In any major real-estate development, the project’s long-term value hinges on how future-proof the building is—how well it can meet needs that are only just emerging today. This directly affects asset value, return-on-investment risk, and operating costs. The latter remains critical even when the developer and the future operator are not the same. As designers, we serve our clients best when—within the agreed budget—we not only meet immediate requirements, but effectively “build a time machine” into the system that protects the investment’s value in the years ahead. A summary from CÉH zRt.

Expectations for building services (MEP) systems are complex: they must reliably accommodate changing usage, keep operating costs low, be environmentally responsible, and remain cost-efficient to build. Meeting these goals requires close cooperation across design disciplines, which is why the team’s shared practice matters so much—explains László Lukács, Head of Building Services Design at CÉH zRt. Every engineer involved has to bring their best performance toward the common goal: while we must stay fluent and open to the latest technologies, the client’s needs—and indeed interests—must always come first, as the two are not always identical.

CÉH zRt., with 35 years of practice, is effective because its four core disciplines—architecture, structures, electrical and mechanical—work together in-house. This makes collaboration smoother and results in well-prepared projects with predictable schedules and costs. For more than a decade, CÉH has generated all mechanical construction documentation from clash-free 3D models. Today this is not a “nice-to-have”, but an expectation that brings tangible benefits to all parties—adds László Lukács. A well-built graphical model reduces on-site improvisation and the resulting change orders, and it also enables the Facility Operator to create an operations model (with the right information content), supporting cost-efficient operations throughout the building’s entire life cycle.

New technologies appear in building-services practice daily, and knowing them is essential to meeting the widening range of client expectations. At CÉH, we support this with vendor trainings and international study trips. Seeing technologies at the seed stage—often in university incubators—lets us recognize them early and place multiple price- and performance-based alternatives on the client’s desk already in the concept phase. A hands-on example is energy optimization: in industrial projects, for instance, we recover waste heat from technological processes and support it with low-temperature networks as well as heat-pump and heat-recovery integration. This way we not only meet mandatory requirements, but also deliver tangible reductions in operating costs—keeping the building economical and competitive even 20 years from now.

Alongside engineering solutions, effective and clear communication—also in international settings—is just as important. The era of the “technical hermit” is over: engineers must be able to present and substantiate their ideas plainly. To this end, we regularly develop our colleagues’ client-communication, negotiation and language skills.