Get to Know the Society of American Military Engineers

By Stephen Karl – Director of Communications & Marketing, Society of American Military Engineers

Founded in 1920, the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) builds leaders and facilitates collaboration among government and industry to develop solutions to national security infrastructure challenges. With a national office in Alexandria, VA and over 100 Posts around the world, SAME unites the uniformed services, public, private and academic sectors from across the architecture, engineering, construction and related disciplines. Providing extensive opportunities for training, education and professional development through a robust offering of conferences, workshops, networking events, publications, webinars and other member-driven programs, SAME bridges the gaps between critical stakeholders to help secure our nation.

One of the key ways SAME supports industry-government engagement is through its Communities of Interest, which enable members to engage with other professionals focused on a particular technical discipline or socio-economic demographic within the A/E/C industry. SAME currently has more than a dozen Communities of Interest, such as Facility Asset Management, Architectural Practice, Small Business, Environmental and International.

The International Community of Interest serves as SAME’s subject matter expert on national security infrastructure challenges outside the continental United States. It fulfills this through direct support to SAME’s Europe and Pacific Region Posts, Field Chapters; Geographic Combatant Commands and Service Components and other U.S. Government Agencies and strategic partners by actively promoting multidisciplinary industry-government engagement focused on solving infrastructure challenges and improving infrastructure program/project delivery.

Specifically, the International Community of Interest support’s SAME members through two specific lines of effort:

• Inform: Informs SAME members by facilitating delivery of lectures and panel sessions with information and ideas on A/E/C issues of concern to project professionals.
• Collaborate: To assist SAME members in collaborating on solutions to military engineering challenges through Industry-Government Engagements supporting geographic Combatant Commands.

For more information about SAME, visit www.same.org.