Founded a company in Šenčur with a classmate and led it to million-dollar deals

After 30 years at the top of the company, architect Andrej Ržišnik is preparing for a new role. In that time, Protim  Ržišnik  Perc has grown from two employees to 120.

(Foto: Denis Sadiković/N1)

Andrej Ržišnik has been at the helm of the architecture and engineering firm Protim Ržišnik Perc since its foundation more than 30 years ago.

Over three decades, the small team of architectural and graphic designers has grown into a well-known company employing around 120 people, including foreigners, and also involved in information systems, real estate project development and property management. This year, net sales will exceed EUR 20 million and a profit of EUR 1.5 million has been made.

Their signature is on many real estate projects around the country, and on the walls of their offices and on the computers of their colleagues, Ržišnik shows some of the most prominent ones - the Kranjska Iskrica housing estate in Kranj, the Montana office building in Ljubljana and NGEN in Žirovnica, the office building of the pharmacist Krka, to name but a few of the most recent ones.

Abroad, they worked on the Wilopark industrial centre in Dortmund, where they designed their Campus with a new office building and laboratories for Wilo SE, a global manufacturer of pumps and pumping systems. The construction site was only 18 kilometres from where Ržišnik grew up.

"There is only one product, and a large number of experts in each field have to work together. Our greatest value is that we can effectively orchestrate a team for a common goal," says Ržišnik, summarising the company's vision in two sentences.

Ržišnik explains that they are currently busy building one of the largest office buildings in Ljubljana, WestLink CAMPUS, along Celovška cesta, where, alongside integral project management, they are also acting as the coordinator of a consortium of investors.

“Making space for future generations”

After more than 30 years at the top of the company, his role is slowly changing, and he will be handed over to his successor. He does not like the formulation that he is stepping into the background.

"We are making room for the development of the next generation. My role is now that of a mentor, focusing on the strategic orientations of the Ržišnik Perc Group. The new generation needs our gradual withdrawal," he replies, adding that his role has already been taken over operationally by Gregor Rožman, who has been with the company for 15 years.

Alongside the changes in management, the organisational structure will also change, as the founders, Uršula Pollak and Sabina Fašmon Muznik, will be removed to the umbrella company Ržišnik Perc, which will be transformed into a holding company. Through it, they will then control Protim (architecture and engineering services), Infotim (information systems) and RP Investicije (real estate development).

"The reorganisation of the group into a holding structure is agreed by 31 December next year, with the final transfer of powers tied to my formal retirement, which is 1 April 2028," Ržišnik explains.

Started with a classmate

Together with a classmate and fellow architect, Andrej Perc, they founded the company at the time of Slovenia's independence, with trade fairs as their first focus.

"We were founded in a period that was favourable to us. At that time, the Slovenian economy was beginning to restructure - we had to move from the former Yugoslav markets, most of which had closed with the war, to new ones, starting today and ending tomorrow. One of the means of communicating with these markets was fairs. Our first focus was the organisation, planning and everything that goes with it for trade fair appearances for our companies at home and abroad. This was our niche market," he describes the beginnings.

In a relatively short time, trade fairs trained them to start transferring planning to larger, more complex projects.

He and Perc, he says, formed a dream team - Perc overseeing the architectural work and Perc the marketing. Major clients included Sava, Merkur and Žito, and they also worked briefly with Lek.

"This part of the offer was not particularly well developed, and we were able to develop and establish ourselves effectively and relatively quickly in this gap," he adds.

The name was not changed at the time of the ownership split

After 2000, the trade fair business slowly began to die down with the advent of the internet, and the Andrejs parted ways - Perc continued his career in marketing with Creatim, while Ržišnik turned his attention to classical architectural design. However, the name of the company was not changed, and although he is no longer involved in the ownership, the surname Perc is still in the lettering.

"We split the company, and I brought in other partners from the company to replace his share. It was an agreed split. As a co-founder, Perc's views had a significant impact on the development of the company and his philosophy is still present. I suggested that the name should remain and he agreed. He told me to keep the name as it was and told me I had to be successful," he recalls an anecdote when the business was split.

Inspired by the German model

Ržišnik's ambition was to create a bureau of architects and engineers that would design, build and carry out the project to the planning permission for the investor - he wanted to take overall responsibility. This stemmed from his German influence, where he spent much of his youth.

"In our area, architects and engineers were divided. There were design organisations and engineering organisations. The German model, in which the designer also guides the investor through implementation, was not established. The challenge for me was to take a project that I had conceived, design it, bring it to implementation and to an epilogue. I didn't want to settle for just producing a design on paper," was Ržišnik's vision.

Trade fairs are a great school for their model

The trade fairs he was involved with at the beginning of his business career were an extremely good school for their model of monitoring construction from planning to handover. "Even at the stands we had to bring together different contractors - electricians, joiners, locksmiths, painters and upholsterers. You had to bring them all together to produce a common product, package it and send it by container to the other side of the world," he explains.

His thesis is that single-contractor construction is cheaper and the quality of construction is better, because each contractor works directly for the investor.

"With a general contractor, you often cannot guarantee transparency. So what price he buys something at and what price he sells it at. Today, maybe a quarter of the investment value of a project is the civil works and the rest is bought by the contractor. Most of the time, he makes more money from that than from his own work. If you take over the coordination of the execution on behalf of the investor by subcontracting the work on a segment-by-segment basis, the investor can negotiate, coordinate and bargain with everyone. In this way, the investor has a very accurate view of the real prices on the market," he says.

In such cases, implementation is about one tenth cheaper, but the cost is higher for the investor, who spends more time negotiating and has to pay for the services of those who supervise and coordinate the project. Which can lead to a cheaper and better quality built project, he believes.

Will Boscarol keep his promise?

With the example of construction without a general contractor described above, the WestLink CAMPUS project is underway, with 31,500 sqm of office space in the first phase and a further 40,000 sqm of space to be added in the second phase, expected around 2029, with a tower nearly 100 metres high.

Ivo Boscarol will build a similar residential neighbourhood in the BTC shopping centre. Asked whether Boscarol's forecast of a price of EUR 3,000 per square metre is achievable, Ržišnik says: "Of course it is achievable, because we have calculated it."

"The economies of scale are in his favour, as are the relatively cheap land purchase and the possible optimisation in the choice of materials. When the project is finished, it will shake. Of course, time may bring many things, but I believe it is feasible," he is determined.

Still vacant for the first eight months of next year

For the time being, the construction industry is not yet feeling the slowdown in demand and cooling. Their capacity is still fully booked for the first and second quarters of next year, as many projects are still ongoing, so they have had to turn down some recent collaborations, and then there are holes.

"In recent years, we have consistently done a little more work abroad, where we continue to have the opportunity to do more. In the past, we have been turned down several times because we were too busy. We will be more vigilant now," Ržišnik says about preparing for a possible crisis. They will also focus more on pharmaceuticals and biomedicine, where they will build and start up production in the coming years, including here.

Preparing for a possible crisis by building an office building

Incidentally, this is why a year ago, when they first sensed a possible crisis, they decided to build an office building on Celovška Street, which will keep them busy if there is less work to be done. They did something similar 16 years ago during the financial crisis, when many builders went out of business.

Ržišnik and his team then decided to build a new office building in Šenčur, where they are still based, and develop a business zone in the area.

"This was a very effective mechanism to get us through the first real estate crisis. At the time, many people asked me why we were building during it. Very simply, because it was cheap. This building generated a lot of orders for us afterwards because we proved that we were obviously doing something right and that we had the know-how," he explains.

"Dušan Žehelj, co-owner of Davidov Hram, invited us to work with him on WestLink CAMPUS. As the investment exceeded our financial possibilities, we looked for co-investors.

We agreed with business partners with whom we had already worked successfully on other projects, which we designed and coordinated for them. The largest of these is Stefan Krauter, founder of the logistics company cargo-partner, who invested €25 million in the new logistics centre in Brnik a few years ago."

German-style housing built for employees

Ržišnik has also adopted the model of employee housing from Germany. His grandparents left Slovenia for Germany, where miners were attracted by a terraced house and a garden.

"We don't go as far as the Germans used to, but we have built a villa block with 17 flats and a kindergarten on the ground floor. Not only our employees from abroad live in them, but also Slovenians, and especially young couples and families," says Ržišnik about the construction of the block near the office building in Šenčur.

"We notice that an idea that is more than a hundred years old is still a key argument in the decision to go for a job. Wages are lower than in Germany, but even in Germany they no longer offer what they did a hundred years ago," he adds. He estimates that we could fill as many apartments again. "You can't go wrong with building housing if you're into it. Instead of the money going into dividends, it goes into building the value of the company. If we got into trouble, we could sell the apartments," he concludes.

Forbes Slovenia article: https://forbes.n1info.si/posel/podjetje-v-sencurju-ustanovil-s-sosolcem-in-ga-pripeljal-do-milijonskih-poslov/