From Egypt to Saudi Arabia and now Australia, Ayman Kandeel, Associate Engineer, is building better cities and sharing how to do the same with others.

 

What motivates your career? 

I want to build better, more sustainable smart cities. I’m involved in our Future Ready™ team to share knowledge on implementing better solutions to meet the challenges of tomorrow. This includes the bidding stage and how we can improve on things that perhaps the client hasn’t thought of. I started my journey in Egypt as a roads and airport engineer before moving to Saudi Arabia and Australia. I got the opportunity when I worked on King Khalid International Airport to implement the ideas I’d been sharing and working on in a large scale to make a smart airport. 

 

What are you hoping to change in your industry? 

I am driven to share my knowledge through online courses, mentoring, conferences and articles. I’ve been published in publications worldwide discussing BIM and GIS applications for smart cities. I am committed to going above and beyond by implementing Future Ready ideas and building sustainable healthy places, and I encourage our teams to do that in everything we do. 

 

How would this impact people or society? 

Our cities are getting bigger as our population increases and we are not building enough to keep up with demand. Smart Cities will make our places more sustainable and healthier, benefiting everyone. From building roads with sensors that can give information to smart cars to having parts of the road charge electric vehicles to building from more sustainable materials with less carbon as we transition to Net Zero. The outcome we want is for future generations to use this infrastructure rather than having to tear it down in thirty years because it doesn’t meet the community’s needs. 

 

What are some barriers to this change? 

It’s very big-picture thinking and can get lost when you want to do an excellent job for a client and stick precisely to the scope of work. Part of this is educating everyone about the benefits of building better and smarter for tomorrow’s needs, not just for today. Within our teams, we have to come up with solutions that might be different from the original idea and then communicate to the client why a particular solution is better. Cost is also a significant factor, but if we’re doing things digitally and designing better, it saves money in construction delays and maintenance when completed.