Christchurch. There are few brokers — female or male — who can rival her achievements thus far and, based on the content of the submission, the judges had to agree," said Phipps. Doig did not receive her award in person as she is currently overseas.
Among the companies, CBRE stole the show by winning no less than five categories: Commercial Agency Team of the Year; Research and Consultancy Team of the Year and Tenant Advisory/Representation Team of the Year. In addition, CBRE's Anisha Segar jointly won (with AECOM's James McCafferty) the joint RICS Young Achiever of the Year Award.
CBRE's senior managing director for New Zealand, Andrew Stringer, said the awards acknowledged the company's strategy of nurturing its key people, while aiming for a truly broad business.
While CBRE may be the largest commercial real estate business in the world, Stringer acknowledged being somewhat less well known than its competitors in this country.
"In New Zealand we have a reasonably finite focus in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch; we lack brand value out of residential business, nor have we developed a franchise model with multiple offices.
"But we're wholly owned and very connected, so we're growing now and have a lot more potential to grow. We have no wish to 'take out our competitors' as such, instead we're solely focused on doing an incredible job for our clients.
"And this seems to be bearing fruit. It's nice to have recognition from your peers. But the most satisfying part of all for me is achieving a result that under-scores the breadth of what we have to offer as a business."
Meanwhile, Bayleys won the coveted Industrial Team of the Year Award. The company's national director industrial and logistic, Scott Campbell, said this accolade reflected the agency's successful strategy of segmenting the broad commercial and industrial market into sector-specific divisions that develop salespeople into knowledgeable and proficient specialists by property type, "rather than being generalists selling anything and everything".
Campbell said the award highlighted Bayleys' national franchise network approach to the marketing and sale of property across New Zealand — enabling Auckland investors with properties in provincial cities to sell their assets to "local" buyers known to the local sales teams, and simultaneously allowing for provincial city-based vendors to sell their assets to Auckland investors through the company's database network.
The climax of the night was the Lifetime Achievement Award, recognising eminent commitment to RICS and the wider profession. It is the most prestigious award for built environment professionals.
This year, it was awarded to Alan McMahon from Colliers International, for his commitment to the industry and RICS for more than 30 years.
"Over the last 31 years Alan has continually demonstrated his thorough professionalism, his talents, his knowledge, his research and forecasting all so often accompanied with his wonderful dry sense of humour," said John Cameron FRICS, Professional Property Consultancy Services.
"It is our view that he represents the RICS professional standards and delivery in the best possible way and has done through his career, both during the formative years of the RICS and ever since."
RICS (originally the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) is the global professional body for the valuation, development and management of land, real estate, construction and infrastructure, which celebrated its 150th anniversary this year. The organisation promotes and enforces qualifications and standards across the industry.