#futureofwork2024 | Antoniu Panait, Vastint: Work-meets-life concept is about balance between job and personal life

At the latest edition of Working Romania, Antoniu Panait, Managing Director at Vastint Romania, explained how ESG criteria are already influencing office buildings and the working environment of employees. For example, the elimination of gas-fired power plants will force office developers to massively renovate their existing buildings, and those that are now under construction should integrate green heating and cooling systems to avoid problems in a few years, when the rules will become even more stringent in terms of the environment.

”Recently the EU has even gone to the next step from a building developer point of view. ESG is actually an umbrella that brings together all our desires we have had over the years to evolve, to take things to the next level, to protect the environment, to protect people, to create a great environment for employees. The EU has voted on what will happen in the coming years to buildings, including residential buildings. From 2030 no more gas-fired power plants are allowed, and from 2040 all must be eliminated. How this will be done remains to be seen. One thing is clear: these steps are needed, we are real estate developers and I will speak from this point of view. From next year, all big companies, including us, will be ESG audited, which means no more green-washing, i.e. you can’t say you have a green building or a green business, but you don’t have the figures behind it.

We already have buildings with very high certifications, Timpuri Noi and Business Garden. We recently announced that we are starting the second phase at Timpuri noi, and the novelty is that it will not have any fossil fuels. This is a source of pride for us, because we are improving the future. We have as many photovoltaic panels as the space allows, 1700 square meters, we have heat pumps, more than 200 pumps that reach a depth of 60 meters, air-water and air-air exchange pumps.

There is still an interim measure taken by the EU, the so-called nZeb. Already in Romania you can no longer build residential buildings with heating panels per apartment. The most efficient ones are per block or per district, and the best consumption is on centralized heating, like RADET. Of course, the challenge is that the costs are higher. And the problem is that we want to make it as efficient as possible to have low costs for tenants. And we have a higher cost than the market average, but we assume this and we have remained profitable. We have elevators that produce energy when they go down, 100% fresh air. We don’t have stale air, but we use it to heat the air that comes in from outside in winter. For a good air volume, we have as standard the ceiling at three meters from the floor.

Work-meets-life concept is about balance between job and personal life. I remember at the beginning of my job I used to spend an hour and a half going to the office and an hour and a half coming back. That means I wasted three hours a day on the road. That’s why I started the projects with the idea of being close to the big residential areas and the metro, to get access to the balance more easily. Studies show that if you take more than half an hour to the office, productivity decreases because people are already tired. That’s why we’ve also looked to locate near areas that offer retail, services, whatever you need.

I have a small team, only 14 people, but very strong and efficient. Together we have managed to build hundreds of thousands of square metres in areas that are conducive to balance. That hour I used to lose on the road I can spend with my child at home. This is our contribution to the changes Romania is going through and they are changes for the better. Even if they don’t happen quickly, Romania is changing for the better. In the future we will see glass disappearing from building surfaces because it is not an efficient surface for heating and cooling. And all these elements will matter a lot in the future.

In a few years we have gone from the fix phones to drones, artificial intelligence and quantum computers. All are now a reality and we need to adapt our vision for new generations, they have already changed. And they will continue to change and evolve, we are obliged to evolve with them.”