THE PROJECT DIRECTOR

Bill Camille
William Camille graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in architecture. He then embarked on what was a seminal program to achieve concurrent master’s degrees in architecture and business administration. And he only extended his master’s curriculum by six months.

It’s just the kind of efficiency he brought to Community Hospital’s Pavilions Project where, as project director, his primary responsibility has been to keep the project on track.

Camille has served as a liaison between the various parties of interest — hospital leaders; the general contractor; the design team; the Facilities Planning department; and the doctors, nurses, and technicians who are the end users.

“I was delighted Dr. Packer felt positive enough about my experience to bring me in to assist with a project of this magnitude,” says Camille. “So much about making a project like this work lies in creating a teamwork environment and recognizing that  everyone, from the tradesmen to the design team, wants to do a good job and be rewarded for it. To be successful, we have to work toward common and individual goals all at once.”

Raised in Illinois, Camille spent summers well into his college years working construction alongside his dad. Upon graduation, he took a job with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, Inc. (HOK), of Saint Louis, coincidentally the same architecture firm that designed the Pavilions Project.

Two and a half years later, he was part of a team responsible for opening an HOK office in Denver at the apex of its regional building boom in the early 1980s.  But as the market began to decline, Camille took an assignment with the Miller Kluztnick Davis Gray (MKDG) development firm and was later invited to step into a project already under way on the Monterey Peninsula, the development of the Spanish Bay Resort in Pebble Beach.

“The project manager had health issues,” says Camille, “so I was asked to come out and manage the project for three months. But even once the project manager recuperated from his surgery, there was still too much to handle, so my temporary assignment evolved into a 14-month weekly commute from Denver.”

In 1988, Camille moved to the Peninsula to manage the development and sales of the condominiums at the Spanish Bay Resort. In 1995, he began consulting on the redevelopment of the former Fort Ord property on behalf of California State University Monterey Bay. While working on more than 25 buildings for the university over a seven-year period, he undertook the concurrent assignment of managing the renovation of the historic Sunset Center in Carmel.

“I was fortunate enough at an early age,” says Camille, “to have the opportunity to work on a number of large-scale projects of diverse use.  Over the years, I have found that, no matter what my experiences have been, each project offers a different set of challenges and always an education.”