KEA Engineers
Responsive, Diligent & Experienced
by Jan Wilson
When you’re looking for a client to put your MEP firm on the map, you can’t get much bigger than Starbucks. “I was in the office around 7:30 PM,” explains Armen Khachaturian, PE, President of KEA Engineers, “when the phone rang. It was a general contractor for Starbucks, who urgently needed engineering help. We fixed his problem right away and have since worked for Starbucks in 12 states.”
This was in the 1980s, after Khachaturian, who had
worked in petrochemical engineering, decided to strike out on his own. The
Starbucks experience reinforced what he already knew: “Being responsive
and always answering the phone with a human voice gets results.”
Now, including his son, Adam Khachaturian, PE, as Associate Partner, the firm has grown to a staff of 14 professionals, which includes three PEs and two LEED APs. “We provide high quality engineering,” says Adam. “We don’t cut and paste elements from other projects. We provide tailored turnkey solutions for our clients.”
A Variety of Projects
KEA Engineers offers a full range of services on projects ranging from
small retail storefronts to 600,000 SF multi-use institutional buildings.
The firm has provided MEP design services to over 1,000 stores for Starbucks,
7-Eleven, Au Bon Pain, Panera Bread and Le Pain Quotidien. The
firm also has on-call agreement with several of the large commercial
real estate firms to perform tenant work for their buildings. “We also
do core and shell work in manufacturing and distribution buildings and
data center work,” says Adam.
Powering a Data Center
Mountain Development needed to upgrade the electric capacity for its building
at 100 Delawanna Avenue in Clifton, for a large data center client. “I
advised Mountain Development to maximize the size of the substation that
we put there,” says Armen. The project was done in three phases: first
the existing substation was fortified, and the capacity of it was doubled,
then the building was converted to the new system and finally two new
transformers were installed to ultimately provide all of the power needed. The
project will be completed in the next few months.
A Bright Future
Both father and son see the opportunity for more work on sustainable projects.
“Everyone wants to make their buildings more efficient,” says Adam. He
notes that the firm has recently designed and built a number of solar
projects. He adds that more firms are looking for MEP design/build
services and that this is a KEA specialty. “We have hired three new engineers
this year,” Armen says, “and we look forward to continued growth.” n
