Prahlad Roy, 28

Prahlad Roy started his career as a design engineer, but quickly learned he preferred taking what’s on paper and making it a reality. 

He has the opportunity to do that in his current job at Skanska USA Building, a role in which he collaborates with the mechanical, electrical and plumbing teams to track, document and ensure MEP systems are being built properly on projects in the New York region. He’s been with the company for five years.

Roy decided to focus on health care construction because he liked the challenge.

“I heard building MEP systems for hospitals is more on the challenging side,” he said. “Just the nature of myself, I gravitated a little bit more toward that.” 

Roy recently wrapped construction on Northwell Health North Shore University Hospital’s Petrocelli Surgical Pavilion, a $560 million tower spanning 288,000 square feet with 18 operating rooms and 132 intensive care rooms that’s expected to serve 90,000 patients annually. 

The Manhasset, N.Y., facility is now home to the Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital; the Northwell Health Transplant Institute, which is Long Island’s only heart, liver and lung transplant program; and Northwell Health’s department of neurosurgery.

“It didn’t hit me until I walked the floors, with patients in the rooms that we just built, on medical devices, using the facilities — that was one of the most humbling experiences,” Roy said.

These days he’s the lead superintendent on a multimillion-dollar hospital facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The project aims to modernize and upgrade the electrical infrastructure of the facility as well as install new generators for emergency power.