Event Recap: JETC 2023

With over 2,500 attendees, two general sessions, over 80 hours of education and training sessions, and so much more, the 2023 Joint Engineer Training Conference and Expo in San Antonio, Texas, provided attendees with unparalleled opportunities for education, joint training, networking, and professional development. The conference also offered an opportunity for SAME to demonstrate its two central areas of focus in action–developing leaders for the profession and deepening industry-government engagement to address the engineering challenges facing our nation.

The conference got off to an energizing start on Tuesday, May 2, with an Opening General Session featuring a keynote by Sarah Thomas, the NFL’s first female official and one of Sports Illustrated’s 100 Most Influential NFL Figures of All Time. Thomas shared with the gathered attendees the story of her career journey–and it was a journey, for as she explained in the beginning of her keynote, she hadn’t set out with the determination to be the first female official in the NFL. Rather, her success came through a simple formula of doing what she loved, coupled with the right attitude, determination, and motivation. 

Day Two offered opportunities for collaboration between industry and government with a General Session featuring The Honorable Brendan Owens, P.E., LEED Fellow, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Energy, Installations, and Environment), who offered his outlook on how the department is evolving to address the resiliency needs of the future. With the understanding that our military installations are no longer sanctuaries, he said the department would be looking to test installations for resiliency with the same commitment they carry for more conventional attacks. Getting to that point, however, requires assistance from industry—such as the expertise gathered in the room. Following up on his remarks, a panel of senior engineering leaders from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, Air Force, Coast Guard, Public Health Service, and the Department of Veterans Affairs closed out the plenary with a question and answer session highlighting areas where assistance and collaboration with private industry is needed.

Along with the General Sessions, attendees enjoyed extensive workshops, forums, and demonstrations throughout the week; over 80 hours of educational and professional development sessions; an exhibit hall with over 200 leading A/E/C companies; multiple opportunities for networking with like-minded colleagues and mentors; and the Society Ball and Awards Gala to close it all out.

Seminars, Forums, and Demonstrations

Warfighter Seminar

The Warfighter Seminar returned to JETC 2023 with two days of engagement between industry and government on current challenges facing engineers and the joint force. These discussions, which are open to all attendees of the conference to attend, listen in on, and ask questions, provide a platform for in-depth discussion, consideration of challenges, and the development of possible solutions or paths forward.

This year, the seminar focused on a pair of topics through two concurrent breakout sessions.

Seminar 1: Adaptability of Multiple Award Contingency Contracts to Current Global Threats. Multiple Award Contingency Contracts have been in place for nearly three decades and have served as force multipliers during a wide range of global contingencies such as combat operations and natural disasters. The United States has also entered into multiple “Treaties in Force” and Country Agreements with other nations that have direct impacts on contract risk, cost, and schedule when urgent requirements arise. Threats in the Indo-Pacific will likely stress these “workhorse contracts” and those dedicated “battlefield contractors” who must execute complex taskings for deliberate and contingency construction and logistics in numerous countries, each with their own governing relationship with the United States.

This session examined the strengths and weaknesses of these critical contract vehicles and associated foreign nation agreements, and identified necessary structural and process adjustments to ensure speedy, effective, and cost-efficient response to challenging combined military and civilian engineer operations in the Western Pacific and elsewhere around the globe. 

Seminar 2: Mission Recovery from a Cyber Physical System Attack to a Domestic National Security Asset. The increasing digital connectivity of all aspects of life, business, government, and military creates significant vulnerabilities. During conflict, attacks against our critical defense, government, and economic infrastructure must be anticipated.

This session discussed the processes and protocols needed by military engineers to meet federal guidance to quickly identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from a cyber-physical attack, using a designed scenario specifically targeting a mission-essential building system at a notional military asset to deny a national security mission. The scenario highlighted the operational technology mapping requirements for national security critical assets required by Congress through Section 1505 of the National Security Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 and focused on the roles and responsibilities of building systems military, industry, and contractor stakeholders to mitigate the risk and impact of a cyberattack, spanning from building design through continuous facility operations.

FAM Forum

Following up on a successful inaugural event at last year’s JETC, the Facility Asset Management COI returned with the FAM Forum at the 2023 JETC. This year, the forum covered two concurrent topics facing asset management leaders and government stakeholders.

Session 1: A “How-To” Guide to Develop Facility Renewal Strategies. An in-depth study released by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine conclusively determined that federal policy fails to ensure and assure best use of limited funding for facility capital and major maintenance requirements. This report recognizes this as a systematic failure, evidenced by chronic deferred maintenance backlogs and excess inventory, and provides guidance on how-to make risk-informed resource and investment decisions for facility portfolios.

The first session focused on identifying opportunities for improvement, moderated the vice chair of this report. Governmental participants were then challenged to innovate risk-informed facility investment decision making. Following that, seminar participants organized around topics contained in the report to generate objectives and key results that can drive needed change. Topic areas include how to promote and incentivize risk-informed investment decision making; how to communicate investment strategies through Real Property Capital Plans; what data, metrics and models are needed to drive change leading to better outcomes; and what policy changes are needed to create Facility Renewal Strategies.

Session 2: It’s Not Just Tactical. There is great excitement about the modernization of installations, but facility operations tools and contracts are still not optimized for innovation. Additionally, not all facilities are located on a base so many service branches and federal agencies must also manage remote and dispersed facilities effectively, which presents unique challenges.

This seminar explored how to infuse strategic thinking and action into facilities operations in these two unique environments, focused on operational readiness, data and technology, execution structures, and human capital. First, a panel of facilities operations leaders discussed and provided insights on the challenges, followed by working groups centered around the two operational environments. Interactive demonstrations of technology supported the dialogue, along with a short series of Ted Talk-style idea pitches as thought-starters.

GeoWERX III

The Geospatial Working Group returned to JETC in 2023 with another demonstration of geospatial tools, processes, and capabilities through GeoWERX III. Taking place in the Exhibit Hall at the GeoWERX Pavilion, the demonstration is your opportunity to engage with geospatial engineering experts, observe geospatial processes and tools in action, and learn about the resources and capabilities available in this field.

This live demonstration once again used the JETC convention center and surrounding infrastructure as a test study for geospatial data collection, processing, integration, analysis, and visualization. Through field collection of data, existing data integration, and processing, the team of industry and government representatives aim to build a variety of virtual representations of the convention center. The team added a new challenge to the demonstration this year with an imaginary scenario of an extreme weather event in South America requiring the standing up of refugee facilities and associated needs in the area surrounding the convention center, leveraging geospatial capabilities to accomplish such a scenario.

Tools on display at the pavilion included unmanned aerial vehicles; hand-held field collection devices; acoustic, water, and thermal sensors; LiDAR, deployable servers and workstations for data analytics, compression, and visualization; and many more.

SAME Celebrations

Along with providing an opportunity to share insights, expertise, and knowledge across the engineering community, JETC also is the time for the Society to recognize the accomplishments and achievements of its members. During Day Two of JETC, SAME recognized and congratulated the graduating members of the 2022-2023 LDP Class. This year-long program, with a curriculum of book discussions, speakers, small group discussions, and a capstone project, is aimed at developing young and mid-career professionals within the Society and has graduated over 80 members since its creation in 2019.

The SAME Academy of Fellows conducted their 2023 Fellows Investiture on Thursday, May 4, officially welcoming the 26 members of the Fellows Class of 2023. During the event, the Academy also recognized the two individuals named Distinguished Fellows in 2023, both former SAME National Presidents: Col. John Mogge Jr., Ph.D., RA, F.SAME (Dist.), USAF (Ret.); and Col. Sal Nodjomian, P.E., F.SAME (Dist.), USAF (Ret.). To be recognized as a Distinguished Fellow requires service and achievements since becoming a Fellow significantly over and above that which is expected.

During the luncheon, the Academy of Fellows also honored this year’s recipient of the Gerald C. Brown Mentoring Award, which is given annually to a member of the Academy for outstanding mentoring efforts. This year the award was presented to Lt. Col. Neal Wright, P.E., PMP, F.SAME, F.NSPE, F.ASCE, USA (Ret.), STV Inc.

JETC also saw 103rd SAME National President Cindy Lincicome, F.SAME, conduct the Presidential Transition ceremony to swear in the 104th SAME National President, Col. Charlie Perham, F.SAME, USAF (Ret.). A member of the Albuquerque Post, Perham previously held the position of President-Elect and oversaw the Communities of Interest focused on technical matters. He has held numerous leadership positions within the Society, including Chair of the Academy of Fellows (2021-2022); SAME National Vice President (2020-2022); Co-Chair on the 2025 Strategic Plan Task Force; and SAME National Elected Director (2018-2020).

After taking the oath, he noted how he had an opportunity to see two separate SAME Presidents in action close up—first in 2008 and then again a decade later. As his first presidential act, Perham presented Lincicome with the Past President Medal, citing her dedicated service to the Society and over half a decade on the National Leadership Team. He then charged those in the audience to get involved, lead and mentors others, and Be the Value that SAME is for its members.

Listening and Learning

Through the open dialogues fostered across educational sessions, workshops, forums, and other industry-government engagement opportunities at JETC, SAME continues to deliver on its mission to foster greater collaboration between industry and government. Whether it is structured and deliberate engagements from SAME’s IGE project framework, exercises such as the Warfighter and FAM Forum, interactive demonstrations such as GeoWERX III, or just networking that builds the foundation trust between members, SAME offers a vital platform for those dedicated to national security to find the solutions our nation needs.\