Two People, One Hospital

Noor Fasi: This is Small Practice, on The Rightup, I'm Noor Fasi. Today, a hospital commission that went to a studio of two. Nadia Rahimi runs that studio with her partner from a room above a bakery in Leeds. Nadia, welcome.

Nadia Rahimi: Thanks, Noor. The bakery matters, by the way. Every client meeting smells of bread, and people relax.

Noor Fasi: Set the scene. What was the job, and who were you up against?

Nadia Rahimi: A 24-bed day surgery unit for an NHS trust, with a budget of around eleven million. The shortlist was us and four national firms, two of them with healthcare teams bigger than our entire turnover.

Noor Fasi: How did two people even get shortlisted?

Nadia Rahimi: A small mental health refurbishment we did in 2021. The estates manager had moved to this trust and remembered that we had spent a week on the ward before drawing anything. She put our name forward and then told us, very plainly, that she could not help us after that.

Noor Fasi: So what did you do differently at interview?

Nadia Rahimi: We brought a ward sister. Not as a reference, as part of the presentation. She talked for six minutes about how far a nurse walks on a night shift, and we showed a plan that cut that walk by about a third. The big firms brought renderings of the atrium.

Noor Fasi: The panel noticed.

Nadia Rahimi: The panel chair said afterwards it was the only presentation that started inside a room rather than outside the building.

Noor Fasi: The description says it cost you. What did it cost?

Nadia Rahimi: Almost everything else. For two years that unit was ninety percent of our work. We turned down three houses and a library extension we badly wanted. And we had to buy professional indemnity cover at ten million, which tripled our premium overnight.

Noor Fasi: Did you hire?

Nadia Rahimi: We subcontracted. A healthcare planner in Manchester did the departmental adjacencies, and a freelance technician did the detail packages. We kept the design and the client relationship, and we said that in the bid, in writing, so nobody felt misled.

Noor Fasi: Did the trust push back on that?

Nadia Rahimi: Their procurement team asked for a resilience plan. What happens if one of you is ill for a month? We wrote one. It was four pages and it was honest, and I think honesty read as competence.

Noor Fasi: And the fee? Healthcare is notorious.

Nadia Rahimi: We came in at about seven percent. One of the national firms was under five. We lost money in year one and made a modest profit by handover, mostly because there were fewer meetings with two of us in them.

Noor Fasi: Would you do it again?

Nadia Rahimi: Yes, but not straight away. The unit opened in March. We are taking a year of small jobs first. My partner says she wants to design a bathroom again.

Noor Fasi: Nadia Rahimi, thank you. That's Small Practice.