Our People | Facilities Planning and Development | UC Davis Health

Executive Director, Facilities Planning and Development Division

Jason Nietupski has over 27 years of experience managing large capital and facilities programs for hospitals and health care systems throughout the U.S. Over his career, Jason executed one of the largest combined capital programs in the U.S., thousands of projects exceeding $14 billion collectively. Jason began his career in 1995 as a Medical Service Corps officer in the U.S. Army Medical Department. He held prestigious assignments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a hospital administrator and overseas assignments with the 8th U.S. Army in South Korea as a medical operations officer. Following active duty, Jason was recruited by Deloitte Consulting’s healthcare practice to improve client hospital operations.

In 2001, in partnership with Stanford University School of Medicine, Jason joined the Department of Veterans Affairs, Palo Alto Health Care System to lead strategy, facilities planning, design and construction activities including the development and execution of a $2.6 billion capital portfolio - the largest capital program in the history of the Department of Veteran Affairs. In 2017, Jason was recruited by Kaiser Permanente to lead all capital and facilities management programs in the Mid-Atlantic States region. During his tenure, Jason managed facility operations at 57 locations throughout the State of Maryland, the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia. With an interdisciplinary workforce of 900 employees, Jason was responsible for real estate, property management, facilities planning, design, construction, facilities engineering, biomedical engineering, environmental management and security services. While at Kaiser Permanente, Jason executed the largest capital program in the Region’s history, a $4 billion capital portfolio.

In 2021, Jason was recruited by UC Davis Health to execute the largest health system capital program in the U.S. today, a $7.5 billion capital program, to transform the health care system. During his short time at UC Davis Health, Jason has begun to replicate many of his previous career successes rebuilding the Facilities Planning and Development team to deliver world-class facilities for the region. Jason earned a bachelor of business administration from the University of Massachusetts in 1995 (Magna Cum Laude/Commonwealth Honors), a master of business administration from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 and he completed Kaiser Permanente’s Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School in 2019.

Associate Executive Director, Business Administration

Tom leads UC Davis Health’s Facilities Planning & Development Business Administration team which includes administrative staff, contracts, budget management and business systems. He joined UC Davis Health from the California State University (CSU) system where he served as the Director of Facility Planning, Design and Construction at California State University Maritime Academy (Cal Maritime). Tom has a diverse project portfolio and is experienced in all phases of planning, design, and construction of major and minor capital projects. Prior to working in the CSU Tom worked as a campus planning consultant. Tom holds degrees in urban design from UC Berkeley and city and regional planning from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.  

Executive Director, Strategic Programs

A California licensed architect with 25 years of experience in architectural design, construction, project management in the UC system, Jill was a senior project manager for the UC Davis Design and Construction Management department for more than 20 years before moving to UC Davis Health in 2019. She has experience with multiple contract delivery methods, and a wide range of project types including high tech, academic, housing, and healthcare. Her current role includes delivering multiple strategic expansion projects for UC Davis Health including:

• the California Tower, a 1 million square foot replacement bed tower project delivered under a Progressive Design Build contract
• an outpatient surgery Center and Clinic
• an expansion to the Central Utility Plant
• renovation and new construction of hospital Operating Rooms,
• off-site Medical Office Buildings serving outpatient needs in the surrounding community.

She is leading an integrated team of designers and builders using collaborative contract delivery that will add more than 1 million gross square feet to the health campus over the next 8 years.

Executive Director of Project Delivery

Vicky is a licensed architect and brings nearly 20 years of healthcare design experience. She has worked with the California Department of Health Care Access and Information and Authority Having Jurisdictions throughout California to deliver renovation to ground-up projects. Vicky has led integrated teams throughout the U.S. to deliver projects for multiple health systems. 

A graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Vicky enjoys the beach, family time with her college-age son and high school daughter, snow skiing and hanging out with friends for happy hour.

Director of Facilities Planning

As a longtime UC Davis employee, Matt brings extensive planning experience to all efforts of campus planning, capital planning, UC policy, site development, government relations and land entitlement efforts. Matt began his career working in the planning office at the city of Davis and then worked in the San Francisco area as a consultant on major military base realignment and reuse projects. Matt previously led all UC Davis efforts on environmental planning since 2000 including Long Range Development Plan approvals for the Davis campus, Sacramento campus and outlying facilities. In addition, Matt led the local government relations efforts in Davis and Yolo County building key relationships with elected officials and city leaders on topics such as traffic planning, housing and population. Matt graduated from the UC Davis planning major (Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning) and has been a long-time member of the American Planning Association (APA) and holds certification from the APA’s American Institute for Certified Planners.

Director of Capital Projects

Douglas earned his bachelor of science in architecture with a minor in community development at Southern Illinois University and master in Architecture at University of Nebraska. Douglas spent about 10 years designing schools in Illinois and California before making a switch to healthcare design in 2004. He finds real value and a sense of “giving back” knowing that the environments we design have a great impact on people needing care and the people delivering care.

Director of Strategic Programs

Aaron Lester is a licensed architect with nearly 20 years of experience in the field. He worked for SKW Architects for 10 years, 5 of which were in the healthcare field. For the past 9 years he has worked for UC Davis Design and Construction Management and has a broad portfolio of project types and delivery methods. He started on the main campus as a senior project manager and was most recently an associate director for major capital projects. He earned his undergraduate degree from University of Oregon in 1993 in Japanese language and spent the next 7 years working in the lumber export trade, representing several sawmills in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. He traveled back and forth to Japan during that period worked with a variety of clients, from precut mills to major trading companies. In 2000 he returned to the University of Oregon to pursue a master’s degree in architecture that he completed in 2003.

Director of Infrastructure

Matthew Pechman attended the University of Akron and received a bachelor in electrical engineering. Out of college, he briefly worked as an electrical engineer designing and installing automated control systems, but quickly pivoted to project management. He worked as a healthcare construction project manager for 6 years with the VA before he began supervising construction programs. Since 2015, he has managed three different large-scale infrastructure construction programs for the VA, Kaiser Permanente, and Stanford Health Care. Matt has spent the majority of his career in healthcare and specializing in infrastructure capital planning, rehabilitation, and replacement.

Director of Real Estate Development and Management

Keith has over 20 years of experience in capital program and construction management, space planning and real estate portfolio and property management. An 18-year veteran of UC Davis, Keith has held several roles over his tenure to include Lease Administrator, Principal Planner for Educational Facilities, Manager for Capital and Space Planning, Associate Director for Offsite Operations and Interim Director for Facilities Planning. Prior to joining UC Davis and UC Davis Health, Keith held facilities management positions at the Office of Court Construction and Management of the Judicial Council of California. Under Keith’s leadership, the Real Estate Development and Management Department has successfully expanded UC Davis Health’s outpatient portfolio in the region via numerous tenant improvements and key land acquisitions. Several projects under Keith’s leadership have won awards from the Sacramento Business Journal and Construction Management Association of America (Nor-Cal Chapter). Keith has a Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies from CSU Chico and a Master of Arts in Government from CSU Sacramento. He is also a certified Design-Build Professional of the Design-Build Institute of America.

Director of Special Projects

Craig Allen began working in the construction industry in 2008 as a project manager and has been at the Facilities Planning and Development Division since 2014. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is a project management professional. Craig received multiple Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association awards for his previous large projects and at UC Davis Health received a Friends of Nursing: Nursing Excellence award for his work improving Infection Prevention processes for construction projects.

Director of Strategic Programs

A California licensed architect with over 25 years of experience in the design and construction industry, Greg Secor has recently joined UC Davis Health after 10 years working as Senior Project Manager and Associate Director of Major Capital Projects at UC Davis Design and Construction Management (Davis campus). He oversaw complex remodel projects as well as construction of new facilities. He has experience in multiple contract delivery methods and with a variety of projects and building types such as sport performance facilities, residence halls, and seismic renovations.

Director of Compliance

Tim is a California licensed structural engineer with a wide range of healthcare and university design and construction experience. He has led teams delivering Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) Special Seismic Certification Preapprovals (OSP), Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Hospital Expansions, Design-Build University Buildings and Public Private Partnership (P3) Student Housing. Tim joined UC Davis Health on the Capital Projects team in 2021. He now leads the Facilities Planning and Development Compliance team which includes the Building Department and Inspections team. Tim has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Davis.

Director of Building Activation and FF&E

Surita is coming to us from Kaiser Permanente where she served in multiple leadership roles. Most recently, she was the Clinical Administrator over Cardiac, Perioperative, Hospital Based Specialists and Critical Care services. Previously, she was the Transitional Leader for the activation of the new 224,000 square foot Dublin Medical Center. She was subsequently promoted as the Support Services Administrator leading the Facility Groups such as Engineering, Environmental Services, Grounds, Security, Food & Nutrition, Operator Services, Space and Construction. She also served as the Special Project Lead for the activation of 3 Mass Vaccination HUBs for the office of the Governor in California. Prior to joining Kaiser, she led the Transition Planning for the $1.3 billion, 524,000 square foot expansion to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford and Transition & Activation of a Patient Care Tower in Canada.