Personal Work Place Activity

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

By Ali Aziz

INTRODUCTION

In the first career episode I will describe the position that I occupied while working at Alcatel Lucent since Oct 2010 to Present. I was employed as Snr. Technical Support Engineer in the WLS Business Unit. We always have great pressure from management to deliver as our customer Mobilink (Vimpelcom Account) was/is the biggest operator in Pakistan.

BACKGROUND

My particular Duties of Snr. Technical Support Engineer are as follows

Leading the entire Implementation & Planning Teams for RAN (Swap, Integration & Extension) Activities in Pakistan.

Professional experienced in dealing with both in house and out house resources for the operational activities of GSM network.

Fully responsible of the overall interface with customer operational organization, in order to ensure the right execution of the project.

Actively involved in preparing BOQ (Bill of quantities), RFP (Request for Proposal), RFQ (Request for Quotation), RFI (Request for Information) TOR (terms of reference) and SOW (Statement of Work).

Responsible for all pre-sale project management activities. (Project Planning, Risk Management, Partner Management, Contract Management)

Main point of contact with solution team to finalize the project deliverable according to customer requirements.

Implemented processes and tools resulting in effective and efficient monitoring and control on Project roll out.

Managing Budget (IPIS & RPIS) of Project.

Managing Product Orders, Delivery & Sales

Ensure the consistency of Alcatel commitments from the proposals to the contracts (delivery list, planning and milestones, phasing, pricing and payment terms, penalties and legal terms).

Supervise the progress of the project regarding to the contractual commitments in term of deliveries, compliance & timing aspects.

Report any serious deviation from Alcatel commitments or customer difficulties to the head of the program management department and propose action plans to the operational units, and ensure that they are carried out once approved.

Perform weekly capacity planning of BSC’s to ensure availability for future operations.

Overall resource planning of the on-going operational activities on per project basis.

Plan the BSS implementation work for new Integration and Extension according to Contractual commitments.

Discuss with the customer the required process & procedure for implementation.

Organizing work plan for clearing outstanding items in all implemented sites.

Closely follow the reception of preliminary acceptance certificates (PAC) & Final acceptance certificate (FAC) from customer.

Reporting to the higher management in Italy about the work progress on weekly and monthly basis.

Preparing & presenting the acceptance documents with the notification letter.

Device and ensure operations department deliverables (Internal + External), designing, defining owners, defining frequencies and ensuring implementation.

Actively involved in Migration of Network from B10 to B11.

Providing support to FLM team for the Karachi Project of 1000 sites won by Alcatel Lucent.

14 NEC Microwave to ALU MPR Swap.

Redesigned the network from Legacy and Twin modules to TMX (MXTRX) of Alcatel Lucent.

Planned and executed the major turnkey network swap of 132 sites (Phase 2) with outdoor civil works i.e PAD Construction, Shed Fabrication, ATS/DB/Generator Installation as per site requirement) and RAN from Motorola BTS, BSC, TC and MFS to Alcatel BTS (MBI5, MB5, CBO2E and MBO2E), MX-BSC, TC and MX-MFS along with configuration from the OMC-R.

Planned and executed Non Telecom Swap (NTS) of 81 Sites from ALU Indoor RAN Solution to Outdoor RAN Solution including civil works.

PERSONAL WORK PLACE ACTIVITY

Below are the operations tasks that I was responsible for:

Here I have managed all the RAN departments for the swap and installation project for Pakistan.

Supervise the progress of the project regarding to the contractual commitments in term of deliveries, compliance & timing aspects. Management of whole roll out in the region was managed by me. Based upon the analysis report at the end of each quarter, I ensured that all commercial offers are submitted timely by the subcontractor and purchase order (PO) is issued accordingly so that activities can be kicked off by the concerned engineer supervising the activity without any delay. Timely issuance of PO was a delayed process initially. To cater for this, I held regular meetings with procurement department for a proper process and as a conclusion the issuance time was reduced to 10 working days, which was 21 working days earlier.

Actively involved in preparing BOQ (Bill of quantities), RFP (Request for Proposal), RFQ (Request for Quotation), RFI (Request for Information) TOR (terms of reference) and SOW (Statement of Work). I assured timely and authentic response to Project support & control team for the timely capitalization of activities and timely closure of all invoices. To smoothly carry out these activities, I have maintained a budget log which ensures proper monitoring and evaluation of all past and present activities and their financial costs.

I timely inform them and follow up till the issue is resolved. I ensure that all pre-requisites to TI deployment are accomplished as per schedule and deployment activities can be carried out smoothly. I send out weekly progress reports to my management and present the monthly report in the rollout and expansion steering committee, which occurs every month.

Planned and executed the major turnkey network swap of 132 sites (Phase 2) with outdoor civil works i.e PAD Construction, Shed Fabrication, ATS/DB/Generator Installation as per site requirement) and RAN from Motorola BTS, BSC, TC and MFS to Alcatel BTS (MBI5, MB5, CBO2E and MBO2E), MX-BSC, TC and MX-MFS along with configuration from the OMC-R.

Report any serious deviation from Alcatel commitments or customer difficulties to the head of the program management department and propose action plans to the operational units, and ensure that they are carried out once approved. Recovery program always has an option in the project to diminish the delays in the interest of project. In the same meeting, I always presented the Risk associated with the Projects and with the consideration for the advices of all the stakeholders, I always develop my Risk management strategies.

Reporting to the higher management in Italy about the work progress on weekly and monthly basis. I documented Progress reports to management as well for CAPEX and OPEX.

My job responsibility is to deliver a quality BTS site without any service related qualities. After a BTS site is accepted and declared RCO, I inform RF planning & optimization team to conduct drive test. I provide support during drive test from back end for performing any parametric changes and onsite by deploying field teams for replacement of any hardware/antenna tilts etc. I ensure that all snags and service related issues pertaining to BSS are cleared by the concerned subcontractor and site is declared SL within seven days of DT.

My duties were to regularly check the performance of the links and keep them monitoring 24/7. I am acknowledged as the Expert of Microwave transmission troubleshooting in my team and all the issues are supervised by me.

I am the part of Microwave Transmission planning. I had a situation where some of our MW links were disturbed due to some of newly built buildings and advertising hoardings. As these sites were handed over to us so it was primarily our duty to rectify the issues ASAP.

PathLoss is the transmission planning tool that I used and deduced the entire possible connectivity plans we could implement keeping in mind the frequency band and the interference issues. Then I conducted the survey to check the line of sight clearance and installation. After the LOS survey I presented the report to my manager and after his clearance I supervised the activity for the installation of the replaced links.

I have ensured that my team members have a keen interest in their work and are motivated. I appreciate my team members for any achievement and incase of any mistakes I ensure that they are committed only once and are not repeated. I have trained my team members on the equipment and new technologies and have ensured that they undergo the essential trainings when ever required so that they are up to date with the changing technological trends.

I always try to get knowledge from where ever it comes from. I always attend any on job training offered by Alcatel Lucent. I also refer to books whenever I have any confusion in making out any technical aspect of the field. I have also attended session offered by different forums for increasing my knowledge.

SUMMARY

The main task of my job was to make sure that all the requirements are met and in compliance with the code of practice and the set SLAs from the management so that the best design method could be adopted that is less time taking, low cost and makes full use of resources available in Pakistan.