Hisham Arafah

 Professional Profile:
Senior project manager having 19 years of extensive telecom networks experiences including project management, business acumen, customers relationship management, telecom networks deployment and O&M strong technical and management knowledge, working for the worldwide leader telecom infrastructure vendor Nokia (formerly Alcatel-Lucent) since April 2000 till present handling different successful assignments detailed as:
 Senior customer project manager during last 9 years
 Branch manager for Alcatel-Lucent branch in Sudan from 2010 to 2012
 GSM &WIMAX networks RAN technical project manager from 2008 to 2010
 GSM networks core subsystem NSS technical expert from 2002 to 2007
 PSTN switching field engineer from 2000 to 2002

 Career Objective:
Opened to accept relevant challenge enables me to practice my professional experiences deploying large & complex telecom networks as well as practicing my personal attributes those includes dedication to organization objectives, client’s relationship management, persistence, organized, results oriented, analytical thinking, problems solving, adaptability for changes, autonomist, decision making, team leadership, and motivating, inspiring coaching others.







Detailed historical Career assignments

 Senior customer project manager (October 2010 till current).
Assigned customers & projects:
 TE and EAF customers: 5 MUSD/ year Microwave + IP networks delivery
 Asiacell-Iraq customer: 20 MUSD Microwave (BH) turnkey contract.
 MTN-Yemen customer: 18 MUSD MW BB (full turnkey) and BSS expansion contracts.
 Etisalat-Misr customer: 8 MUSD DWDM optics contracts 55 nodes contract.
 MTN-Sudan customer: 4 MUSD/year recurrent BSS expansions & maintenance contracts.
Scope and duties:
 Managing the end to end delivery lifecycle of contracted scope to clients including the project initiation & staffing, delivery planning, execution, monitoring and PAC & closing phases.
 On daily bases leading the project team & resources those are and not limited to technical teams, deployment, logistics, administrative, financial and subcontractor’s teams to achieve proper full contracted scope delivery to the customer.
 Accountable for the project profit & loss and accountable for timely delivery for the contracted scope as per implementation and quality plans.
 Managing customers relationship to achieve smooth projects delivery and customers satisfaction by acting as prime accountable person for the delivery of contracted scope.
 Identifying, managing and mitigating projects risks whether technical, financial, or implementation during the project life cycle.
 Participating in new sells opportunities qualification and offer development phases as post sales validator interface.
 Sharing the customer’s account management accountability with sales staff being responsible for handling post sales activities e.g. up-scopes definition, change requests, PAC, FAC, invoicing and cash collection process.
 On regular bases issuing project status reporting and reviews to internal and customer stakeholders hence identifying corrective action in case of KPIs deviation.

Assigned customers & projects:
 Asiacell-Iraq customer: 20+ MUSD Microwave BH+access 1000+ links turnkey contract.
 MTN-Yemen customer: 18+ MUSD MW BB (full turnkey) and BSS expansion contracts.
 Etisalat-Misr customer: 8 MUSD DWDM optics contracts 55 nodes contract.
 MTN-Sudan customer: 4 MUSD/year recurrent BSS expansions & maintenance contracts.
Scope and duties:
 Managing the end to end delivery lifecycle of contracted scope to clients including the project initiation & staffing, delivery methodology definition & planning, delivery execution, monitoring and PAC & closing phases according to the company CIP framework.
 On daily bases leading the project staff & resources those are including and not limited to technical teams, deployment, logistics, administrative, financial and subcontractors teams while delivering the contracted scope.
 Accountable for the project profit & loss and accountable for timely delivery for the contracted scope as per implementation and quality plans.
 Working on satisfying ALU customers as prime accountable person for the delivery of contracted scope.
 Managing and mitigating the identified risks (technical, financial, implementation, etc) during the project life cycle.
 Participating in new sells opportunities qualification and offer development phases being responsible for services part scoping and quotation and contract overall delivery planning.
 Sharing the customer’s account management accountability with sales staff being responsible for handling post sales activities e.g. PAC, FAC, invoicing and cash collection process and maintaining good relationship with all customer stakeholders (technical, financial, procurement..etc) including customer C- level.
 On regular bases performing project status reporting and reviews to internal and customer stakeholders hence identifying corrective action in case of KPIs deviation.
 Branch manager for ALU-Sudan branch (October 2010 till September 2012).
 Branch manager responsible for implementing ALU branched global policies and processes (procurement, HR, financial, commercial, IT..etc) for Sudan branch.
 ALU Sudan branch annual profit enhancement by successfully controlling the branch expenses that helped achieving saving almost 800 Keuro expenses & VAT overdue in 2011.
 ALU branch revenue management, cash collection and VAT administration.
 Managing agreements and communication with services suppliers and subcontractors.
 Managing local staff and local resources on daily bases, heading more than 10 employees (permanent and projects staff resources).
 Having power of attorney and banking power as ALU representative in Sudan.
 Representing ALU in front of the Sudanese governmental authorities and organizations


 Technical Project Manager (Sep 2007 - Jan2009) for Angola WIMAX project :
 Manages the implementation of all aspects of the Customer Project, in terms of feature content, delivery date and quality of the technical solution, from offer preparation through deployment activities and customer acceptance.
 Plans, organizes and pilots the Customer Technical Project in the framework of the Contract Implementation Process (CIP).
 Coordinates the technical support activities involving other ALU departments.
 The customer primes interface for all the technical aspects of the solution and manages the day-to-day relationship with the customer.
 Works closely with the Solutions Architect to insure delivery of the solution.
 Manage the daily activities of the project implementation and manage the project staff& resources to insure the activities implementation according to the schedule

 Iraq then Pakistan Mobilink projects NSS operations manager (January 2007 - August 2007) :
 Managing entire NSS (GSM and Wimax core) deployment activities e.g. new AAA 1430 deployment project, Wimax access integration with Motorola AAA, Wimax NEs new IP@ planning and reconfiguration, planning (technical study, scheduling and resources planning) for two MSCs physical relocation inside new sites.
 Monitoring and leading Alcatel local staff (18 engineers), developing their technical profile, following up and assessing their performance and insuring correct resources tasks distribution according to their profiles.
 Customer interface for all the NSS&WIMAX&GPRS technical Roll out / Maintenance activity.


 NSS RTAC(Regional Technical Advice Center) member then manager (February 2005 - December 2006):
 On call back office technical support expert troubleshooting MSC and HLR systems for 26 GSM operators in the Middle East and India region where technical advices are given to operators OM team and Alcatel experts.
 Leading team of NSS experts (and practicing) responsible for 24 hours 7 days on call duty to deliver ALU level two technical support activity to foreign GSM operators O&M teams.
 Coaching and transferring NSS technical knowledge for 8 juniors engineer to ramp up the team.
 Huge NSS experience has been acquired especially in the GSM standards plus MSC, VLR and HLR machines HW and SW.

 NSS field technical expert (September 2002 - February 2005):
Member of international service center team performing international& local missions i.e. Algeria, Morocco, Afghanistan, Kenya, and Egypt performing tasks not limited to:
 Field on call duty for troubleshooting NSS system technical faults.
 HLR data base upgrade and migrations.
 Alcatel-Lucent NSS (MSC&HLR) system commissioning, expansion acceptance, SW upgrade.
 New features (CAMEL) implementation& introduction.

 PSTN Switching field Engineer In Egypt Then mission to Jordan (April 2000 - January 2002):
 Commissioning fixed subscriber remote access unites connected to Alcatel OCB switch.
 Commissioning new Alcatel PSTN switches.
 Performing Alcatel PSTN switches complicated HW expansion and Software upgrade