Jáchym Šmíd, a Master’s degree student in Management and Economics in Civil Engineering, has achieved significant success in the prestigious International Student Competition IREC – International Real Estate Challenge 2026, where he was the winning team member. The team including Aneta Volfová finished on the 2nd – 3rd place.
The competition took place from January 12th to 23rd and was organised by the Italian university Politecnico di Milano with support from RICS – the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
The competition brought together students from different European and Asian universities. After the start in Milan, the contestants were divided into 12 teams representing virtual real estate companies, whose task was to offer a large American client a property suitable for their future activities in a specified European city. Jáchym Šmíd was assigned to the Dublin team, Aneta Volfová to the Barcelona team.
The teams then moved to 12 European destinations – Barcelona, Bratislava, Brussels, Dublin, Istanbul, Katowice, Krakow, Manchester, Milan, Prague, Rotterdam, and Valencia for three days – where they attended lectures on the local real estate market including visits to three large real estate projects. After returning to Milan, the contestants finalised and presented their projects as solutions for the assigned city.
The three best designs selected by the academic jury, without ranking, were submitted by the teams including both of our students – Dublin and Barcelona. Their final ranking was decided by experts from practice – employees of Colliers and several major developer companies from the Milan and Lombardy regions and from RICS Italy. The Dublin team, whose member was Jáchym Šmíd, was victorious.
The competition was very interesting for the participants as they all worked on an interesting topic in international teams and visited the respective locality in person. This way, our students got to know Dublin and Barcelona, while a team consisting of a female student from Turkey, a male student from Ireland, a female and male student from India, and two male students from Italy came to Prague. Here, they were tutored by Ing. Martin Čásenský CSc. from the Department of Construction Management and Economics at our Faculty, who, in cooperation with the COLLIERS Commercial Real Estate Consulting, arranged a presentation by experts and an online field trip to three administrative projects presented by their developers for them.
Students from the Faculty of Civil Engineering CTU in Prague were able to participate in the event thanks to sponsorship from the American company “The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors”, which covered all their costs. This success has confirmed the strong position of the Faculty of Civil Engineering CTU in Prague on the international scene, a success that has been built up during previous years of this competition.
Congratulations!
