BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan -- Building a $15 million hospital is a big job, wherever you do it.

In Afghanistan, it's even bigger. Just ask Autumn Leveridge.

Leveridge, a U.S. Army captain, is health facility planning officer for the 83,000-square foot modular military medical facility under construction on the military air base north of Kabul. The Level III treatment facility includes an emergency room, three operating rooms, 20-bed intensive care unit and a 20-bed intensive care ward.

As health facility planning officer, Leveridge is responsible for quality assurance and quality control, managing and tracking contracts, on-site design modifications and coordinating with the Turkish contractor actually building the facility, local Afghan labor, U.S. government civilian employees and on-base contractors.

A 1999 graduate of Texas A&M University with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, Leveridge gives her Texas A&M education -- both in engineering and as a member of the university's Corps of Cadets -- credit for preparing her to do jobs like building this hospital.

"I think engineering is very important base knowledge," she said. "I wish more people would study engineering and then go figure out what they want to do with their lives."

Building a hospital anywhere is a complicated project, but this one is more complicated than most. Consider: It's in Afghanistan -- a war zone. The general contractor for the project is from Turkey and most of the labor is from Afghanistan. Medical equipment is being shipped from suppliers in several other countries.

"I think this is one of the hardest construction projects you can do," she said. "To begin with, it is a hospital, which makes it more difficult than most construction projects. There are challenges with language, with differences in standard construction methods, and most obviously, it is harder because it is in a combat zone, in Afghanistan."

In addition to the "standard" features of any large hospital, the Bagram facility will include veterinary facilities to care for military working dogs, including specialized landmine-sniffing dogs. (Landmines remaining from the Russian occupation of Afghanistan litter the surrounding area.) Veterinary personnel also will be responsible for food safety inspections on the air base.

When the hospital opens (the construction schedule calls for doctors to see the first patients there in summer 2006), it will provide combat medical support to military forces serving in Afghanistan.

Leveridge expects the hospital's mission to extend far beyond its original mission of supporting military operations in Afghanistan.

"Hopefully, one day many local Afghan health care providers will work and train here, if incorporation agreements can be arranged," she said. "There will be an infinite number of local Afghan patients treated here in the years to come."

Leveridge is assigned to the U.S. Army's Health Facility Planning Agency (HFPA), the unit responsible for overseeing the planning, design and construction of Army medical facilities around the world. Before this project, she had been involved in programming for the Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland and planning and construction of medical and dental facilities at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.; Ft. Polk, La., Ft. Belvoir, Va., and other installations across the United States.

"I owe so much of who I am today and my ability to do this job to the experiences I had while I was a cadet in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M," Leveridge said.

For more information, contact

Reporter: Gene Charleton
e-charleton@tamu.edu
(979) 845-6715

News Story 1299, February 22, 2006

Direct page link:
http://engineeringnews.tamu.edu/news/1299

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