The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#132 Learn About The Navy's Civil Engineer Corps
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Most Navy career conversations orbit ships, submarines, and aircraft. Meanwhile, an entire community is quietly building, powering, and repairing the platforms and bases that make all of that possible. I sit down with Roland De Guzman, a Naval Academy graduate and career Civil Engineer Corps officer, to tell the real story of the CEC and the Seabees.
Roland explains what CEC officers do in wartime and contingency operations alongside the Navy Seabees, from expeditionary facilities and tactical airfields to humanitarian support. Then we shift to the day-to-day reality of NAVFAC and the shore establishment: utilities, contracts, construction management, design reviews, and the “roads and commodes” work nobody notices until it breaks. If you’ve ever asked who keeps the Navy’s global bases functioning, this is the answer, with plain language and real examples.
We also get personal about career path decisions, including how a color vision test can change your options, why mentorship matters, and what junior officer life looks like when you’re leading troops in a battalion one tour and negotiating construction fixes the next. Roland breaks down education expectations, professional credibility, and why the Civil Engineer Corps can translate so cleanly into civilian engineering leadership and project management careers. We also talk lateral transfer for fleet officers who want a new challenge and a different kind of impact.
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The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
This podcast is independently produced and reflects the views and opinions of its creators. It is not officially affiliated with, endorsed by, or representative of the United States Naval Academy or its affiliates.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country. Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.
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Welcome And Quick Disclaimer
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. Today's episode is all about the Civil Engineer Corps. CEC, or maybe you've even heard the term CB. This is a unique staff corps community that exists within the Navy, and there are a handful of midshipmen every year that commission into the Civil Engineer Corps, and a lot more graduates that eventually lateral transfer and become a CB at some point in their career. I'm joined by Roland Goosman. He's a Naval Academy graduate, career civil engineer officer, and this is a really cool conversation. What you're gonna discover in the episode is there's a lot of stuff that I had preconceived notions about that were just incorrect. So this was a learning experience for me as well. I think this is an interesting insight to one of the niche communities within the United States Navy. I really hope you enjoy it. Reach out with any questions, otherwise the list. Before we get started, I want to make a quick disclaimer to make sure everyone knows Academy Insider and myself, Grant Premier, are in no ways official representatives of the United States Naval Academy, the Navy, andor the Department of War. What I'm doing here again is just trying to provide a little bit of context perspective and understanding of the Naval Academy journey, but my use of the Naval Academy and conversation about them does not imply endorsement from the institution. If you ever have any questions directly for the Naval Academy, I encourage you to reach out to them directly and the Public Affairs Office. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I hope you have a great listen to the
Roland’s Path To The Naval Academy
SPEAKER_02episode. Roland, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. I'm really excited to get to have this conversation about a really cool, unique niche community within the Greater Navy. And so before we get there, if you don't mind, just giving a quick introduction of yourself, how you ended up at the Naval Academy, and then a little bit of your journey uh through the Civil Engineering Corps.
SPEAKER_00Great. Uh thanks, Grant. Thanks for having me. Uh longtime fan of uh of the podcast, happy to be on. Uh so I grew up in North Jersey, the son of Filipino immigrants, um, and no military background to speak of, but I have a twin brother, and so the uh the one thing I did know is that college would be expensive. And so I started looking at places like West Point and the Naval Academy, and then um I went to summer seminar, and that was probably the biggest single thing that uh pushed me towards the Naval Academy. Um it got accepted after uh some saga with or some drama with the color vision test, and we might get into that. That's why I'm in the Civil Engineer Corps. Um but uh got accepted uh I Day on 3 July 1990 with uh 33 other brave souls whose name whose names and hometowns I still remember. Um my career at the Naval Academy was uh pretty standard. I think I graduated at the top of the bell curve, right in the middle of the class. Perfect. Um but uh a couple of things stand out. One, um the Filipino American community really opened its arms to me, both the the folks out in town um as well as the the mids. We had a uh an extracurricular activity, uh Filipino American Club, um, which uh I guess is uh dormant for now, but we'll see how that goes. Uh but it was really it really helped me get by.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then um the the other thing that's noteworthy is the company mates. Uh as I look back on it through the years, people sometimes get shotgunned or sometimes they they switch companies. We the 34 of us, after we lost a couple here and there for whatever reason, uh, but we're still friends with them. Uh we stayed together all four years. Started in 17th company, went to 20th company, um, and they're still some of my closest friends today. Uh, they held swords at my wedding, and I've held swords at their weddings. We've been around the world to go see each other. So, and based purely on unscientific data, I think out of the 36 companies that I graduated that graduated uh alongside us, I feel like we are among the more cohesive.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, I love that. Here, here on Academy Insider, we love good anecdotal evidence, stuff that you can't actually prove. Uh that's true. It's the science of sea stories. Uh so uh absolutely love that.
SPEAKER_00So
The Color Vision Test Detour
SPEAKER_00I was a systems major. Um, and like I said, I um when we were talking before we hit the record button, I failed the color vision test going into the Naval Academy. And so it I almost didn't get in. I didn't discover, I didn't uh get accepted for final final until May. Yeah. Um I had to pass the test five times before coming in. Yeah. So I showed up on I Day, uh took the test, failed the test on I Day, and I got pulled aside by uh a Navy Medical Corps captain, and he said, Hey, you just failed the color vision test, son. Um, if you fail the color vision test on your pre-commissioned physical, you're not gonna be able to be a pilot, you're not gonna be able to be a swell. You still want to do this? I had 40 pounds of stuff, my head was shaved. Sure. Yeah, why not? I'll go ahead and do it.
SPEAKER_02That's a problem for future me. We'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_00Right. So I went through and um didn't really think too much of it. Went through plebe year, learned about the whole Navy pro knowledge, heard about the CBs that way, but didn't really think about it until I'm a plebe detailer, I'm a platoon commander, the plebe summer regiment, yeah, which I think you appreciate. We had the regimental dinner, and I guess they uh they invite flag officers because I just so happened that the chief of civil engineers, the two-star admiral, commander of NAFAC, Rear Admiral Jack Buffington, sat at my table, found out I was a fursy, and he said, Hey, where are you gonna uh where are you gonna service select? Um I was thinking about the civil engineer course. Um but after that I said, Oh, I gotta get on the stick, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do when I grow up. Yeah. And then it became clear as I thought about it that the CEC was the career, was the community for me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And again, in that world, you're trying to figure out what it is you're gonna do when you find out you're not going in one of like the primary direct warfare communities that the majority of people are gonna commission into. Um, did you have any mentors on the yard, or were there any officers on the yard prior to that meeting with the two star that were a CB or like were a part of the civil engineer community that allowed you to kind of discover that? Or was it literally like you read it in pronoun and then you run into an admiral in a couple of years and you're like, I mean, maybe close that was it.
SPEAKER_00That the option number two. But as I thought about it and as I talked to people, uh, they assigned us um when I when I raised my hand and said I wanted to, I was thinking of the civil engineer corps, they assigned me a mentor who was a young lieutenant at the time named Mark Libinati, whom 20 some odd years later I went to work for again um down in Norfolk. Um but uh he and I chatted, he was working out of a uh con Xbox trailer um right next to uh Seventh Wing, which uh they were just starting the uh Bancroft Hall renovation. Yeah. How about that? So um so he was the he was one of the project managers for that. And they had they were literally just starting that at that point. And so uh he and I chatted a number of times, and then we chatted again through the years. Um I went to work for him uh out in Sasebo, and then um as the I was a lieutenant, he was a lieutenant commander, and then I was a commander, he was a captain at Norfoot towards the end of my career.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's so cool.
What The Civil Engineer Corps Does
SPEAKER_02And for for everyone who's listening, because again, we're kind of telling, we're we're already starting the stories and telling everything, a lot of people are probably listening and they're like, Grant, what the heck is the Civil Engineer Corps? You you've you've used this term CB. I have no idea what you're referencing. So to provide a little bit of context as we jump into the rest of the episode, do you mind explaining what the Civil Engineer Corps is, what a CB does, and and just kind of run through what this community does for the United States Navy?
SPEAKER_00Certainly, certainly. So uh you've got on one hand, you've got unrestricted line officers, SWOs, submariners, aviators, uh, EOD folks, um, and then you've got the staff corps, supply corps, medical corps, dental corps, and then there's the civil engineer corps. Very small community, 1,200 officers or so, and we manage shore infrastructure. We, as the name implies, Civil Engineer Corps, we manage the stuff that's sticking out of the ground. Sweet. Um in wartime or contingency operations, we work with the Navy Seabees, which are the Navy's organic combat construction force, the naval construction force embedded in the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command world. Um, and we go and we support the Marines or whoever needs us. Um, and we we go into combat zones, we go into hurricane recovery sites, humanitarian assistance, and we build expeditionary facilities, uh tactical airfields, tent camps, uh, shore, um ship-to-shore uh J LOTs, uh joint logistics over the shore. Anything that's again touching the ground that supports the Naval, the Department of the Navy, the Navy Marine Corps Green Team, uh, we are there. So we are probably we're not always the first ones there, but we're probably the second ones there. Yeah. So that's what we do in wartime. In peacetime, um, the Navy has 74 bases or so around the world. There's a small team of us at each one of those places that builds the buildings, that manages the utilities, roads and commodes. Um, we do the janitorial contract, the stuff that no one really cares about until it breaks. And then all of a sudden everybody cares about thankless jobs, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So um that's what we do when we're ashore, when we're not um not on sea duty with the CBs. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And um question then. I actually, and this is genuinely curious. It wasn't even a part of the outline, just the way you've said it, I realize maybe I've had a misconception about uh the community at large. So could you be a civil engineer corps officer, a part of the CEC, but not a CB? Like, do you have to do one of the sh the shore or the C tour rotations to like get the title or qualification of being a CB?
SPEAKER_00Great question. So um the Civil Engineering Corps, we do three things. We're CBs, we're uh engineers, and we're um we have we're business professionals, we're contracting officers. Leadership is embedded in all three of those. So at some point in your life, um, and it didn't used to be this way when I in the 90s, um, but at some point in your career, whether it's five years or 25 years, you pretty much have to go into the CVs at least once. Okay. Um, but they're a very small C C is small, the CVs are small within the officer community, and so um you can spend a 30-year career captain with one CB tour under your belt. Um but you need that operational experience, you need to know what it means to lead troops, to be a division officer, to uh stand on a watch bill, those kinds of things, because you can't appreciate what the uh what the rest of the warfighters need unless you have that experience yourself.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. And semantically, like purely semantically, are you then only a C B while you are in that set of orders, or like you are a C B for the rest of your life if you've done a C B tour?
SPEAKER_00That's an astute question. So um and I think the community has changed over the years. When I first came in, officers, you're
Who Counts As A Seabee
SPEAKER_00an officer, you're not a C B. Okay. You just come here, you you hang out with us for a couple of years, and then you're gone. Um, so a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, C B construction battalion, where we come, where we get our names from. Those are our units of action. That's where it came from.
SPEAKER_02Hold on. The the C B construction battalion turned into a C-S-E-A-B-E-E, like the C B logo. Absolutely. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right. We're not very smart. So construction battalion, C B Club. That's how we do it. So um, construction battalions, mobile battalions in particular, completely self-sustaining. So you got doctor, you got a doctor, you got uh independent duty corpsman, you got a dentist who does triage in a uh combat scenario, you got a couple supply corps officers, um completely self-sufficient. And so a lot of times people say, Oh, if you're a YN, if you're a yeoman, you're a CB, you are absolutely a C B when you're in a battalion, but you're not a C B when you leave. Okay. I think people are a little bit more uh enlightened now. They understand that you've got the experience, you've got the C B combat warfare pin, you're you're a C B regardless of where you go afterwards. And so that professionalism from the C B combat warfare pin, I think, has changed a lot of people's opinion over the years. Because uh once you see the pin, oh yeah, that's C B. Yeah. I don't actually care what they did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. That that's that's really interesting. I I appreciate it. Again, what's funny is normally in these interviews, I'm like, I know everything, and I'm like got in the discussion. You brought up stuff that I was like, oh, I don't actually get this. I've actually had a very I've misinterpreted uh this community. So thank you for educating me. This is uh probably one of the more fun interviews I've done in a long time because I'm like, holy crap, like I have been I've been wrong for about 14 years in my understanding. Um Okay, very cool. And so you get to the fleet, you have this uh again, you said you have uh a mentor uh originally at the academy that starts this, you go to your first tour, you're having your first assignment. Did you have any inclinations early on that you wanted to then stay in and lead at a high level, again, make up your way to the rank of commander and above within the civil engineering community? Or like what was your path as a young junior officer that kind of kept you staying in and committing to more tours and staying in the Navy?
SPEAKER_00So my dad was a civil engineer, and growing up, I felt like I was gonna be an engineer. I didn't think in a million years I would be a civil engineer. I didn't want to do dirt and concrete and whatever. Um but when I got into the civil engineer corps, I learned a couple of things. One, um, I didn't I wasn't gonna sign drawings, I wasn't gonna do heavy duty tech technical stuff, but I was gonna solve problems. And I was gonna lead people, whether they're CBs or sailors on a base or civil service employees, I was gonna be a leader with uh engineering and analytical experience and understanding in my toolkit. And so my first tour duty, I was uh NSIN at the Staff Civil Engineer Department, Naval Air Station, North Island, San Diego. People always ask, what was your favorite tour? And tough to choose a favorite because you don't want to choose a favorite kid, but it is tough to look away from three years of living in Southern California. I was in San Diego along with a bunch of classmates and and longtime friends. Uh we had folks in Seal Beach and we had folks in Ventura County. So Southern California was our playground. Yeah. Um, and so uh succeeded there, went overseas, did base closure, which was interesting, and that got me connected with the community, and I realized that being a civil engineer,
Early Tours, Grad School, And DC
SPEAKER_00managing facilities for the Navy, you can't do it in a vacuum. You gotta talk to the local mayor, the local public works department. And so I thought that was neat. Some people didn't like that, um, but I I had a knack for it, and I uh it really uh I really liked solving problems for the Navy and solving problems for the community. Yeah, then I went to the CBs because I knew that's where I needed to go, succeeded there. Um and because I feel like my time at the academy really helped me buckle down, hey, I gotta do this. Yeah. All miner, yeah, easy day. Um leading troops. I had to manage, you know, I was a plea summer detailer, I had to do a lot of things on the leadership front. So I felt like I was prepared. Yeah. Um and then each job after that, uh I went to grad school after, oh, something worth mentioning. Um went to grad school after my tour in the CBs. The Navy paid for me to go to grad school. You had a podcast about people going to grad school. Um the Civil Engineer Corps, we send 100% of our career officers to graduate school. Through the Naval Graduate School or to a civilian institution? Civilian institutions. Some of us go to pro some of us go to Monterey. Uh there's a business degree there that people do. Uh most of us go get technical degrees, engineering degrees somewhere else. Yeah, that's awesome. Um because we need to be professional engineers, we need to have credibility as we're sitting across uh negotiating million-dollar construction contract. Yeah, no, heck yeah. That was a pivotal moment for me. Coming out of the CDs, I knew I was gonna go to grad school. I just didn't know if the Navy was gonna pay for it or not. Yeah. I decided to have the Navy pay for it, owed three years after that, and then at that point, you're in, you're in. Yeah. Um, and I was I was continuing to be successful. Um, I went to spent a year and a half up in New Hampshire at a shipyard up there, uh wonderful time. Uh then I went to DC. I was in DC for six years, yeah, six and a half years.
SPEAKER_02Um is DC a common uh a common place that CEC officers will end up? Because I think what's really interesting, I'm just gonna kind of riff here, is like you mentioned being now being in like New Hampshire. You mentioned the base up in Ventura County. Is that Port Ume? Port Wineme. Winemy. Yeah, thank you. I was driving through with my wife, so check this out. So I'm going, um, I'm driving up. I have to referee a basketball game at Westmont College, uh, Westmont University up in Santa Barbara. Um, I'm driving through there, we're driving through Oxnard, and uh I see I see a sign for like naval base port Ami. I was like, there's a naval base here? I was like, I have no idea, dude. And so again, what's interesting is that like you mentioned the four like 47 bases all across. You could hypothetically be stationed at any of them. Because again, as a cryptologic officer, I was basically like, you're going to Fort Meade, or you're going to Hawaii, or like there's like five locations that you're probably going to spend your entire career between any one of the fives. And again, being a civil engineer officer sounds like you kind of have the world is literally your oyster in terms of like potential places you could be stationed. Pause from there.
SPEAKER_00No, and you've got a friend everywhere. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I can't count how many times I was going somewhere. Hey, I need some help. I need to, I need a vehicle, I need a Govy. Call the public works department. Hey, can you help a brother out? Yeah. When you get off the flight, go to the tower, there'll be an envelope with your name on it with a set of keys. So um we're everywhere and we help each other out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's very cool. All right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sweet. But to answer your question, yes, uh, DC, I mean, I think every officer community goes to DC. Yeah. Um, I was lucky. I spent a couple of years at Navy Installations Command, the single type commander for that runs all 74 of those bases. Um and so I ran the Navy's utilities program as a lieutenant commander. Then I went to the um I was in the legislative fellowship program. So I spent a year in the senator's office on her personal staff as basically a subject matter expert on the DOD. Um then I had to go back to uh back to the Navy and uh do a utilization tour. So I was at the Navy Office of Legislative Affairs as the The Department of the Navy's principal guy for military bases and military construction. Military construction is near and dear to every congressional member's heart. A lot of money short term in their district or their state, and a lot of money long term because it's new capability that the DOD has. So I did a lot of great work those two and a half years at OLA. And then I went out back out to the real world and managed facilities armed with the knowledge that I learned in Washington and then learned as a JO.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that's super cool. And again, speaking of kind of being a JO, and I think the majority of our audience listening would be interested in like kind of the life of the of a JO within the Civil Engineer Corps and what that would look like. And now having had the perspective of your career, having been a JO, starting in the Civil Engineer Corps, making all the way up, being a senior leader within the community, and now being out and having time to reflect on your overall journey, um, how would you describe the experience of being a young civil engineer corps, junior officer? And if there were someone to come to you today asking, like, hey, Roland, I'm about a commission as a civil engineer officer, like what advice would you give them or what thoughts would you give them about the journey that they're about to embark on?
SPEAKER_00So I would say that uh life as a junior officer, you get the best of both worlds. When you go to battalion, you go to CB battalion, you're a division officer. Your life is very similar to your classmates who are on ships, who are um in aviation squadrons. You've got to do your own thing to earn your CB combat warfare pin. You've got to do your own personal professional development, but then you also gotta lead troops. You're a platoon commander, you're a company commander, you've got a hundred, you're standing in front of 120 CBs, you're approving chits for lead, you're trying to figure out if uh um if BU2 Jones can go to this
Junior Officer Life On Base
SPEAKER_00training class. Uh, oh, but you need him because he's a project crew leader, blah, blah, blah. So you're making all those kinds of decisions, the same ones that your classmates are making.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um, but when you leave the battalion, you go to the shore. And so you're managing a base, you're uh negotiating construction contracts, you're uh sitting across from a construction contractor, you're doing the math to figure out, hey, he's trying to they're trying to hoodwink us. Um, or you're managing utilities or um or the the maintenance crews that uh come out and uh your power turns off on your base, you're leading the the civil service guys who come back out and and turn the power back on. So you get that experience, which you don't get, um which your your classmates don't get, and it prepares you for a career on the outside, whether you're five years or 25 years. So if you're trying to um qualify to take the professional engineer exam, every single minute of your career, the four or five years you're you're waiting to take the professional engineer exam qualifies. You're either a project manager or you're an asset manager, you're a project engineer, um, or you're a project supervisor. Um walking boots on the ground, uh leading the construction career.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean that's that's sweet. Um and again, you mentioned it was something that I heard you say earlier, which I was um, you know, really interested in. I kind of want to relate it to like being a teacher, but you mentioned that send 100% of career civil engineer corps officers to graduate school most likely to get an engineering degree because you need to be like a professional engineer, especially as you reach kind of more senior leadership levels at that point. If there's a midshipman who's listening to this or someone who's interested in the community, and they're not like an engineering major, like, do you need to have an engineering background to start, or is that something that would be developed and then grown? And then again, you get continuing education in the community, um, like to progress your career forward. I guess is there a need for it before joining?
SPEAKER_00Good question. So um the rules say you have to be an ABET accredited engineer to assess into the civil engineer corps. There are waivers, and so if you lateral transfer, if you if you're full up physically qualified and you go uh you're on a ship somewhere and you've got a um you've got a math degree, um I don't know anyone who is a group three major, but that's not to say it hasn't happened. Um but if you've got a a technical degree, physics degree, um math or whatever, um they do uh they do have waivers for those folks. Um but you the the key is the analytical critical thinking process of uh of a technical degree. You're not stamping drawings, yeah, but you need to be able to figure out um the technical problems. I was a systems major, but um I got licensed as a professional civil engineer, so I took the civil engineer exam and um I succeeded in I I took some review classes, uh, got a graduate degree in um in engineering at at Berkeley, but uh took a couple of undergraduate classes to fill my uh fill my uh academic portfolio out. Um but uh the what really helped
Degrees, Waivers, And PE Credibility
SPEAKER_00is the uh the critical thinking and the analytical approach. Um I passed the civil engineer exam by Chief Sokotoa just doing trigonometry. Yeah uh whereas people a lot of people just oh yeah, uh site stopping distance, easy day. I was drawing triangles. Um but uh the the that's a long answer to a short question. Yeah you technically need to be an engineer, but uh there's paths to the civil engineer corps for folks without a degree. Yeah, okay, fair enough.
SPEAKER_02And so yeah, we're talking about the path to the Civil Engineer Corps. What about the path after the Civil Engineer Corps? Like, how do you feel like in again with the perspective and reflection that you have now, what does the Civil Engineer Corps do to prepare civil engineer officers to eventually transition to their next career when their, you know, their last day in uniform comes? So again, which which comes for everybody.
SPEAKER_00Right. So they tell you from a very young age, um, starting at Seacoast, our version of SWAS in Port Winamy, hey, what again, whether you stay in five or 25 years, the civil engineer corps is gonna help you find your next job. And that that's no joke. Um, because there we've got folks everywhere. We've got alums everywhere. Yeah um for me, but what I would say is, and and I've mentioned it briefly before, but the things that we do in the Navy, in NAPAC, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, the things that we do, negotiating construction contract modifications, awarding construction contracts, reviewing designs, constructability reviews, all sorts of stuff. Um every minute of that prepares us for a project management tour or a career after the Navy, uh, prepares us for uh even the hardcore design. A lot of us go into, and I'm at a design firm, and I'm not doing business development. I'm doing, I'm managing electrical engineers and mechanical engineers and structural.
Careers After Navy And Lateral Transfers
SPEAKER_00Um, but every minute of our time goes towards that. Yeah. Um when I was in a transition classes, I would look across the room and see SWOs or SEALs struggle to figure out how am I gonna translate this 25-year career into something that I want to do. We had a SEAL in one of my classes, unbelievable accomplishments. Um, a lot of the stuff he couldn't tell us what he did, but he was struggling, trying to figure out um how to uh articulate the leadership and management that could in and quantify it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh whereas all of us, we just look at our old FitREPs and $100 million worth of construction, uh $2 billion worth of plant replacement value, it just rolls off the tongue. And so um, and your your network out in the industry, um, invaluable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So um it really helps. Um being a grad and being a civil engineer corps officer really helps.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um that's really cool. And if there is a JO out there that's listening, right? Like someone who, you know, they've been a SWO for they're, you know, they're finishing up their second C tour and then they're putting on lieutenant and they're in this spot where there is a window to lat transfer if possible. What's that process look like for somebody coming in again as a lieutenant versus an ensign? Uh, and what's that process and and like who can people talk to if that's something that they're potentially interested in pursuing?
SPEAKER_00Sure. So uh we have three accessions officers um out in one's in San Diego, one's in Norfolk, and one is I think in Millington, Tennessee. And we cover the waterfront. So if you're around the world wherever you want, um you go to one of those three folks. If you're lateral transferring, you need to have your warfare device in whatever community you're in. Um if you know if one is available, and you need to have uh the the standard record of sustained superior performance. And but pretty much anybody who's succeeding got their warfare pin, um, depending on you know, years from year to year, it's different, the numbers are different, the needs of the Navy are different. Um, but um a lot of people most of the people, it's been my experience, that uh most of the people who succeed can lateral transfer. And um, so it's uh it's a pr it's a well-worn path, it's pretty straightforward. Um, and they they succeed just as well as uh as everybody else does. Yeah. Um they gotta pick up the pace a little bit because they technically don't have to go to a CB battalion, but it helps, just from a professional reputation standpoint. Um people at the commander and captain level, people look at your chest and they see the CB pin and the the swole pin or whatever. Yeah, oh okay, that person took the time to understand our community. Yeah. If they just have a swole pin, that that's fine. It's not a knock. It's but it's the minimum bar to entry or it's the minimum uh thing to entry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. All right. Interesting. I I I appreciate that that perspective because again, I think there are a lot of people who are always uh interested at whatever career path is next or whatever the case is, and you know, civil engineer corps, one of those communities that uh, you know, again, especially if you have a technical brain, an engineering brain, like an ability to make that transition into that community and continue to serve is uh uh you know incredible opportunity for a lot of people, you know, at some point. And so um uh look, I uh I think this is one of the really interesting things. Obviously, I didn't come across that many civil engineer corps officers like in my time, right? Even active duty in the Navy, you don't run into them all that often, right? I I lucked out They keep us hidden. They keep you hidden, right? Like I lucked out that I was good friends with Ryland Tue, who was a civil engineer corps officer and um you know had conversations with him a lot about it a little bit. I've been blessed to kind of build a friendship um with Commander Burnett at the Naval Academy, who's part of like the the Navy uh formula team as well and teaches and does all that and part of the community. But to kind of get the word out about it, um, I think is really cool because this is like one of these things that like again, I this is what I do. Like I was active duty and now I run this platform, which is like hopefully about educating people about the Naval Academy and the Navy. And I'm like, I didn't, I I didn't even know what I was talking about. Like I was getting it wrong. So um this is like a very cool thing, and I really appreciate you know you taking the time to to have a conversation about it because this is a again a new world for me in this one. Um and so again, with that being said, and I I feel like this episode at large has been a recruiting pitch for the civil engineer corps. Um, but what would be like your best recruiting pitch? If there's someone who's listening and considering this, maybe they they realize that you know they just went through a commissioning physical and you know, the the unrestricted line community might not be in their path forward, or there's someone out there who wants to potentially lateral transfer. What would you leave with those young men or women about why they should consider um the civil engineer corps and can like pursuing a career in it?
SPEAKER_00Sure. I I always follow the Marine Corps rule of threes, right? Three, three Marines in a fire team, three fire teams in a platoon, three platoons in a company. So three thoughts uh from the recruiting pitch. The Civil Engineering Corps is absolutely the right place for grads who want to use their analytical, critical thinking skills to solve problems. Um and lead troops. Because you gotta do both, and you gotta do both well to succeed. Um we do work every day, every tour that makes us valuable to whatever you're gonna do on the outside because of those two things. From a geographical standpoint, number two, the CEC is a little bit more stable than our classmates. You're going to the CBs, you're deploying, you're seven months or six months out, eight months back, and then six months out again, or whatever the deployment cycle is these days. So that's tough. That's it's not different than what everybody else is going through. And because of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, it's more similar than it used to be. Um and so, but it's a little bit more stable. You do a tour in the CBs, and then you can have a legit, great, fantastic career and just go from base to base. And you can sit in Norfolk for seven, eight years. You can sit in San Diego for seven or eight years, and then go away for a couple of years, geo batch, your family's still in Norfolk, you go up to DC. So geographically it's very um, it's more stable than um than other careers in the Navy. Uh, but the final thing, most fulfilling for me, was the C C was the right place for graduates who want to shape the shore establishment, who want to solve problems for infrastructure, want to work with the local community, want to want to make people's lives better. You want to build new barracks so that uh people don't have the sailors don't have to live ashore. So we're doing the home port ashore thing. Um you want to we want to build the infrastructure that the shipyards need to keep submarines and and aircraft carriers and ships out at sea. Uh you want to solve those kinds of problems, then the Civil Engineer Core is the right place for you. Again, whether it's five years or 25 years.
SPEAKER_02Heck yeah. I love it. Uh well then final question for you. Um why does not why does NAFAC suck, dude? My biggest frustration as a as a as a uh department head at NIH Groton was every time I needed to do something in my building, NAFAC was working on some project or something was going on. There was always construction, never nothing ever progressed. Here's my here's the hater in me coming out, dude. What's going on?
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. So I was down in Norfolk. I oversaw the NAFAC operations at all six of those bases down there. And a classmate of mine, God bless him, uh, super grumpy about NAFAC stuff. So he'd call me up, hey, why is the road in front of my building closed? Um, and I will tell you that uh someone told this to me when I was an ensign and it stuck with me. People love civil engineer corps officers individually, they hate us collectively. But not because we don't solve problems, because we do, but the Navy, rightfully so, makes some resourcing decisions about uh the Navy prioritizes ships, submarines, aircraft, things that are painted gray and things that put steel on target. Um and so the shore establishment often gets the short end of the stick. Um it is tough to recover from that. Um the Air Force has the right culture
Why NAVFAC Feels So Slow
SPEAKER_00as much as I love make in front of the Air Force. Um they but they've successfully embedded uh prioritization of the their shore facilities um into their program. But um what we do is we struggle with something until it breaks. And so um we do the best we can, but there's never enough money to do everything you want to do. So you gotta pick your fights, which is part of the thing that makes us so valuable, is we know what fights to pick, we know which um which things to fix first, which triage, you know, what um what things need to be fixed now and what things can wait until later. And so um that's why people think yeah Netflix sucks. And that's an oversimplification.
SPEAKER_02But no, it it's again, it it's always fun to have like perspective and insight into it, right? Again, it's always easy to complain when it randomly impacts your day in an inconvenience fashion, but like you're saying, there's so much that goes into uh these decisions, into budgeting, into all like everything that goes on in the world. And like you're saying, the Navy's priority is always about the ships that are going to be underway and out forward, and that will always take priority. And uh and that can be difficult when you're dealing with the reactions and the ripples of those decisions that then weave their way down to the shore establishments. And so um, you know, I I I say it, I say it in jest. I, you know, obviously I was a person who uh, you know, again, as an officer on a shore command, like, yeah, you you you experience that and it can um have some of those things, but it's so cool to have you on here and talk about the civil engineer community. I just think it's like uh what an incredible uh again, niche aspect of the naval experience and in one community, one part of what a person's journey could be. Um so again, thank you for coming on and explaining all this. I'm gonna turn it over to you for any final thoughts. If there's anything that you know I didn't ask or anything that you want to leave the audience with about either your experience or the civil engineer community in general, kind of want to give you the floor is yours, general topic, just let you kind of go with it.
SPEAKER_00I appreciate it, Grant. Um, as I've been listening to your podcast, as I did my 30-year reunion a couple of years ago, my thoughts have turned back to the Naval Academy a little bit more over the past few years than they had before that. And so I relish this opportunity to tell the story of the Civil Engineer Corps. The Civil Engineer Corps, not the Civil Engineering Corps. I give people grace for missing that, but uh it's the Civil Engineer Corps. Um but it was the right place for me. The CBs are about halfway between the fleet and the Marine Corps, which is the right place for me. Um I just stumbled into it, uh, but uh had a great career in uniform and it prepared me really well for my career afterwards. Um, wouldn't trade a minute of it. Got to spend some time on Capitol Hill, got to spend some time out in Guam and Peleliu and Japan and Puerto Rico as the alert battalion on 9-11. All sorts of great things uh that never would have done if I wasn't in the CBs, it wasn't in the Civil Engineer Corps. Uh so I'm just uh grateful for the opportunity to tell the story.
SPEAKER_02Heck yeah. Um I appreciate your patience. Uh, because I know that has to be uh like nails on a chocolate chalkboard for the same way. Every time someone says we're talking about the cryptologic warfare community, people are always like, Oh, aren't you one of those like cryptological warfare officers? I'm like, ah,
Final Reflections And How To Reach Out
SPEAKER_02dude, it drives me nuts. And so here I am saying civil engineering corps for it.
SPEAKER_00No, no, to your credit, you you got it right. You said civil engineering community, but every time you said Civil Engineer Corps, you did it right.
SPEAKER_02Let's go, baby. Oh my goodness. So uh anyway, Roland, thank you so much for taking the time today. I think this is an interesting one. If there's anyone out there who has questions about the community or anything like that, again, please feel free to reach out to me. I can put you in touch with Roland if that's you know ever anything that we can do or just get you more information. I think this is an incredible thing and hopefully just provide a little bit of exposure. So, Roland, you're the man. Thank you for your time today.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much, Grant.
SPEAKER_02All right, and everyone listening. Thank you so much. Hope you had a good listen and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it, and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate it to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves, and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen, and their families. Thank you.
