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Westbridge Poland

CATEGORY
Newcomer of the Year, Poland
Specializing in ESG policy and optimization of operating costs, Westbridge Advisory (Westbridge) opened a new headquarters in the capital of Poland in April 2022. Danuta Grzywacz has been entrusted with the duties of the headquarters at Rondo ONZ 1. As Country Head for Poland, it will report directly to the Managing Director of Westbridge Advisory International AG, Hajo Engelke. From now on, Westbridge's expertise is available locally to investors and asset managers operating on the Polish real estate market. Westbridge's international division is currently represented in Europe by two branches outside Germany: the existing office in Zurich and the newly established branch in Warsaw. In this way, the company wants to strengthen its leading position in consultancy in the field of sustainable development and energy efficiency in the commercial real estate sector.
Name of company
Westbridge Poland
Sector / company profice
The company is supporting institutional real estate investors in optimizing the operating expenses of their European assets with a focus on energy procurement, capturing relevant data to identify the annual electricity and natural gas consumption and corresponding carbon footprint for ESG-reporting.
Name of the President or Managing Director
Danuta Grzywacz
President's or Managing Director's profile
After graduating in finance and management, Danuta Grzywacz started in 2002 as a Senior Sales Specialist at BPH bank. Four years later she joined Raiffeisen Bank Polska. Then she changed positions several times, managing sales teams and winning, among others experience in the field of digital transformation as a Business Development Manager at Econocom. While working at Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL) in Warsaw as the director responsible for Sales Management and Clients Growth, she became interested in the subject of sustainable development in the commercial real estate industry. This was an incentive for her to deepen her knowledge of zero net energy consumption and to join Westbridge, a specialist in ESG.
Countries in which company operates
BE, DE, ES, FI, FR, IE, IT, NL, PL, SE, UK
Description of the entry into the Polish market
The opening of our representative office in Poland gives new impulses to the growth of our company on a European scale. The new headquarters in Warsaw will allow us to enter this very important market and intensify our support thanks to greater customer proximity, support our clients on their way to achieving climate neutralit
The orgins of the company and how it started out
In a nutshell, Westbridge supports institutional real estate investors and asset managers in the implementation of their ESG strategy. We started the company in Germany in 2015 as an operating cost-optimizing company. This entails scrutinizing and understanding among others the energy usage of buildings across all asset classes. To be able to understand each property’s energy usage, we typically start most of our projects with energy procurement. This allows us to provide our clients with precise and above all consistent energy consumption data for each asset. We were highly experienced and therefore perfectly positioned when ESG started to become a more prominent topic on real estate investors’ and asset managers’ agendas three to four years ago. We are now offering various services across the three main areas energy, green building and operations management, covering among others digital energy monitoring, e-mobility charging solutions, smart metering, ESG due diligence, sustainability certifications, operational expenditure due diligence and facility management tenders. Our company has seen tremendous growth. We have founded several subsidiaries, acquired one company, merged with another, and are currently more than 120 colleagues.
How much the company has invested in entering the Polish market
We invested into HR, starting the local company, will build the team, expand marketing and have a significant budget in our business plan for the next three years
What differentiates the company's products/services from the competitors?
We are operating cost optimizers and ESG specialists with a sole focus on the real estate sector and a track record of more than a thousand successfully completed projects across all asset classes and more than 20 jurisdictions. We have carved out a niche market and know exactly what we do within. Aggregating data is a challenge, adding consistency and reliability makes it close to impossible, organizing, interpreting, and drawing conclusions from data is an art. We master this art so our clients can focus and allocate resources to their respective core competencies.
Notable achievements to date
We assist investors and portfolio managers in the operational development of ESG strategies and implements the "E" – Environment – operationally through its operating cost efficiency expertise as well as its many years of experience in the real estate industry. The aim of the consulting carried out according to a standardized process model is an efficient, transparent, and sustainable design of all operating costs and finally the increase in property value.
Plans for the future
Growing client base in the institutional real estate sector, increase our service offering together with each client, assist the client in becoming more sustainable and managing the appropriate data for a better understanding of their portfolio from an environmental perspective, grow the team to duplicate the success story from Germany.
Company website
https://www.westbridge-advisory.com/