Still Learning, Still Building
Twenty-five years is a long time in any profession. In telecommunications and infrastructure, where the technology changes every five years and the scale of projects doubles every ten, it is a lifetime. I started my career in 1999 as a maintenance shift engineer at the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo, responsible for keeping HVAC, electrical, and mechanical systems running in a twenty-four-seven hospitality environment. Today, I lead telecommunications projects as a Projects Director and PMO executive, working across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan on programmes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The distance between those two roles is not measured in job titles — it is measured in the problems I have learned to solve.
Because one thing experience teaches you is that the value of a professional is not simply measured by the number of projects they have completed, but by the problems they know how to solve when the project becomes difficult. Anyone can manage a project that goes according to plan. The test of a project leader is what happens when the plan falls apart — when the contractor walks off site, when the permit is delayed by six months, when the fiber cable arrives damaged and the splice crew is already mobilized, when the executive sponsor changes the scope three weeks before the deadline. Those are the moments that define whether twenty-five years of experience means something or means nothing.
The STC Years: Learning to Control the Uncontrollable
I spent ten years — from 2007 to 2017 — as a Senior Project Control Engineer supporting Saudi Telecom Company's fixed network implementation programmes across Saudi Arabia. STC was not a single project; it was a portfolio of projects that spanned the entire kingdom, each with its own contractor, its own geography, its own technical challenges, and its own political dynamics. My role was to bring order to that portfolio — to establish project control systems that could accommodate the diverse nature of STC's project range, from infrastructure deployment in desert terrain to network upgrades in dense urban centres, and to ensure that every project reported against the same standards, the same KPIs, and the same governance framework.
The challenge was not technical. The challenge was scale. When you are managing project controls for multiple concurrent telecommunications projects, each with unique technical requirements, stakeholder expectations, and regulatory considerations, the volume of data is overwhelming. Every contractor maintains their own schedule in their own format. Every project manager reports progress differently. Every region has its own permitting process and its own relationship with local authorities. The natural tendency of a portfolio at that scale is entropy — the gradual breakdown of standards, the drift toward inconsistency, the slow accumulation of small deviations that eventually become large problems.
The solution was not more processes. The solution was better integration. We established a single reporting framework that every project had to follow — not a thick manual of procedures, but a concise set of templates, KPIs, and review cadences that made it possible to compare projects side by side. We conducted comprehensive risk assessments and developed mitigation strategies that were proactive rather than reactive. We facilitated project review meetings that were not status updates — they were decision-making forums where issues were escalated, resources were reallocated, and corrective actions were agreed. The result was a portfolio that could be managed as a portfolio, not just as a collection of individual projects. That is what project controls at scale looks like: not the absence of complexity, but the ability to see through it.
The New Administrative Capital: Building From Scratch
In January 2020, I joined Sabbour Consulting as Lead Consultant Project Manager for the OSP fiber optic network installation in Egypt's New Administrative Capital. This was a greenfield project — a city being built from nothing, with ministries that needed to be connected to a data center and main exchange through a fiber optic backbone that did not yet exist. The technical requirements were stringent, the regulatory landscape was complex, and the coordination challenge was immense: construction crews, surveyors, engineers, and consultants all working on the same site, often with conflicting priorities and incompatible schedules.
The problem on a project like this is not the fiber itself. Fiber optic cable installation is a well-understood technology — you lay conduit, you pull cable, you splice, you test. The problem is everything around the fiber. Securing permits in a new city where the regulatory authority is still being established. Coordinating with civil works teams who are pouring concrete for roads while you are trying to dig trenches for conduit. Managing supply chain disruptions when the global fiber market is experiencing shortages. Adapting to evolving client requirements as ministries change their specifications mid-project. These are not technical problems — they are project management problems, and they are the problems that determine whether the network gets built on time or not.
The approach I took was to treat the project as a governance challenge first and a technical challenge second. We established meticulous document control processes — every shop drawing reviewed and approved, every material inspected against acceptance criteria, every survey validated by the surveying engineer. We attended coordination meetings with consulting companies and other work streams on-site, not to report progress but to resolve conflicts. We maintained document archiving that ensured accurate and accessible project records, because in a project of this scale, the ability to find the right document at the right time is not an administrative convenience — it is a project control. By the end, we successfully supervised the network implementation, connecting ministries to the data center and main exchange, and the fiber backbone was operational.
The Egyptian Olympic Games City: When Systems Collide
From January 2021 to September 2023, I moved within Sabbour Consulting to lead the light current systems implementation for the Egyptian International Olympic Games City. This was a different kind of complexity. Instead of a single fiber backbone, I was managing the integration of multiple systems — Fire Alarm, Access Control, CCTV, Gate Barrier, Time Attendance, Telephone, Data Communication Network, and Building Management Systems — each with its own contractor, its own technical specifications, and its own commissioning requirements. The challenge was not installing any single system. The challenge was making them work together.
In a complex systems integration project, the failure mode is not usually a single system that does not work. It is the interfaces between systems — the fire alarm that does not communicate with the access control, the CCTV that cannot share feeds with the BMS, the gate barrier that does not integrate with the time attendance system. These interface failures are the most expensive problems in the project because they are discovered late, during commissioning, when the systems are supposed to be working together and are not. By that point, the contractors have demobilized, the budget is spent, and the fix requires re-mobilizing teams and re-engineering interfaces that should have been designed correctly from the start.
The solution was to treat integration as a project in its own right, not as a byproduct of the individual system implementations. We conducted comprehensive site visits to review and assess the progress of each system, but we also mapped the interfaces between systems and tracked them as deliverables with their own acceptance criteria. We coordinated and managed teams of contractors and engineers, fostering collaboration and effective communication to ensure that when system A was ready to talk to system B, system B was ready to listen. We provided technical guidance and support during implementation and commissioning phases, resolving complex technical challenges before they became commissioning failures. The result was a set of light current systems that operated seamlessly across the Olympic Games City — not because each system was perfect, but because the integration between them had been managed as deliberately as the systems themselves.
The Railways Project: When the Environment Is the Enemy
In 2018, I joined FiberMasr as Senior Site Manager for the Egypt National Railways Modernization Project, overseeing the implementation and testing of fiber optic networks for railway signaling and telecommunications. This project taught me a lesson that no amount of project management theory can teach: sometimes the environment is the enemy. Railway fiber deployment is not like urban fiber deployment. You are working along active rail tracks, with trains passing at intervals that do not respect your schedule. The civil works — excavations, conduit laying, manhole construction — must be coordinated with railway operations, and the safety standards are not advisory; they are mandatory and enforced by an authority that can shut down your work without notice.
The logistical challenges were immense. Preparing sites for underground and aerial fiber deployment along railway track routes required navigating complex regulatory standards and coordinating with railway authorities who had their own priorities and their own timelines. Managing bending radius and drum handling during outdoor cable laying operations was critical to maintaining cable integrity — a fiber cable that has been bent beyond its specification is a cable that will fail in service, and in a railway signaling system, failure is not an option. The splicing, cable storage, and organizational structures within joint manholes had to be optimized for network efficiency and reliability, because access to these manholes in service is restricted by railway operations.
The solution was a combination of rigorous planning and field-level problem-solving. We implemented robust fiber optic network infrastructure that addressed the unique challenges of the railway environment — not by adapting urban solutions to a railway context, but by designing solutions that were specific to the constraints of railway operations. We supervised civil works activities with an obsessive focus on safety and quality standards, because in a railway environment, a safety incident does not just delay the project — it can stop the trains. We maintained meticulous records and ensured compliance with railway industry regulations, because the documentation was not just project management — it was the evidence that the network was safe to operate. The project was delivered on time, within budget, and in accordance with specified requirements, not because everything went according to plan, but because we knew how to solve the problems that the environment created.
Sudan: When the Ground Itself Is Difficult
Before STC, before the New Administrative Capital, before the Olympic Games City, there was Khartoum. In 2005, I worked as Senior Project Site Engineer for MITT on the Fiber Optical Ring around Khartoum project in Sudan. This was my first experience of large-scale fiber optic network installation in a challenging environment — and the challenges were not just technical. The project encompassed the deployment of a fiber optical ring around the Khartoum area, using Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) operations across diverse terrain and environmental conditions. The logistical challenges of securing permits, managing equipment and material transportation, and ensuring adherence to local regulations and community requirements were compounded by an operating environment that was demanding in ways that no project plan can fully anticipate.
The lesson I took from Khartoum was that project execution in difficult environments is not about having the perfect plan — it is about having the right people and the right discipline. We supervised and coordinated the activities of field crews, contractors, and subcontractors, fostering collaboration and ensuring seamless execution even when the conditions on the ground were far from seamless. We conducted rigorous inspections and oversight of HDD operations, ensuring adherence to industry standards, project specifications, and safety protocols. We performed comprehensive acceptance testing — OTDR tests, insertion loss measurements, continuity checks — to validate compliance with project specifications and quality standards. And we fostered a culture of safety and compliance among field crews and contractors, promoting adherence to industry best practices and mitigating potential risks associated with HDD operations and fiber optic cable installations. The project succeeded not because the environment was forgiving, but because the team was disciplined.
Siemens: Where It All Began
My career in telecommunications proper began at Siemens in Cairo, from 2000 to 2004, as a Project Controller for OSP network implementation. The projects were the Shoubra Exchange Network Expansion and the Assuit Exchanges Network Expansion — the latter a large-scale initiative involving network infrastructure upgrades across eight cities in Upper Egypt. At Siemens, I learned the fundamentals of project control: managing resources, monitoring budgets, preparing reports, and ensuring alignment with project plans. I learned that project control is not about producing reports — it is about providing the information that decision-makers need to act. I maintained open communication channels with customers, presenting regular updates on project status and progress, and reporting comprehensively to project managers on budget utilization, progress tracking, and technical issues. That early lesson — that the value of project controls is in the decisions it enables, not the reports it produces — has shaped every role I have held since.
The Thread That Connects Everything
Looking back across these projects — from the Sheraton Hotel maintenance shifts to the STC portfolio, from the New Administrative Capital fiber backbone to the Olympic Games City systems integration, from the Egypt National Railways to the fiber ring around Khartoum — the thread that connects them is not technology. The technology has changed dramatically over twenty-five years: from copper to fiber, from TDM to IP, from manual splicing to automated OTDR testing, from spreadsheet-based project controls to Power BI dashboards and ERP-integrated systems. What has not changed is the fundamental challenge: turning complex projects into controlled, measurable execution.
That phrase is not a slogan. It is a discipline. It means establishing governance frameworks that connect strategic intent to operational execution. It means building project controls that provide visibility not just into where the project is, but where it is heading. It means creating communication channels between contractors, engineers, consultants, and executive stakeholders that ensure decisions are made with the right information at the right time. It means managing risk proactively, not reactively. It means knowing that the value of a professional is not measured by the projects they have completed, but by the problems they know how to solve when the project becomes difficult.
Over the past twenty-five years, I have had the opportunity to work across telecommunications, digital infrastructure, FTTH/FTTx, OSP, ISP, 5G, project controls, PMO, and complex infrastructure programmes across different environments. From fiber deployment and network implementation to project controls, commercial management, governance, risk, contractors, and executive stakeholders — my career has always been about one thing. And it is still about that one thing today.
The Next Project Is Always Ahead
Today, I am particularly interested in connecting with organizations and leaders working on large-scale telecom, digital infrastructure, FTTH/FTTx, OSP, 5G, PMO, and infrastructure programmes across Saudi Arabia and the wider region. I am always interested in conversations around projects that need stronger execution, better project controls, disciplined governance, or experienced leadership. Sometimes the right opportunity does not begin with a job advertisement. It begins with a conversation.
If you are involved in a major infrastructure or telecommunications programme and believe my experience could add value, I would be glad to connect. Twenty-five years in projects. Still learning. Still building. Still looking for the next challenge. The next project is always somewhere ahead.