Whether building a new deck on the back of one’s house or the entire infrastructure for a missile defense program, the most basic and complex question in construction is always, “How much is it going to cost?” That is the critical role of a cost engineer (CE) comes in. In construction organizations, project managers and design engineers get the glory but cost engineers play a critical role behind the scenes. This is especially true in an organization like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Transatlantic Middle East District (TAM).