Echo Investment won the Grand Prix of the EXPO 3x20 competition at the POLEKO International Fair in Poznań. Its Astra Park office building in Kielce obtained the prestigious award in the category ‘Practical implementation of the Climate and Energy Package objectives based on examples of HVAC systems with heat pumps installed in Poland’.

Grzegorz Juszczyk, HVAC specialist from the Technical Consulting Department, received the award on behalf of Echo Investment. „The construction of the Astra Park office complex in Kielce started in 2006. As usual we had to find solutions which guaranteed the best comfort and quality so as to provide the buildings with timeless look and character and enable them to defy changes in the installation technology for as long as possible. In addition we wanted to make them comfortable, safe, economical to operate and cheap in terms of investment,” says Grzegorz Juszczyk from Echo Investment. After a thorough analysis it turned out that it was possible to maintain a fully autonomous heating and cooling system in each office building while lowering investment costs at the same time. We used the WLHP system (Water-Loop Heat Pumps), which was one of the most innovative systems on the office space market in Poland. While implementing the new solutions we used several years of experience operating a similar system in the Galaxy shopping centre in Szczecin, which was one of the first WLHP system installations in Poland. The scheme is a heating and air-conditioning system based on numerous small heat pumps providing a possibility of transferring the heat between various areas in the building. Astra Park is a modern office complex which is located at Solidarności Avenue 36 in Kielce. It consists of three buildings with a gross leasable area of 16,300 sqm. The office building, which was put into operation in 2007, includes the offices of Echo Investment, Cersanit and Barlinek. The designer of the facility is DDJM Biuro Architektoniczne Sp. z o.o.