“A career in sustainability involves wearing a lot of hats,” according to Carla Fresquez, engagement program manager in UC Davis Sustainability, “including progressing UC Davis and the larger University of California sustainability goals surrounding decarbonization and climate resiliency.”
If you happen to glance up when you enter the large atrium in the Student Community Center, you’ll notice large skylights of different shades of blues and greens adding color to the space — part of Jenny Fortuna’s vibrant mark on campus. Fortuna works as a Interiors and Furniture Services project manager at Design and Construction Management, a position she came to after 13 years at UC Davis Design Services. Through her work in both units, Fortuna has been dedicated to bringing fun to projects she works on.
In the past two decades, philanthropic support has played a vital role in funding the construction of state-of-the-art facilities that support UC Davis’ objectives, including providing students with a world-class education and supporting impactful cutting-edge research.
Knowing the ins-and-outs of campus — like what exciting new facilities are on the horizon long before a grand opening — is one of the things Leslie Carbahal likes best in her role as director of Capital Planning at Design and Construction Management.
With over 20 new hires in the past year, Design and Construction Management is well equipped to deliver on all of the exciting and vital projects that support our community of students, faculty and staff.
Just for the fun of it, we wondered what would it take to renovate your house into a campus facility? Let’s suppose this facility is located on campus and you request that we renovate the living room into a classroom, the kitchen into a lab, and the bedroom into an office. Let’s take a walk through your house to see what we will need to do.
UC Davis Design and Construction management provides increasingly complex facilities under shortening timelines and proliferating code and regulatory requirements. Underpinning our efforts to meet these challenges, we continue to hear the same question echoed by our governing boards, administration and customers: “Why does is cost so much?"
Solving the “city-scale” infrastructure problems UC Davis faces is no easy task, but it’s just the kind of challenge Courtney Doss enjoys facing in her role as associate campus engineer at Design and Construction Management.
Project manager and architect Debra Smith has played an integral role in bringing to life numerous innovative and sustainably designed buildings on the UC Davis campus, including the recently constructed state-of-the-art Teaching and Learning Complex.
UC Davis Design and Construction Management (DCM) delivers new, high-quality buildings at the forefront of green building design; transforms existing facilities to meet future demands; manages improvements to our campus infrastructure; administers public-private partnerships that create opportunities for building large-scale projects like West Village or innovation districts like Aggie Square, and so much more.
UC Davis is constantly undertaking large projects that have lasting impacts across campus. The university has been massively expanding housing, pursuing carbon neutrality, improving seismic safety and creating and renovating classroom space, to name a few concurrent initiatives responsible for the construction around campus. Carrying out so many projects is no easy feat, so UC Davis implements many strategies to reduce costs and advance university priorities.
With the same efficiency and excitement she brings to her marathon training, Tammy Booker, space planner for Design and Construction Management's Space Management and Project Development team, has helped UC Davis claim back thousands of square feet of space, save money, and provide space for academics and research to thrive.
Just like the New York Times puzzles she figures out every morning, Julie Nola treats every new day at work as a puzzle to solve. As an architect and director of Major Capital Projects since 2017, she has worked on and managed numerous projects at UC Davis over the past three decades. Her contributions to maintaining and supporting her beloved UC Davis is felt immensely throughout the campus.
While the ghost town our campus has been for the last 10 months reminds us of the devastation caused by COVID-19, construction and planning for future projects have carried on. The inside joke that UCD stands for “Under Construction Daily” has not changed in spite of the pandemic, but how the work gets done while keeping our community and contractors safe has.
