Director General of Planning and Development, Ports and Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
Economic Cities Authority
Total years of experience :19 years, 6 months
• Defined strategic framework for ports and SEZ within the Economic Cities including the blue print for the first private SEZ in MENA region as a true embodiment of vision 2030.
• Successfully led the development of first business friendly regulations drafted fully by the private sector in KSA.
• Oversaw the development of ports and SEZ including King Abdullah port expansion (20M container per year with total area of more than 17 square kilometer) and four SEZ’s with total area of more than 4million square kilometer.
• Played key role in securing the connection between King Abdullah Port and the national land bridge railway project.
• Led the implementation of ISO 9000 framework to ensure the quality of O&M services for all port facilities that resulted in increasing customer satisfaction to 90% and achieving 99.9% of availability of utility services.
• Played key role in reducing the clearance time of goods coming through King Abdullah port from 14 days to 4.2 days, which contributed in increasing trade volume through it to more than SAR 23B during 2017.
• Oversaw the development of first phase of King Abdullah port reaching up to 2.7M containers per year.
• Authorized the permitting of all developed facilities with more than SAR 2M collected as fees.
• Successfully completed the review and approval of King Abdullah port’s new master plan, which increased land utilization by 20% after changing the original design from F-Shaped single basin to H-Shaped multi basins.
• Orchestrated the integration of G2G and G2B systems including national Customs Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system, Terminal Operation systems (TOS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
• Managed the delivery of a SAR 40M portfolio of projects for the Ports Agency starting by setting strategic objectives using prioritization and ensuring benefits realization.
• Headed the Procurement Committee for ECA E-government program, where I authorized the awarding of projects worth more than SAR 100M in accordance with Saudi National Procurement Laws.
• Successfully led the launch of King Abdullah Port in 2013 after two years of missing deadlines before I join, which has contributed to regaining the trust of the main shipping line to sign up long terms contract with the port.
• Developed a successful delivery framework that integrated all activities of the program and provided leadership team a macro to micro views of all aspects of the program.
• Successfully managed to integrate more than 20 government agencies, whose service is essential for the port operations through working with them on strategic, tactical and exaction level.
• Led the creation of the Ports Agency within ECA in terms of recruitment, capability development, roles, responsibilities, regulations, budgeting and processes.
• Successfully led the securing of regional and global recognitions of King Abdullah port including International Maritime Organization (IMO), GCC and securing the Royal Court approval for using the King’s name for the port.
• Successfully led the designing, building and commissioning of a Disaster Recovery Center (DRC), including a Tier-III data center and work recovery place with an estimated value over SAR 40M.
• Led the development of IT DR systems to meet Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) of the business including more than 80 infrastructure, mission and business critical systems with total value exceeding SAR 80M.
• Led the creation of IT Service Continuity framework and function in accordance with ITIL standards.
• Led the development of the Business Continuity Management (BCM) capabilities.
• Successfully managed a team of external and internal resources to establish BCM framework in accordance with BS25999 standards with a value of SAR 3M.
• Managed IT Projects of small and medium size in accordance with to BAE Systems Project Management framework serving both internal Lines of Business and Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF).
• Developed IT PMO capabilities by establishing a downsized version of the full BAE Systems’ project Life Cycle Management (LCM) framework for managing projects with value less than £500K.
• Developed business applications including upgrading of BAE Systems Saudi website and integrating it with the UK BAE Systems website.
• Enhanced the departmental Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) in accordance with best practices of Software Engineering.
• Led the implementation of 2005 European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) initiative across the organization.
• Successfully developed a testing platform for Siemens mobile phone chip.
• Successfully converted 3D environment used for ball tracking in cricket (called Hawk-Eye) into football.
Course studied: Advanced Computer Network Advanced Computer Graphics Advanced Image Processing Advanced Concurrent Systems Managed to pass with an equivalent of Very Good Grade.
A major that gathers between both hardware and software aspect of modern computing systems. During my study, I have taken extensive courses in programming, software engineering and system design and system implementation. Managed to achieve Very Good and came second on my group on graduation class.