KHALID SAFIE, PLANNING ENGINEER
Having worked as a schoolteacher, Khalid knows all about the value of good planning and communication. He puts these – and his engineering skills – to good use in his current role.

I’m one of three planning engineers on the Seagreen project... Our job is to create, maintain and monitor the project schedule. Part of my role was to create the progress measurement systems for engineering, procurement, fabrication and commissioning. These systems capture the weekly and monthly progress for each deliverable on every phase of the project.

Planning is a bit like the nervous system of a project… We communicate important information between the brain, the muscles and the organs. Without us it wouldn’t work properly as a whole! We work in detail with teams from each discipline, so communication is the most import part of the job – especially during monitoring. What might be causing a delay and how can we mitigate it? What will the knock-on effects be if we do something differently?

A good technical background is important… Planners need to know exactly how each part of the project fits together. It’s great that I’m working at the fabrication yard, too. You can plan much better when you can see the scale of the project in front of you. A lot of our work is digitalised as this increases accuracy and speed, but digital systems are only as good as the people using them. We also depend on our eyes, ears and our experience.

I joined Petrofac in 2016 as part of the Graduate programme… In 2018 I got the chance to work as Planning Engineer on the BorWin Gamma wind project in Germany. Renewables are the future of global energy and this enabled me to build my experience in this area. When Seagreen was awarded, I was in a good position to join that project from the start. Being involved in every stage has been very rewarding. Seeing the original drawings come to life is a bit like nurturing a plant from a seed and seeing it rise up in front of you.

As a schoolteacher, I learned as much as the pupils… It was a role I took for two years in Dubai while I looked for opportunities in engineering. I taught science to younger children and physics to the older ones in Grade 11. It’s not an easy job but very rewarding. As well as helping others learn, it teaches you how to be patient and how to communicate subjects clearly and simply. These are skills I still use every day.  

Meet the people behind the project