SAME President Announces Focus Areas for 2006–2007

As I prepare for the 2006 Joint Engineer Education and Training Conference & Expo in New Orleans, La., I wanted to take a few minutes to share my thoughts about the coming year. First, I am delighted to take part in the conference. SAME continued its support of New Orleans as the conference site to demonstrate our support to the local Post and the people of that great city, and as a statement of confidence in the hurricane recovery efforts. It was the right decision, and we are proud that our conference will be one of the first in the city since hurricane Katrina hit last August. On behalf of the entire Society, I thank the Louisiana Post for its perseverance and dedication during a tremendously difficult time. Second, I am honored to take on my new role as SAME President. I look forward to working closely with the organization’s dedicated members as we continue the great work accomplished under the leadership of Rear Adm. Michael K. Loose, P.E., F.SAME, CEC, USN.

SAME has done much to foster a strong relationship between military and civilian engineers. That relationship remains vitally important as we continue our efforts to support the Global War on Terror, improve homeland security and provide a multitude of professional outreach opportunities to the youth in our nation. We have a great organization!

In March, the SAME Board of Direction met to review the past year and chart a course for next year. It is an annual strategic planning process that was established by Bob Wolff, SAME’s Executive Director. The meeting underscored the outstanding ability SAME has to reflect internally, adapt to external changes, and develop better methods to provide value to members and potential members.

The effort to reach out to students, Young Members, NCOs and small businesses has been superb. For example, thanks to our Posts, many high school students have the opportunity to attend the three SAME Engineering and Construction Camps. Their experiences continue to generate positive feedback; college students frequently credit the camps as the inspiration to study engineering or to attend a service academy.

Our Posts also have been engaged in the important work of providing education and mentoring for Young Members. The nation needs more engineers, and we can take pride in our programs, which help to educate and develop the professionalism of civilian and military engineers. We need to keep moving forward in this area.

The Board reviewed the mission statement and concluded that it did reflect all of those tremendous outreach efforts, but we added some additional points to our goals and objectives to further this important aspect of our mission.

We also revamped SAME’s national security goals and objectives to better reflect our future focus on the National Response Plan. Significantly, we incorporated two of SAME’s goals for 2005-2006: SAME’s support of professional licensure and certifications, and support to our deployed engineering team and their families.

Finally, we discussed and set forth focus areas, in support of the Society’s Strategic Plan, for SAME during my tenure as President. These include:

• Develop and implement national, regional and Post programs that support public sector participation.
• Revitalize and realign SAME’s readiness program to support the National Response Plan.
• Facilitate industry support to the uniformed services in the development and realignment of military installations.

Our first focus area will continue a priority initiated under the leadership of Past President Maj. Gen. L. Dean Fox, F.SAME, USAF, and reinforced by Adm. Loose, which is to achieve greater public sector membership and participation in SAME. Currently, about 24 percent of our members are from the public sector, and we would like to see that number increase. Additionally, we want more active public sector participation at Post, regional and national meetings. These meetings are integral to accomplishing our mission of developing relationships between the public and private sector in support of national security. In the past two years, we have lowered public sector dues and conference fees. We must continue to make our Post programs and our conferences more relevant to the public sector, particularly to the uniformed services. I challenge our Post presidents and conference planners to meet this goal so that we can recognize their successes in the coming months.

Our second focus area will help SAME refocus its readiness programs in support of the recently published National Response Plan. We will focus our efforts on assisting federal, state and local governments in protecting human life and the nation’s infrastructure against man-made and natural disasters. I look forward to the SAME Readiness and Homeland Security Committee providing new guidance to our Posts in the coming year so that we may begin to achieve this goal. SAME’s participation in The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) will be an important element of the Readiness Committee’s leadership on this goal. SAME HQ has agreed to host the 2007 TISP Congress in Washington, D.C., in March 2007, and an SAME member will co-chair the Program Committee for the TISP Congress.

Related to Base Realignment and Closure 2005 (BRAC 05), the third focus area is extremely important, and we will look to industry partners for substantial support. BRAC 05 and the transformation of our military forces to a more modular and responsive force structure is driving a major relocation of military forces and requirements for new facilities that need to be built quickly. I am confident that SAME members will provide the high-quality assistance needed to our military installations. As an interface between industry and government, SAME will facilitate clarifying Department of Defense (DOD) requirements for industry and provide DOD with innovative ideas and capabilities to accomplish the mission. The next few years will be a tremendous challenge for the uniformed services, as well as for industry. This also will represent a tremendous opportunity, and I am confident that the partnerships we have developed through SAME give us the foundation for success.

I am truly excited about the next year, and look forward to working with the SAME Board of Direction, the Society’s headquarters staff and Post leaders to accomplish the SAME mission. Thank you for all that you do to support our nation, the Armed Forces, and our nation’s engineers.

Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, P.E.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
SAME President, 2006 – 2007