Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
A former student has helped improve medical care in the Baltic states and other European locales by providing architectural services and writing construction contracts for the region’s healthcare facilities through a U.S. defense department program.
Jim Vandenberg, a U.S. Navy reservist who is the capital improvement fund project manager at Yosemite National Park in California, was recalled to active duty in August 2007 and began working with a defense department humanitarian assistance program on healthcare facilities. He received a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in 1984 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1985 from Texas A&M.
He helped build schools, fire stations, hospitals, assisted living facilities and orphanages after being assigned to an engineering division in the U.S. European Command, where he worked in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Moldova.
“They were all very rewarding projects,” he said.
The opening of a hospital in Kardia, Estonia merited a report on Estonian national television and marked a major improvement in the health care available to the region’s 10,000 people.
“I went there in early April 2008 to assess the hospital, built in 1947,” said Vandenberg. Hospital officials wanted to upgrade the facility’s operating room and recovery wing.
After seeing a local architect’s plans, detailing the work necessary for the upgrade and writing a construction contract, the Office of Defense Cooperation, part of the defense department’s humanitarian program, got the job bid for $325,000 and work begun.
“The first phase was to gut and renovate the recovery wing into intensive care units and up-to-date recovery rooms,” he said. “This meant one person per room with a private bath. Prior to the renovation it was six to a room with one bathroom and shower,” he said.
Phase II of the project saw the construction of a new operating room suite for the hospital, begun in December 2008 and finished in May 2009.
“This was the single largest humanitarian assistance project ever undertaken by the U.S. Embassy’s Office of Defense Cooperation,” said Vandenberg. “The project proved American commitment to the people of Estonia and its desire to improve Estonia’s healthcare facilities.”
In 2004, Vandenberg, through a presidential recall to active duty, contributed to U.S. efforts in Iraq by designing a 3,000 square-meter hospital for the town of Ar Rutbah in western Al Anbar province as well as a prototype for village clinics.
At Yosemite, he’s overseeing projects like the $137 million rehabilitation of the Ahwahnee Hotel, the $40 million renovation of the Badger Pass Ski Lodge, and the construction of employee housing to replace cabins damaged and destroyed in a 2008 rock slide, in addition to many smaller jobs.
A video on Estonian national television marking the opening of a hospital designed by Jim Vandenberg BED ’84, MARCH ’85. It’s narrated in Estonian, but Vandenberg appears in the video and talks about the project in English.
Watch the video (Quicktime: 9 MB)
- Posted: July 16, 2009-
