National IGE Report: July-August 2023

SAME continues to address pressing issues facing the joint engineering community through industry-government engagement. Recently, this has included premier collaborative training opportunities at the 2023 JETC in San Antonio, as well as advancements in resources developed for Posts to make it easier to carry out impactful events at the local level.

Resources for posts

A new list of certified IGE Mentors to assist Posts with industry-government engagement has been published on the IGE webpage on the SAME national website. Developed over the past year as part of an overall effort by the National Leadership Team to better support local industry-government engagement programming, it contains the names of members who have led successful programs and what their areas of focus are.

If you are interested in being an IGE Mentor, contact Rob Biedermann with the National Office (rbiedermann@same.org).

Joint Training at JETC

At the 2023 JETC, SAME’s Communities of Interest supported a variety of seminars, forums, and demonstrations that provided platforms for industry and government attendees to discuss pressing issues and develop possible solutions and paths forward.

Warfighter Seminar. The JECO COI once again hosted the Warfighter Seminar, which gathered industry contractors and engineers involved with the Combatant Commands for two days of in-depth collaboration on two urgent issues facing national security.

Session #1 examined the strengths and weaknesses of Multiple Award Contingency Contracts, “Treaties in Force,” and Country Agreements, and identified necessary structural and process adjustments to ensure speedy, effective, and cost-efficient responses to challenging combined military and civilian engineer operations in the Western Pacific and elsewhere around the globe. Session #2 discussed the processes and protocols needed by military engineers to meet federal guidance and quickly identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover from a cyber-physical attack. Participants used a designed scenario specifically targeting a mission-essential building system at a notional military asset to develop their assessment.

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

Session #1 identified opportunities for improvement to assure the best use of limited funding for facility capital and major maintenance requirements. Discussion areas included 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 explored how to infuse strategic thinking and action into facilities operations in remote and dispersed facilities—focusing on operational readiness, data and technology, execution structures, and human capital.

GeoWERX III. Also returning to JETC for the third straight year was GeoWERX, hosted by the Geospatial Working Group. This demonstration enabled participants to engage with geospatial engineering experts, observe geospatial processes and tools in action, and learn about the resources and capabilities available in this field.

Over the three days, the team of industry and government representatives built several virtual representations of the convention center through field collection of data, existing data integration, and processing.

High-level collaboration. JETC also served as an incubator for new IGE projects or efforts through the Executive Advisory Group. This engagement offered a chance for executive leaders from the services to discuss pressing issues facing their enterprises and hear from attendees on potential solutions or approaches to address them. This year also saw a number of Listening Sessions be held on Day Three. During these sessions, representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs and Air Force invited senior industry representatives to directly share their perspectives on issues, difficulties, and concerns they may have.

Through the open dialogues fostered at these sessions, and at other industry-government engagement opportunities that took place throughout the week of JETC, SAME continues to deliver on its mission to foster greater collaboration between industry and government.

Sharing PFAS Knowledge

The impact of PFAS on water resources, particularly for military installations that previously used aqueous film forming foam, continues to be a major challenge for federal and military decision-makers. In September 2021, SAME embarked on an IGE Project to provide concise deliverables that distill the vast amount of PFAS-related information into digestible documents, with the goal of providing accessible information to those who need to address PFAS while carrying out their mission.

Supported by the Environmental COI, the project team has held a series of webinars aimed at providing targeted PFAS information. In addition, the group recently published two informational fact sheets, approved by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. These documents provide at-a-glance knowledge of PFAS basics as well as sampling considerations and analytical methods for those working with PFAS. They can be found on the Environmental COI webpage on the SAME national website.

Panel of experts sitting at a table

Bringing Industry and Government Together

As the cornerstone of the Society’s founding in 1920, industry-government engagement remains mission-essential for the organization a century later. By leveraging our unique, inclusive platform that brings together members from across the entire infrastructure lifecycle, public and private, SAME is driving solutions for some of the toughest engineering challenges facing the A/E/C industry and our national security. Learn more about SAME’s IGE efforts.