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Tell me about your background.

I worked in project controls for 22 years, but that wasn’t my career of choice. It was actually a fluke. I began my education in commerce while I was still living in Pakistan.

Upon earning my bachelor’s degree in 1999, I moved to Canada, settling first in Toronto, where I worked in project accounting, and then in Alberta, where I worked in project controls for the oil and gas industry.

A turndown in the oil and gas industry in 2018 led me to consider other opportunities. Before long, I landed a change management position in Toronto’s burgeoning rail and transit industry.

During this time, I became involved in claims management and began pursuing a master’s in construction law. However, my family was still in Alberta, so after a few years, I returned home to be with them and decided to move away from project controls and focus on claims work. I was almost finished with my master’s when I did a Google search on “claims management”, which brought me to HKA.  

What attracted you to your specialty?

After arriving in Canada, I secured a position as a project accountant for a Toronto company. My first annual review was very positive, but the company did not have any advancement positions locally, so they offered me a job in Alberta. Although I had no idea where that was, I knew I definitely wanted to go!

This new assignment took me to Fort McMurray, the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry. On my second day, the project manager asked me to pull a schedule from P3. “Absolutely,” I said, “but I have two questions. What’s the schedule and what’s P3?” At the time, the company’s HR department believed that sending a project accountant to learn project controls was the solution to the project manager’s need for a scheduler.

The company subsequently enrolled me in a local college to attend a two-weekend crash course on planning and scheduling. That’s how I came into the profession, and I love it.

What do you love about the field you work in?

Because of my background in accounting and finance, I enjoyed costing and forecasting before getting involved in contracts and change management and ultimately making the transition to claims management.

In project controls, I was like the fire brigade, always putting out fires, and in claims, I’m the recovery ward, trying to reconcile the problems and differences and resolving disputes between parties. In today’s mostly virtual world, there’s not much tangible work anymore.

So, at the end of the day, there’s satisfaction in the work HKA does because we are solving problems. We are bringing the parties together to reach an agreement before the matter goes to court. The work is very rewarding if you look at it from this angle.

Why did you join HKA?

As mentioned, after returning to Alberta to pursue claims management as a career, I searched online for companies that specialized in the field and came upon HKA. After my interview, when I got the call offering me a position, I was like “This is it!” I knew if I wanted to get into this profession that HKA was the company. 

I had to take a few steps backward since I was changing my career focus, but the position HKA offered me was going to allow me to learn and grow in the industry, especially in areas in which I was not overly familiar. I’m very happy that I chose HKA because I really like the culture and the fact that there is always work. The work mirrors some of my experience while giving me the chance to learn new things and be challenged. 

What do you think have been the key reasons for your success?

I believe my willingness to take chances and a bit of luck brought me to where I am today. When I’ve been given an opportunity, I’ve gone in with the mindset that I’m going to prove that I’m the best. I did not put any opportunity to waste.

I believe you have to humble yourself, grab hold of the chance you’ve been given, and show them you have what it takes. That’s the mentality I’ve always used, and I think it’s worked for me. I did not count the hours and days that I worked, I just worked.  

How do you drive change in your industry? 

The construction industry is going through a lot of changes. Canada’s preferred project delivery model for large infrastructure projects is the public-private partnership (P3) model. This model has been kind of failing in the industry, so much so that nobody was bidding on the last light rail transit (LRT) project that went out in the market. As a result, Canada has been moving toward more collaborative project delivery models.

Recently, I was honored to be part of the country’s first use of the alliance delivery model, a UK-based model that is gaining traction. I was not only in the lawyer’s office when the first contract was drafted, but I was also part of the execution. Since then, I’ve discovered that many people, even at HKA, are not familiar with alliances, so I’m hoping to host a lunch-and-learn session on this collaborative model.

It’s my desire to drive change by educating others on what’s new in the industry and stressing how quickly our profession needs to catch up. Otherwise, we’ll be left behind.

What advice would you give your younger self? 

I left Pakistan right after earning my commerce degree and regret that, at the time, I did not continue my education in Canada. I was told that I had to start over from scratch.

Having just earned my degree, I was not eager to begin again. That said, given my lifelong aptitude for engineering, I may have told myself to become an engineer. I’ve always felt that not having an engineering background was a weakness for me as a scheduler. If I had trained in civil engineering, I would’ve excelled more and not struggled so much.

Where is your favorite place to visit/travel to? And what is it about this place that resonates with you? 

I like really remote areas and places with not a lot of crowds. Before we had children, my wife and I often went to South America. Now, I enjoy visiting the various secluded parks in the Canadian Outback, especially Alberta. I like to rent a cabin where nobody is likely to go. I also like to be near the water and the mountains. We have a great mixture of these types of places in Calgary and the surrounding areas.  

I have also enjoyed traveling to South Asian countries like Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines. These areas are quite the opposite – very populated – but interacting with people from other cultures gives me an understanding of how humans are different and helps me appreciate what a great life my family and I are living here.  

When I was younger, I went to Mauritania to volunteer. I worked in the desert in a village where the people had to travel long distances every day to get water and other supplies. Doing so required a day’s worth of travel. One day, through a translator, I asked an elderly man about his perspective on life. He responded by saying, “Thank God – I’m content, I’m happy.” I wondered how this man could say that, having had the same routine for 45 years from morning to night, but I realized it’s all about perspective. The concept of contentedness or happiness is very different in different cultures.  

What is something about you that might surprise people?  

I’m a huge comic book fan and if I have a difficult time memorizing someone’s name, I try to compare that person with, for example, a Star Wars character to make it easier for me to remember them.

I developed this strategy after attending a Carnegie training course in Canada. The trainer told the class to bring something funny into our heads to help us remember people’s names and faces. The only thing I could think of at the time was Star Wars, and this has stuck with me ever since.  

What are your passions outside of work?

My children are my primary focus. I’m married with three children, ages 10 and 8. My firstborn children are twin boys, and they have a little brother. The twins were born as micro-preemies in 2012, so they have had a lot of health issues.

My wife, who is a fully qualified CPA, took a 10-year break from her career to be home with them. She is a very academic person, so it was a big sacrifice for her to quit work, but now she’s ready to go back. As a result, I greatly value working remotely because it allows me to help at home as needed.  

If you would like to find out more about joining HKA,
visit our careers website.