SDI Canada is a turnkey healthcare construction company that specializes in MRI installations.

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Nelco USA

SDI Canada experienced phenomenal growth after it was founded in 2003, President Toufic Abiad says. “How we managed that is we kept the company focused on steady growth,” he explains. “If we thought a project wouldn’t be good for our customer or us, or that we thought it wasn’t realistic, we say ‘no.’ We say ‘no’ a lot. If we didn’t, we would find ourselves in trouble.”

In five years, the Quebec-based company grew from an MRI shielding vendor into a turnkey healthcare construction company that provides consulting, design and construction management services, as well as rigging, final closing certification and site surveys. “We’re a full turnkey, one-stop shop,” he stresses. “Clients don’t need to go to different contractors.

“We’re experts in MRI,” he continues. “It is a complex installation process. There are moving masses, vibrations – we are experts in all of these fields. We have a wealth of expertise namely through highly skilled subcontractors and consultants.

“We have a network of certified and approved subcontractors that work for us,” he adds. “We have the expertise to make MRI installation a streamlined … approach.”

Its customer base includes hospitals and healthcare centers across Canada, as well as in Dubai, Africa and the Middle East. Through its Dubai affiliate, SDI Worldwide, the company also performs work for private clients and companies such as GE, Siemens and Phillips.

‘Big Family’
SDI Canada keeps its customers’ best interests in mind, Abiad says. “We know we can deliver exactly what we said we could,” he says. “We have a reputation to be on time and on budget. That is a big deal in the construction world.

“We are, very simply, careful,” he explains. “We do a lot of studying and preplanning. We are focused on turnkey and benefiting the customer.”

The company’s corporate structure is geared toward employees, which also benefits the customer, he adds. “[The company] belongs to everyone,” he says. “Nobody feels like an employee. We are a big family.”

Keys to Success
Nelco USA, its main shielding supplier, is a pillar to its success, Abiad says.

“The company offers an impeccable product line and an unparallelled support that allows us to meet practically any design and shielding requirement that our customers may have,” he explains. “Nelco brings over 75 years of shielding expertise to the table and is ISO certified.

“Our highly skilled and knowledgeable suppliers are a major factor in our success,” he says. “Conspan Construction, our installation contractor in Canada, brings 35 years of experience to the table and allows us to complete installations on time, every time.”

Notable Projects
One of the company’s most notable projects was a breast cancer clinic it built for Ville Marie Breast Cancer Center in downtown Montreal in 2006.

“Although it was expensive to stay in downtown Montreal, the client was so customer-focused that it stuck to downtown,” Abiad says. “It was in a 100-year-old building.”

An MRI was installed on the ninth floor of the building. “We had to do structural reinforcement, work with all sorts of governmental bodies and we had a tight timeline to work on,” he says.

However, that did not deter the company from finishing the three-month project in six weeks, he adds. “Before we even planted a nail, we did about two months of planning,” Abiad explains. “We didn’t have access to the site [beforehand], but starting on the day we had access, we completed it in six weeks.”
    
Increasing Needs
MRIs became widely used and a preferred technology in the early 1980s. Since then, the technology “is gaining ground in leaps and bounds,” Abiad says.

“However, the performance of this sophisticated diagnostic tool depends in great part on the quality of the RF shielding provided,” the company says.

“There is no shielding system on the market which outperforms SDI’s. In fact, our system was originally developed to meet the most stringent requirements of MRI magnet manufacturers. No wonder SDI is the shielding most often specified by these OEMs.”

Also, “The need [for MRIs is] increasing and the complexity is being increased,” Abiad says. “The overall economic conditions are making things very difficult.”

Due to wars, fuel prices and other turmoil, working across continents is difficult, he says.

“There is a huge demand for healthcare and there are a lot of projects, but we’re also dealing with low-cost labor issues,” he adds. “The way we respond to that is providing a lot of expertise and knowledge. We provide added-value. We sell our projects not on price, but on quality and service.”

Five-Fold Growth
Abiad says the company expects to grow five-fold in the next three years. “We will sustain that based on philosophies that we believe in and the emerging markets,” he says.

He also expects 80 percent of its revenues to come from the North American market and 20 percent to come from overseas.