- I'm Captain Matthew Doris from Oshawa, Ontario,
a Royal Canadian Electrical Mechanical Engineering officer
serving at the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment
here in Petawawa, Ontario.
(narrator): Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Officers
- or RCEME Officers - are leaders in the field,
commanding groups of Vehicle, Weapons, Electronic-Optronic and Materials Technicians
who are responsible for maintaining military equipment.
- Generally, a RCEME Officer is a liaison between a higher headquarters
and the technicians on the ground.
We take the commanding officers' intent of what they want to achieve with land equipment.
We translate that into specific tasks,
down to the specialized trades and how we can achieve that,
giving them their timelines, their specific tasks.
Your role really as a RCEME Officer is to enable those technicians to do their job.
You don't need to be an expert on every single system.
You just need to make sure that the person who is
has the tools they need to succeed in that job.
Management administration as a RCEME Officer can be challenging.
You have to be a human being at the end of the day,
talk to your troops, and do what's best for them.
You're trying to balance what the Canadian Army or Canadian Forces needs,
but also the individual needs.
(narrator): RCEME Officers are employed at bases and garrisons across Canada
as well as on exercises or deployed operations both here at home and around the world.
In addition to managing the people who maintain and support all Army equipment,
they also manage the care of the land-based equipment
of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.
They may even have the opportunity to work with Canadian Special Operations Forces.
- You may see equipment going down the trace, or weapons firing, and it looks really cool.
But none of that happens without the RCEME technicians in the back,
enabling those combat operators to do what they need to do.
(narrator): RCEME Officers can also be employed in other technical
or logistical staff officer roles
and at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa,
where they can expect to work on procurements or engineering projects
at the strategic level, influencing and making decisions on the equipment
that the Canadian Armed Forces will use for years to come.
- The coolest part of being a RCEME Officer is actually getting to see the equipment up close.
You come down to the shop, you can see light-pattern vehicles
or heavy-pattern vehicles, armoured vehicles,
and then down to even the weapons.
And you feel a lot of pride in enabling these technicians
to do what they need to do and to succeed.
(narrator): Once they've completed their training,
RCEME Officers are posted to one of the many Canadian Armed Forces bases across the country,
generally to a large workshop, where they will lead a group
of up to 30 technicians who maintain a wide range of equipment.
They act as technical advisors to their commanders,
planning and controlling the workload of their unit's maintenance organization
while handling unit-level personnel administration.
- Once you get into the seat, there's a great deal of problem-solving
you have to do on the fly that you learn very quick,
and you learn by experience once you're in those positions.
However, you typically have other RCEME Officers in the area and senior RCEME Officers
who you can always look to for guidance.
One of the more memorable moments I've had was as an operations officer in Kuwait,
was to serve my country and do what I can do to assist.
Being a younger adult, you're handed such high-level responsibility.
And to work with other nations and achieve tasks
that you didn't think you'd actually be working on.
It's very interesting to see how you can jump into something at such a young age
and have such a profound effect on an international scale.