Antidote to Burnout

Then and Now 2

Back in 1972, I shot this photograph of an Islamic mosque under construction along the main street between downtown Saigon and the airport.  This street was called Cong Ly in those days.

I was enamored with the delicacy of the concrete construction.

This mosque continues to exist today, but this section of the street in the Phú Nhuận District of Ho Chi Minh City is now named Nguyễn Văn Trỗi.

This street was recently widened, so I am surprised that the mosque was set sufficiently back to escape having its facade chopped back.

For old nostalgic U.S. Navy C.E.C. officers only:

My blog service, Typepad, gives me information daily on how many page hits the blog receives the previous day.  In addition, I can also see what kinds of Google searches people have done to find the blog.  However, I cannot see who has made the searches.

Sometimes, reviewing these Google searches gives me ideas for topics to cover.  Some of these items are very particular to some shared experience the searcher and I may have had.  Lately, there have been several searches for "OICC" and "Dang Duc Sieu".  There are not many people in the world that would have interest in searching on those terms.  Those terms are common primarily to those of us who served with the U.S. Navy Officer in Charge of Construction, Republic of Vietnam, back in the late 60s and early 70s.  Dang Duc Sieu was the old name of the one-block-long street on which the small hotel was located that housed our 50-or-so naval Civil Engineer Corps officers.

The office building of OICC-RVN was located at 176 Hai Ba Trung Street in downtown Saigon.  OICC had many American and Vietnamese civilian employees.

The building is still located there, in use as an office building for a state-owned Vietnamese company.

Since OICC-RVN was the contracting officer for the cost-plus construction contract with the huge contracting consortium RMK-BRJ, many old RMK senior staff will also be familiar with this building.

Đường (Street) Dang Duc Sieu is now named Đường (Street) Nam Quốc Cang.

This is that street today as viewed from the west on Bùi Thi Xuân Street.  I cannot remember what the name of this street used to be.  The OICC hotel was located mid-block on the right hand (south) side of the street.

The opposite street on the east was called Võ Tánh Street, but is now called Nguyễn Trãi Street.  This photo is taken from Nguyễn Trãi Street viewed west on old Dang Duc Sieu Street.

The hotel would be on the left side in this photo.

This was the hotel in 1972, featuring grenade screens and a generator out in front behind the green sandbags.

My friend and blog reader emem, who worked in another building on this street until recently,  tells me that this hotel was torn down several years ago and replaced with the building shown in the center of the following photograph (not the building with the "KOOL" sign).

The more I look at this photo, however, the more I believe that it is possible that the building was remodeled.  The height is the same, and you can see the old roof-top restaurant and deck at the top of the building.

Here is a view of the houses across the street in 1972:

And here is the house across the street today:

The modernist house that was located to the left of the French colonial villa has either been rebuilt or substantially remodeled.

This was the view in 1972 to the west end of Dang Duc Sieu from the rooftop of the hotel.

This is the view today at the end of Dang Duc Sieu:

The new eight to ten-story buildings along the street and at the end of the street are typical of the new construction in Ho Chi Minh City over the past decade in District 1 neighborhoods.

This neighborhood is located south of downtown (downtown defined as the City Hall area at the west end of Nguyễn Huê Blvd. where it intersects with Lê Lợi Blvd.)  As shown in this photograph taken in 1972 from the hotel rooftop with a telephoto lens,

a railroad yard with the old terminal at the end stretched to the Bến Thành market.  This area is now a long park called 23 September Park, bordered on the right by Phạm Ngũ Lão Street, which is now the center for cheap "backpacker" hotels.

In this photo taken in 1972 just to the left of the previous photo, a water tower, church, and rounded apartment building are shown.

All of those structure still exist, as shown in this photograph taken by my friend emem a couple of years ago.

The new checkered building is Zen Plaza, a retail shopping center.

The Church was on Võ Tánh Street, now renamed as Nguyễn Trãi Street.  This is the modern view of this street at the intersection of the old Dang Duc Sieu Street.

The new high-rise building at the end of old Dang Duc Sieu is a 13 or 14-story building, and is emblematic of the changes occurring throughout Ho Chi Minh City.

Design Touches 7

While I am thrilled about the modernist and experimental directions of Vietnamese house architecture, I am aware that Việt Nam has a long history of modernist architecture that has a distinctive Vietnamese flavor.  Việt Nam's explorations in modernist art and architecture paralleled the evolution of modernist architecture in Europe and the Americas, whereas in most Asian countries, design has lagged the world evolution in design.

I think that the southern Vietnamese have an innate sense of design that motivates them to develop strong ideas in architecture, as well as allied arts in fashion and graphic design.

This detail from an old house in my neighborhood of TP. Hồ Chí Minh shows this spirit of experimentation in modernist design.

While the composition may not be very well resolved, the fact that the owner of this utilitarian house felt strongly enough to have such decoration applied to the house speaks to the sense of design that the Vietnamese value.

I took the following photo in 1972 because I was amazed to find modernist architecture alongside the French Colonial architecture that I expected to find in Việt Nam.

This photograph was taken recently, but this villa probably dates back to the 60s or 70s, and is unfortunately in an area that will be redeveloped soon.

Family Matters

Today is our 33rd wedding anniversary.  We were married in the white chapel built by the Seabees at the Newport Rhode Island Naval Base.  I don't have a picture of the wedding with me here in Viet Nam, (like I know I should), but I do have this photo taken sometime in the summer of 1972 about 34 years ago in Saigon.

Also this week, we are proud to announce that our oldest daughter Kristine has become engaged to be married to David Nakamura, the son of Bob and Bernie Nakamura of Vienna, Virginia.

David is a staff reporter for the Washington Post, and Kristine is a graduate student at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

We are thrilled to welcome David as our future son-in-law, and wish for them the best in their marriage, as it has been for their parents.

Street Advertising in HCMC

Productive work has intruded on my blogging for the past week, but I have now snapped out of it.  After all, this blog is about the antidote to burnout.

Meanwhile, both noodlepie and The final Word in Saigon posted stories about street advertising this past week.  Noodlepie stated "I understand that pre-1990(ish) there was very little in the way of advertising in Vietnam."  The final Word photographed two great present day examples of huge billboards on buildings, including one of a real Ford Focus hanging off the side of the billboard about 8-stories up a building.

So I looked back to my photos of Saigon in 1972 to see if I could find some comparisons of street advertising with today's HCMC.

This was one of my favorite "roundabouts" back when I was living in Saigon in 1972, mostly because of the modernist architecture of these corner buildings.  Even then, though, there was a large sign towards the top of the building. 

This might be the same corner buildings now in HCMC -- I have not been able to confirm this, but what difference does it make?  The whole  building has been covered up.

This was Vo Thanh Street in 1972 -- not too much street advertising then.

Here is the same street at about the same point today, now called Nguyễn Trãi Street.  There are more signs, but not obtrusively so.  The trees have grown up to hide most signs and buildings.

Finally, here is a 1972 shot in front of the Bến Thành Market in downtown Saigon.

And here is the same building today, mostly covered up with advertising.

Getting civilian military construction done -- RMK-BRJ [Part 1]

KBR (formerly the M.W. Kellogg Company and Brown & Root, Inc.) is the 4th largest American construction firm today (listed by Engineering News Record) and is a subsidiary firm of Halliburton, well known for its former CEO, now U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.  KBR makes the news regularly under criticism of the non-competitive sole-source contracts awarded to it by the U.S. government for construction work in Iraq.

As pointed out by James M. Carter in his online article "The Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq", the precurser to KBR is the American construction joint-venture RMK-BRJ, formed to perform construction under a cost-plus-award-fee contract for the U.S. Navy in Vietnam in the 60s and early 70s.  Brown & Root, Inc., now part of KBR, was also a key part of RMK-BRJ, also known as The Vietnam Builders (although I never heard that term during the year I worked alongside RMK-BRJ people in 1972).  The other members of RMK-BRJ were also the largest American construction companies at the time, including Raymond International, Morrison-Knudsen, and J.A. Jones Construction.  According to Carter,
"In the process, Vietnam Builders employed 8,600 Americans and over 51,000 Vietnamese. They built six ports with 29 deep-draft berths, six naval bases, eight jet airstrips 10,000 feet in length, twelve airfields, just under twenty hospitals, fourteen million square feet of covered storage, and twenty base camps including housing for 450,000 servicemen and family. In short, they put on the ground in southern Vietnam nearly $2 billion in construction of various kinds of facilities and infrastructure. Military commanders called it the "construction miracle of the decade." (Jones Construction Centennial)."

By my calculation using the ENR Building Cost Index, $2 billion in 1970 terms for construction in Vietnam is the equivalent of $15 billion in American construction dollars today.

As a naval officer assigned to the U.S. Navy Officer in Charge of Construction, Republic of Vietnam (OICC-RVN) from 1971 and 1972, I was privileged to attend the final ceremony in 1972 when Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker turned over the plant, equipment, and material of RMK-BRJ to the Vietnamese government.

While most of the Navy OICC organization was devoted to administering the RMK-BRJ contract, I was fortunate to be assigned to work with Vietnamese construction contractors to build civil projects up and down southern Việt Nam.  But for portions of time, I occupied home and office space in RMK-BRJ construction camps, as well as their home office in downtown Sài Gòn (now occupied by the Diamond Plaza Department Store and office tower) at the corner of Đại Lộ (Avenue) Lê Duẩn and Đường (Street) Phạm Ngọc Thạch in District 1 (Sài Gòn) of Hồ Chí Minh City.  This is what the headquarters looked like in 1972:

and this is what it looks like today:

This is a block south of the Consulate General of the U.S. (former site of the U.S. Embassy).

RMK-BRJ Construction Industry Legacy in Việt Nam [Part 2]

All of the photographs below were taken in 1972 -- click on any of them to enlarge it.

The huge American construction consortium RMK-BRJ was ubiquitous thoughout southern Việt Nam is the 60s and early 70s with its thousands of ochre-colored trucks and equipment.

RMK-BRJ gave construction training and employment to 200,000 Vietnamese in this period, including many women.  These construction workers often became the supervisors and foremen of the Vietnamese contractors I was working with.  In particular, they trained them in modern quality standards and practices, which I think has led to good quality Vietnamese construction today.  This pouring of concrete cylinders for compression-testing is an example:

In looking at the Vietnamese construction industry today, I suspect that much of the RMK-BRJ plant and equipment became the core of the modern-day large Vietnamese construction companies, many of which remain state-owned.  Some of the equipment was probably already being diffused into the local industry to some of the Vietnamese contractors I was working with in 1972, such as this concrete mixer on the Tham Thiện Bridge replacement on Highway QL-51 between Sài Gòn and Vũng Tào on the coast.

Of the many RMK-BRJ construction plants, I understand the the Saigon concrete beam precasting plant is still turning out prestressed concrete beams like the beams used for the La Nga Bridge on Highway QL-20 north of Hồ Chí Minh City.

RMK-BRJ's Saigon Island Depot was the primary depot for most of the imported construction material and equipment entering Việt Nam from America.

RMK-BRJ had all kinds of construction equipment all over southern Việt Nam, including a fleet of water-craft for riverine construction.

RMK-BRJ Construction Legacy in Việt Nam Today [Part 3]

Between 1965 and 1972, the consortium of the four largest American construction companies, RMK-BRJ, built much of the infrastructure of the lines of communications now serving southern Việt Nam today.  All of the photographs below were taken in 1972 -- click on any of them to enlarge it.

The Newport Saigon River depot  (now called Tần Cảng) still offloads ships at the docks next to the Saigon Bridge on the Hà Nội Highway, both of which were also built by RMK-BRJ.

RMK-BRJ completed construction on the by-pass highway (QL-1A) to the west around Saigon in 1972.

This new highway took pressure off traffic in downtown Saigon and now is the key route for transport between the delta to the south and the industrial parks to the north and west.  There are many new office buildings and factories along the bypass highway.

The new bypass highway included four major bridges (Bình Phước, Bình Điền, Bến Lức, and Tân An).

I am not sure what might have happened to this cinema RMK-BRJ built at the Long Bình U.S. Army Post right before the American army left Vietnam at the end of 1972.

I am living over an old project of mine...

While in Saigon to manage construction contracts to Vietnamese construction contractors in 1972, I worked with a company called VIHICO to build a large storm drainage tunnel two or three kilometers long.

The project was called Vo Thanh Drain, which might have been for the name of the street that was dug up during construction and then restored.

As near as I can tell, that street is now called Phan Dăng Lưu, and I live just 50 meters away from it now in Quận (District) Phó Nhuận of Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh.

At the beginning of the tunnel at the intersection with Hai Bà Trưng Street, the cross section of the tunnel is about four meters square.

It required a deep excavation.

As the tunnel neared its outfall (close to present-day Dinh Tiên Hoàng Street), it flattened out to a section about 10 meters wide and 3 meters high.

The outfall drained into an area of wet fields growing dinner greens.

That area now looks like this, around the new University of Fine Arts Building on Phan Dang Luu.

As the tunnel progressed, neighboring house owners connected their house sewer lines through the tunnel wall (probably in collusion with the contractor).

The project was fairly disruptive to the lives of the occupants of the neighborhood, but attempts were made to accommodate movement across the construction.

After construction, the street was restored.

Since 1972, the street has been widened considerably.

The La Nga River Bridge

In 1970, the U.S. Navy Officer in Charge of Construction RVN awarded a construction contract to a French construction contractor, Eiffel-Asie, to construct a bridge across the La Nga River on national highway QL-20 running north of Sai Gon to Dalat.  This was the first construction contract awarded outside of the work the huge American construction company RMK-BRJ had been assigned.  Subsequently, construction contracts were awarded to Vietnamese contractors as the RMK-BRJ contract was closed out.

I was assigned responsibility to administer the construction of the bridge out of our Long Binh office at the RMK-BRJ Camp.  We regularly drove up national highway QL-1 and QL-20 to observe the construction.

This bridge was to replace a previous French-built bridge bombed by the Viet Cong.

U.S. Army engineers had replaced the dropped span with a Bailey Bridge span, as well as a pontoon bridge for heavy military traffic.

The new bridge spans were constructed with precast prestressed concrete beams furnished to the contractor by the Navy.  These beams were fabricated by RMK-BRJ at their Saigon Island precasting plant.  The French contractor constructed a steel truss "beam launcher" to pull the beams out to the span to be set.

After pulling the beams into the launcher on steel tracks,

the launcher was moved laterally into the position where the beam was to be dropped.

Steel barricades were erected around each pier to protect against mines dropped to drift into the piers to destroy the bridge.

Notice that the piers were solid walls across the width of the bridge.
Here is the bridge at completion.

Rock rip-rap had been added at each of the bridge abutments.

Since returning to Viet Nam, I have desperately wanted to figure out how to get a ride up QL-20 to see if the bridge was still there after the past 35 years.  I luckily received that opportunity two weekends ago when a Vietnamese developer wanted to show me a property north of the bridge on QL-20.  Here is the bridge today:

Notice that the piers are now round columns and beams.  Sometime over the past 35 years, a dam was built on the La Nga River downstream creating a large reservoir which greatly widened the river at the bridge.  It is possible that the river was dredged at this point so the piers had to be reconstructed with new foundations.  The original beams are still there, though, as shown in this picture:

It also appears that the railings were moved outward by extending the bridge deck out to widen the bridge a bit.

This project was an important step for me as a young architect and construction professional.  I am happy to revisit it, and it will stand for me as a reminder that some things will stay the same, other things will go away, and some things will change -- what counts is how it got there and how it will change to meet new needs.

Happy Birthday to Hiền

Happy Birthday to my wife Hiền today.  Here she is 34 years ago at the Saigon Zoo:

We had a party on our roof deck last Sunday night, inviting Hiền's cousins that live in Ho Chi Minh City.  We brought in bún thịt nướng  (barbequed pork strips), nem nướng (barbequed ground pork balls), and chả giò (deep fried spring rolls) from our favorite local street stand (as usual, noodlepie is the definitive source on Vietnamese food).  We also brought in bia hoi (fresh beer) in a five-liter jug, and a variety of sodas.  We set it all up on a fresh refrigerator cardboard carton (since our landlord just installed a new one).

The cousins all had a good time, and of course they spoke a mix of Chinese and Vietnamese all night, so I can't report much on the discussions.

The evening breezes on the roof deck make this the ideal place to be in the evening to cool off.

Then and now....

I will try to end my Vietnam 1972 nostalgia phase with this short series of "then and now" pictures.

In downtown Saigon, here was the Grand Hotel in 1972 at the foot of what was then Tu Do Street and what is now Dong Khoi Street.  It was virtually empty at that time and badly in need of restoration.

Here is the Grand Hotel today in Ho Chi Minh City -- restored to glory.

Here is the Hotel de Ville in downtown Saigon in 1972.

Today, the Hotel de Ville in Ho Chi Minh City has become the People's Committee Building.

In 1972, the primary cathedral in downtown Saigon was known to Americans as John F. Kennedy Cathedral.

.

Today, it is Notre Dame Cathedral, which was probably its real name.

This was Vo Thanh Street in 1972,

which is now Nguyen Trai Street.

Finally, I wanted badly to export one of these old Citroens to the U.S. back in 1972, but of course I didn't.  There were lots of them around in those days.

This is the only one I have seen, and it seems to be on exhibition outside hotel where it is parked.

What is an AROICC?

From October 1971 to October 1972, I served as a Assistant Resident Officer in Charge of Construction (AROICC) for Vietnamese contractors in Vietnam under the Officer in Charge of Construction - Republic of Vietnam (OICC-RVN).  Another young ensign managed Vietnamese contractors in II Corps (Central Highlands), while I managed projects in I Corps (Da Nang, Hoi An, etc.) and III Corps (Saigon).  All of the other sixty (and more senior) naval Civil Engineer Corps officers at OICC-RVN supervised the construction program as a whole and the huge American construction cost-plus-award-fee contractor RMK-BRJ (more about them later).

The design for projects, the bidding, and the award of contracts were made by the OICC headquarters in Saigon.  The awarded construction contracts were then assigned to AROICCs for management in the field.  Management of these projects included expeditious contractor direction, design review and coordination, negotiation of change orders and claims, liaison with client agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or the Army Corps of Engineers, and supervision of Vietnamese civilian construction inspectors.  Over the year, I managed 21 contracts to Vietnamese contractors (and one French contractor) including 360 units of family housing, a 240-bed hospital addition, two province supply centers, two reinforced-concrete bridges, and a 202-building school.

Although I had just completed an intensive construction contract administration course at the Civil Engineer Corps Officer School in Port Hueneme, California, I was a very young inexperienced architect.  This assignment as an AROICC in Vietnam was a “sink-or-swim” opportunity, and I learned very quickly.  Each of these projects had a Vietnamese construction inspector assigned to them, and I am very thankful for the construction experience they transferred to me.  In particular, the Chief Inspector, Vo Van Thanh, was my mentor that whole year and I learned a lot from him beyond construction to Vietnamese life and culture.  He made sure that I got out and sampled Vietnamese and French restaurants.

Unfortunately, I did not pick up on Vietnamese language because all of the Vietnamese contractors and construction inspectors spoke English very well.

Vietnamese Construction People in 1972

Construction Inspectors.jpg
Originally uploaded by layered.

Please click on the photo for access to 12 other photos of Vietnamese construction people in this set. I had the very good fortune to be assigned to administer construction contracts to Vietnamese construction contractors in 1971 through 1972. These contractors and their construction workers did very good work and were justifiably proud to the good quality and finish of their projects.

I was assisted by Vietnamese construction inspectors employed by OICC-RVN to review the construction work constantly on site. These inspectors usually relocated to the town where the project was located. I relied heavily on my Chief Inspector, Vo Van Thanh.

These people were almost always positive in nature and strived to do good work while having fun at the same time. They (and I) enjoyed the closing parties and the good Vietnamese food.

How did I wind up in Vietnam in 1971-1972?

After graduating from Montana State University in 1970 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, I faced the draft into the Army directly (I had a low draft lottery number) by enlisting in the Navy as a naval officer instead.  While I was firmly against the nation’s war in Vietnam by that time, I knew I could not in good conscience flee to Canada or go underground.  I hoped I could do something positive in the Navy by managing construction as part of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.  My father had been one of the first Navy enlisted men in the famous Seabees (construction battalions) in WWII, and his experience was a part of my decision to become an architect and then to go into the Navy.

After Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island in Spring 1971, I headed to Civil Engineer Corps Officer School at Port Hueneme, California.  While in this school, I specialized in contract construction management, and spoke with the “detailer” about my first duty assignment.  There were several “Assistant Resident Officer in Charge of Construction (AROICC)” assignments available at remote locations such as China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California.  AROICCs are essentially construction project managers.  There was also an AROICC position in Saigon.  Like an out-of-body experience, I heard myself volunteering to go to Saigon for a year.  Part of my decision was a desire for adventure -- part was the prospect of more interesting projects with interesting contractors.

In October 1971, I arrived in Saigon at Ton Sun Nhut airport on a flight originating at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California.  I knew life was going to be different from the normal military life in Vietnam when the person I was to relieve picked me up directly at the airport so that I bypassed the normal week’s orientation at the Navy headquarters at the airport (NAVFORV).  Bear in mind that I did not receive any weapons training to speak of in the U.S..  After expressing my concern, I was told that our objective while in Vietnam will be to stay out of trouble and look and operate like civilians as much as possible.  Since we were working with civilian constructors, this is exactly what we did.

Nevertheless, I was still a naval officer, and as an Ensign, I was the youngest, freshest, most junior officer assigned to the Officer in Charge of Construction, Republic of Vietnam (OICC-RVN).  This agency was responsible to the Department of Defense for all civilian and civil construction in Vietnam.  We were not combat engineers, nor were we involved in building forward bases.  Our customers included the U.S. Agency for International Development for Vietnamese government public works capital projects, as well as capital projects for the Vietnamese military with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as our customer.

Our headquarters was in downtown Saigon on Hai Ba Trung Street a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy, and our residence was a hotel on Dang Duc Sieu between Saigon and Cholon.  Subsequent posts will explain the construction projects we completed in Vietnam, as well as how we managed these projects.  There will also be pictures linked to Flickr showing the beauty of Vietnam in 1972 as well as the projects we built there.

Why Relocate to Vietnam?

The prime reason for this blog is to inform friends and family about our decision to relocate to Vietnam for a couple of years and to show them the wonderful cultural experiences we know we will have there.  How do we know we will have these experiences?

I have kept fairly quiet about it for a long time -- my year in Vietnam from October 1971 to October 1972 was the best out of my good life.  My silence has partly been a matter of respect for the serious experiences of Americans and Vietnamese in the war.  I did not see the war for the entire year I was in Vietnam although I travelled up and down what was then South Vietnam as a naval officer administering 21 construction contracts to Vietnamese contractors.  However, some of these projects were in areas eventually overrun in the Tet offensive of the North Vietnamese in 1972 and later.

It was my experiences working with these Vietnamese contractors that I remember fondly, and to what I have wanted to return.  Vietnam was and is a very beautiful country, but it was and is the Vietnamese people, culture, and food that I enjoyed the most.

And of course I met my wife Hien in Saigon in early 1972, and we were subsequently married in 1973 at Newport, Rhode Island.  Although her entire family also became refugees to America in 1975, she has always wanted to return.

And return we will for a couple of years managing design and construction once again with Vietnamese architects and contractors.  After a couple of weeks in China, we expect to arrive in Hanoi at the end of September to begin this new adventure.

Update:  We visited Vietnam in September and October to orient ourselves to the country again, and decided to relocate to Ho Chi Minh City in January 2006.