After all, the crisis is beneficial in one way: real estate developers will have more time from now on to structure their projects more carefully and they have already ”started to also seek input from a manager again as they used to in 2003-2004,” Lucian Anghel, managing partner and founder of Building Support Services (BSS), one of the leading office building and logistic space management companies, said in a conversation with BUSINESS Magazin.

In his opinion, the new office buildings erected in major cities are of a lower quality than those built at the beginning the real estate boom. ”It was the rush to build and sell as fast as possible, it was the dwindling labour supply. They were erected to be sold fast,” the BSS head said without referring to any project in particular. The recent fire at the Millennium Business Center, a building whose manager BSS is, brought to the forefront again the opinions voiced by managers or consultants in this field over time, who were mentioning, off the record, problems found at some buildings in the Capital after completion.

”The more sophisticated a market becomes, the better the buildings will become, that is normal. However, if you sell a building it does not mean its quality is poor; there were developers who used to build well five years ago, and still do, and there are others who do not build that well.

Very important here is the manager of the project,” says Hora]iu Florescu, chairman of The Advisers and the most experienced office space rental broker.

In the days after the fire at the office building close to the Armenian Church, many brought up the issue of the small distance between the building and the church, as well as the material the faÁade was made from, which allowed the fire to spread quickly, and the lack of sprinklers on the floors of the building. ”No one expected a fire to start from the outside,” BSS manager comments.

Lucian Anghel adds that the construction regulations in force do not stipulate the mandatory installation of sprinklers ”unless the thermal load exceeds a certain level”, with the thermal load established based on the materials used for every floor. Since the tenants of an office building are free to use whatever furniture they like for their space, the initial calculation loses some of its relevancy. ”There were hydrants on every floor, anyway,” Anghel says. ”I am convinced, however, that from now on much harsher regulations in this field will be issued.”