Waseem Khan is an award-winning building services engineer with design and construction experience on projects spanning across the Middle East region from malls and theme parks to hospitality and residential. Last year, Waseem won the Young Engineer of the Year Award at the 2020 MEP Middle East Awards and was recently awarded the Mechanical Engineer of the Year award at the 2021 Construction Business News MEP Awards.

What inspired you to join the industry? I have always been interested in the field of engineering and studied a variety of subjects when I first began my university degree. What I did not know was which sector I would be best suited for. While studying, I took a course in heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), which introduced me to concepts such as the design and installation of building services. This course made me recognize my passion and proclivity for design. I decided to continue this focus and develop my skills to the greatest extent I could, eventually graduating with a first-class bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, I naturally chose to continue this path and pursued a career in this industry not only because I was utilizing and growing my skills, but because of the deep passion and enjoyment I have for designing building services.

What is your favorite ArchTam project that you’ve worked on and why? With over nine years’ experience in the building services sector, I have worked on many amazing projects in residential, retail, hospitality, transport and mixed-use developments. My most notable projects include the Mall of Oman and the ASAAS theme park in Oman; MOTC bus stations in Qatar; Jazan Economic City Port and Infrastructure in Saudi Arabia; and a Bollywood theme park, as well as a Motion Gate theme park in Dubai.

The Mall of Oman is my flagship project and would be the favorite project I have worked on. This major mall development is set to be one of the largest and up-and-coming malls within the region. It has been challenging as it needed to be designed to meet multiple guidelines and operator requirements and required coordinating with a multi-disciplinary team. We made it work through a lot of communication and by holding coordination workshops for all those involved on the project.

It has been an interesting experience to design all the services considering that all the different mall tenants —cinema, restaurants, children’s entertainment, etc. — require different systems and designs. This single project has given me even more career experience in retail design and I cannot wait to take what I’ve learned from this experience to the next amazing project.

How has your work positively impacted the community? The projects I work on widely benefit the communities we serve, but within my role, it is important to me to positively impact those on my team. As an avid learner, I dedicate myself to inspiring and educating those on my team so we can all benefit and grow from additional and continued learning. I support and mentor my colleagues by offering ‘lunch and learn sessions’ and I have enjoyed watching them take what they’ve learned and make their own positive impact on our business. I am always looking for new ways to develop personally, researching innovative solutions and tools and sharing these new ideas to help the business and address client needs and objectives.

Is there any career advice you’d like to share? Two quotes I live by are: “Never stop learning. If you stop learning, you stop growing. If you stop growing, you can’t move on to bigger and better things;” and “Understand what it means to be responsible for something and strive to hit your commitments. Leveling up in your career means broader responsibility and less direction with what to do with it.”

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Several senior employees taught students about the current market and future trends in the regional construction industry. ArchTam’s sponsor in Abu Dhabi, His Excellency Otaiba Al Otaiba, and the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Director, John Simmons, also gave valuable insights into how the U.A.E. construction market fits into the global picture.

As the U.A.E. Professional Development Program (PDP) manager, I shared the opportunities ArchTam has made available to our graduates to ensure they learn from practicing technical leads and develop their professional networks. The program was well received, and I was delighted to join the group for dinner to answer questions about it.

With over 80 graduates in our two-year program, we are dedicated to providing a supportive environment for professional growth as well as accelerating their development into industry leaders of tomorrow. The PDP is intended to provide a bridge between university and the challenges of a professional career by offering three main areas of learning. These include learning and development, where graduates complete technical competencies such as leadership, excellence and innovation; mentoring, which equips participants with the tools and resources for a successful career at ArchTam; and networking, where graduates visit project sites throughout the U.A.E., and attend internal and external events.

I am pleased to say that the students were keen to understand more about our program over dinner. I answered their questions about the mentoring program — what it is like to work in the U.A.E. and whether it is beneficial for a fresh graduate to work abroad straight from university. My answer was a resounding, “Yes!” With the range of large-scale projects we deliver in the U.A.E. such as the District Mall, Etihad Rail and various theme parks, it’s a great opportunity for graduates to get exposure to working on projects they may not have the opportunity to work on in their home countries.

One of our success stories is Rami Al Otaibi, who joined ArchTam as a graduate architect working in the Abu Dhabi office in October 2012. When explaining his experience, he said, “I was fully immersed into projects by the team leaders, who expected me to respond with feasible and practical solutions. I found this approach very eye-opening, verging on overwhelming on occasion. However, the support of my mentor and everyone else on the team always got me through.

“The team in ArchTam is just as supportive of my career development as they are my personal development as a well-rounded architect and employee. I have had support on multiple occasions, including when I travelled to Brazil to build houses in the slums of Sao-Paolo. ArchTam also celebrated my achievement of being ranked amongst the top 25 architect graduates globally.”

Vicky Mabbott (Victoria.Mabbott@archtam.com) joined ArchTam in Abu Dhabi in January 2008, and has been working with the learning + development team for the past year — coordinating training for 1,800 employees across the U.A.E. as well as organizing and managing the graduate program. She’s currently preparing to attend career fairs around the U.A.E. such as with New York University in Abu Dhabi, to prepare for ArchTam’s fiscal year 2016 graduate intake, and she’s really looking forward to it.

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In my experience working on projects in the Middle East, I would like to establish some of the most common issues that project managers face on a daily basis and how these issues could be resolved competently:

1. Minor additions versus scope creep

Stakeholder viewpoint: The stakeholder thinks that all he/she is asking for are a few new little requirements. Since these changes are minor, why then inconvenience ourselves by going through the formal process of change management and gaining approval?

Actual situation: Project managers recognize that these “little” requirements will ultimately add up and force project resources to work on undocumented requirements, which transforms into loss of time and money.

Resolution: Project scope management needs to be stringent when project teams work towards confirming requirements with stakeholders. To alleviate all misunderstandings, the project manager should communicate to all the stakeholders about the change management process and that no changes will be accepted without going through the agreed approval process. Project managers should recognize scope creep and monitor if their work includes addressing any undocumented requirements.

2. Disbelief versus lack of engagement

Stakeholder viewpoint: The stakeholders have not been briefed on the status of the project for a while; the stakeholder deduces that the project manager must be hiding or delaying negative project information.

Actual situation: The project manager did not conduct a proper stakeholder analysis and information distribution plan to engage the stakeholders throughout the project period.

Resolution: Early on, come up with a list of all of the individuals involved in and impacted by the project. Then, identify and filter a group of key stakeholders based on their influence, power and closeness to the final project operations. To add to this, prepare a communications and information distribution plan. The project manager’s job always includes communication.  Let stakeholders know what is going on from time to time; especially regarding project elements that impact their survival and operations.

3. Project failure versus unrealistic expectations

Stakeholder viewpoint: The team isn’t hitting every milestone on the dates specified, so the project is obviously a failure.

Actual Situation: Those very specific project milestones are created months ahead of time, and not all requirements can be known when a project is launched. The project may still produce good results.

Resolution: Project managers must be clear and transparent when managing stakeholder expectations. Explain to stakeholders that a “project plan” is merely a “projection” of what you expect to happen in the future. Following an outdated project plan will merely result in failure. Project managers should communicate to stakeholders what they can expect regarding immediate milestones. As soon as a milestone seems to be at risk, this fact must be communicated immediately. Explain the reasons and communicate any new plans based on updated project priorities.

4. Stakeholder project wishlist versus balancing constraints

Stakeholder viewpoint: Projects can be done quickly, inexpensively and at a high quality—without sacrificing any constraints.

Actual Situation: If a project is completed quickly and inexpensively, quality could suffer. A project team can conduct high-quality work in a short amount of time, but stakeholders should expect increased costs as a result of added resources. The disagreement often occurs as a result of executives making promises to their stakeholders without involving the project manager—and it is noticeable during project kick-off when stakeholders bring their unrealistic expectations to the table.

Resolution: To overcome the challenge, the project team should hold workshops with key stakeholders from various groups to uncover solutions. In addition, appoint change agents within the organization to educate colleagues on the project’s benefits and impact. If project teams are to produce quality deliverables, stakeholders need to be educated on the risk of “quick and smudged” projects versus “well-planned, quality” projects.

Romi Sebastian (Romi.Sebastian@archtam.com) is an ArchTam project manager in Qatar, and has been working with ArchTam in the Middle East for the past decade. Apart from his passions for charcoal rendering and sketching, Romi writes on a broad range of subjects for national newspapers, magazines and web-journals such as Construction Week, EDC Magazine, Green Prophet and The Big Project. He holds a strong interest in the fields of Organic Architecture and Bio-Mimetics.
LinkedIn: Romi Sebastian

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