RTKL promotes healthcare leaders

Three newly appointed group leaders will oversee RTKL's healthcare developments in the Americas and the Middle East.

By BY: RTKL July 12, 2011

Global architecture, planning, and design firm RTKL has promoted three of its healthcare leaders – Dallas-based Debbie Cameron and Donald R. DeBord Jr., AIA, and Washington D.C.-based Jeffrey Davenport, AIA – to senior vice president.

As one of the founding members of RTKL’s Healthcare Technologies Group, Cameron is a registered nurse with more than 30 years of international and domestic medical equipment project experience. As senior vice president, she leads the group’s global operations and manages its domestic work.

Cameron’s work includes an extensive project portfolio in Saudi Arabia, including the Orthopedic Specialty Hospital and Marina Medical Tower in Jeddah, which is a 970,000-SF, 25-story orthopedic hospital, and the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, a major healthcare campus located in Riyadh, Jeddah, Al Hasa and Madinah. Her recent domestic work includes the Children’s Hospital of Orange County Tower II, a 418,000-SF, seven-story patient tower; Stanford University Medical Center’s 970,000-SF acute care hospital replacement and expansion facility in Palo Alto, Calif.; the new 370,000-SF surgery and emergency services pavilion at the University of California, Davis Medical Center in Sacramento; and the New Hospital Pavilion at the University of Chicago Medical Center, which is a 892,000-SF replacement hospital.

Cameron holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

Davenport, a 25-year healthcare design veteran, has also been appointed Regional Practice Group Leader for the Middle East and is relocating to the region as part of the firm’s effort to expand its presence there. His wide range of international and domestic project experience has included leading large teams of specialists on some of the firm’s most complex healthcare projects, including Saudi Arabia’s Orthopedic Specialty Hospital and Marina Medical Tower in Jeddah and the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. His project portfolio also includes the Military Medical Complex at the Premises of King Khalid International Airport, a 4,000-bed medical city in Riyadh; the 2.2-million-SF expansion project for King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah; and the new 1-million-SF U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Las Vegas.

Davenport received his architecture master’s and bachelor’s degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

DeBord has also been appointed a Regional Practice Group Leader and will oversee RTKL’s healthcare work in the Americas. During more than 25 years in the industry, he has focused on the comprehensive planning of healthcare developments for more than 50 institutions. DeBord oversees complicated phased renovations, system-wide planning processes and multi-million dollar replacement facilities. His expertise has led many institutions through a process designed to bring divergent interests to consensus while engaging key user groups and driving the decision-making process.

DeBord’s healthcare projects include the University of California, San Diego’s recently completed Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center; University Health Center Downtown Outpatient Campus in San Antonio; St. Luke’s Lakeside Hospital, The Woodlands, Texas; The Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, the Denton A. Cooley Building; and Main Line Health System in Philadelphia. A member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, DeBord holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Texas.