As a child, Mehdi Khosrovani designed and built small structures with blocks and clay. Today, he owns his own architectural firm that designs multimillion-dollar health care facilities across the region.
Cranston-based New England Medical Design Inc. has carved out a niche over the past 17 years planning buildings for every facet of health care, from cancer-treatment facilities to medical offices and fertility clinics. Patients see the company’s work at dozens of locations, including Landmark Medical Center, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Roger Williams Medical Center, South County Hospital and Women & Infants Hospital.
It’s a profession Khosrovani never intended to enter. Khosrovani graduated what is now Roger Williams University in 1980 in the midst of a poor economy. Willing to take virtually any job, he accepted a position at Kent Hospital in Warwick as a draftsman and project manager overseeing minor renovations.
He later moved to Rhode Island Hospital before being recruited by XRI. The medical-imaging company was starting a division to design facilities to house its products. After five years there, Khosrovani set out on his own with a partner, David Hamblett. In under a year the company went from four employees to a dozen.
“Everyone was looking for that one person who was extremely experienced in health care design and then all of a sudden we came in,” Khosrovani said. “They felt they found the best thing after sliced bread.”
Since then, New England Medical Design has completed hundreds of projects and Hamblett retired. Khosrovani attributes the success to his firm’s specialized knowledge of how health care facilities operate and the regulatory hurdles they must clear. Before he and his team put pen to paper, they spend at least half a day observing how their client operates. Khosrovani has even donned scrubs and observed surgeries to see firsthand how doctors and nurses move around the operating room.
The staff spends hundreds of hours poring over voluminous health care regulations that govern everything from the width of the corridors to utility setups. To make things more complicated, the regulations vary from state to state.
Attention to them is crucial. In Massachusetts, regulators check the plans before approving the construction of a facility. In Rhode Island, regulators inspect the building after its completion. A mistake by an architect could cost millions of dollars to repair and devastate the architectural firm. So Khosrovani believes in specializing.
There’s plenty in the health care field alone to keep New England Medical busy. The Northeast – and in particular Boston – houses the country’s highest concentration of medical facilities, including hospitals, clinics, labs, doctor offices and medical schools. The company has completed more than 100 projects for Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital alone.
The company also continues to hold its own despite a sputtering economy that saw the number of construction projects tumble and some health care institutions scale back planned expansions. Khosrovani said many small specialized companies like his stumbled and were bought by big architectural firms. And while New England Medical saw some clients reduce their projects, it chugged along enough to still award staff raises and bonuses.
The firm also went searching for new opportunities. It scuttled a plan to open an office in Dubai after the economy crashed in 2008. Instead, Khosrovani cultivated relationships with other architecture firms in the southeast part of the United States. He pitches partnerships where New England Medical brings the expertise and the local firm brings the contacts and provides some of the on-the-ground support.
Khosrovani said such partnerships allow the company to broaden its market without spending money to physically open new offices. The partnerships in the southeast are just now gaining traction but show enough promise that Khosrovani is pursuing similar setups in Rhode Island.
And New England Medical is bidding on government jobs, recently winning contracts with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to work on regional medical facilities.
But mostly, Khosrovani said the company is sticking to what it knows best and not taking any shortcuts.
“If you love what you do, pay attention to details and stay true to your values you become successful,” Khosrovani said. •COMPANY PROFILE
New England
Medical Design Inc.
OWNER: Mehdi Khosrovani
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Architecture firm
LOCATION: 95 Sockanosset Cross Road, Cranston
EMPLOYEES: 11
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1993
ANNUAL SALES: WND
