#MeetOurTeam – Amir

What does a typical workday look like for you?

Everyday work is very different from day to day, which is one of the main reasons why I love my job. There are of course many meetings, but the tasks range from "daily standups", project follow-up, finance, reporting and steering groups, as well as strategic meetings such as tender work and negotiations, sales and business development.

In addition to this, we work with a lot of cool things internally, such as e.g. to build a project toolbox (comply and PMO), contribute to recruitment and profiling.

PMO stands for Project Management Office and is responsible for ensuring that projects are delivered on time, with a specified quality and cost frame, in accordance with the mandate (often called Scope in projects). The PMO can be an individual, a team or another authority. At Cegal, we would like to call this function Quality Manager, since the focus is on creating high quality projects across the organisation, rather than managing and controlling the projects.

To achieve the above, a set of tools is often used - in this context called Comply. Comply (toolbox) often contains frameworks, templates, documents and processes that will help standardize the way  egal deliver our projects, as well as ensure that projects don't have to "reinvent the wheel" every time we initiate a new project . The beauty of this is that we learn a lot from each project and update the toolbox as-we-go, so it just getting better and better.

Which technologies do you work with?

There will be a lot of Word and Excel, but in the projects I use other tools such as Jira, Azure Devops and Mural. However, these are tools rather than technology. I am otherwise involved in projects where the team uses technologies such as Vue.js, React, and various services from Oracle and Microsoft Azure, and a little Figma.

There are various graphic design tools that have gradually specialized and become more tailored to each domain. Within interaction design, several tools like that have appeared in recent years, such as e.g. Sketch and Figma. On the latter, you can also prototype simple clicks and generate CSS code that makes the work easier in the transfer from UI to development.

What drives you at work and in your role, what's fun?

I love technology and business. Therefore I love the intersection between tech and business.

Amir

I think it's a lot of fun to do business development, lead and run innovation projects - and I came to Cegal because I wanted to work with technology in the energy segment.

We have many challenges in the world, and in my opinion we can use technology as a tool to solve many of these. Early in my career I wanted to use technology in the health industry (Health Tech). But in recent years I have been very concerned with climate challenges, sustainability and energy. In contrast to health, where there is much we know little about and often have to do research on a large scale over many years, I believe we have enough technology today to solve the climate challenges. I believe Cegal is well positioned to digitize this industry and help put some pieces in the big puzzle.

What is the best thing about working in Cegal?

I am proud that I am allowed to work with technology and business in important projects together with some of the country's biggest players, who digitize and push society in Norway forward.
I'm also proud to have so many cool and clever colleagues from whom I learn a lot!

Amir

Do you have a favorite quote?

No one can help everyone – but everyone can help someone!

Is there anything else we should know about you?

In 2007, me and a medical student started a HealthTech Startup - Intermed AS, where we wanted to predict epileptic seizures, and also created a product to predict epidemics. Here we got Inven2 and Apple itself on the investor side. The startup was wound up just before Covid. The main challenge was that we studied and needed investors who had to inject more capital in order for us to continue. So we ended up winding down due to economic circumstances. We both wanted to be "grownups" and buy apartments, so then we had to have fixed income.

Read the case (in Norwegian): Norwegian company wants to predict epidemics, but needs investors >

I'm very active - I've even been a national team swimmer. The favorite distances were 50m and 100m breast and I am the Norwegian champion in both of these. Now I really enjoy playing tennis and I follow Formula 1 closely (because this is where sport and technology come together). Formula 1 is essentially a purely technological sport. A car consists of lots of sensors, computer systems and mechanical equipment that are run by complex programs. A Grad Prix race is very computer controlled. The conditions on the track, the weather and temperature that affect the tires on the cars, must be constantly analyzed with a lot of data and the teams must then react quickly and change their strategy. Those with the best equipment who execute the best strategy are the winning team. It is said that 70% is decided by the car, 30% by the driver.

I have also tried being a HipHop rapper and created a small record label. It might be a bit of fun to mention that I have made a song with Isah himself.

I've made several apps and thought I was going to be the next Mark Suckerberg when Google highlighted my Physics app, haha! This was a school app written in Java, at the time when Android Studio hadn't arrived yet. Google highlighted the Physics app (containing physics problems with solutions for the exam) as recommended/or favorite of the week/month. It cost NOK 50, and to be honest, the purpose was to make money. I made this when I was in my last year of high school, and was actually going to study something within oil, but this changed my interest and I chose data and informatics. So that's how I ended up in Cegal, which I'm very happy about!