Meet Ahmed Alshaikh – Featured YP for February 2016

Where are you from?

I was born and raised in Dammam City in Saudi Arabia.

What company/institution do you work for?

Saudi Aramco (the national Saudi oil company)

Where did you complete your chemical engineering education?

Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh (Scotland)

How many years have you been a member of AIChE?

Eight

Describe a recent challenge you managed, notable achievement, or obstacle you overcame at your job or in your work as an AIChE member.

Recently I worked with a group of young enthusiastic engineers with the aim of establishing a Young Professionals Committee (YPC) as part of the Saudi Arabian Section of AIChE (SAS-AIChE). This YPC group we created was the first of its kind in the Middle East. The task was very challenging since we had to come up with vision, mission, operating plan, our own logo, website, and social media accounts among many other things for the group. We also had to do a lot of coordination to pull off an amazing inauguration ceremony during the 3rd Middle-East Process Engineering Conference (MEPEC2015) in Bahrain last September. With attendance by a huge crowd of managers and executives from oil and gas companies, and AIChE Executive Director Ms. June Wispelwey, the inauguration and subsequent success we experienced were far beyond what we expected. This was a very challenging task and it continues to be as we currently endeavor to search for sponsors and establish our own official bylaws and committee hierarchy.

What do you do to meet people in your field?

I usually meet new peers during professional events. This includes regional and international conferences such as the AIChE Annual meeting, and SAS-AIChE Local Section monthly dinner meetings. I also utilize social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter to find people in the same field. There, I participate in technical discussions of common topics which help me identify professional peers with similar interests.

Fill in the blanks: there are chemical engineers who _____ and who ______. 

Those who work in design offices, and those who roll up their sleeves, wear their hard hats, and fix problems in operating plants caused during design by the first type.

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If your first and last initials stood for something other than your name, what would that be?

Analytical Achiever. These are two of my strongest personality attributes.

If you weren’t a ChE, what would you most want to be?

Business entrepreneur

If your college had offered a class on real-life skills for the aspiring ChE, what would you want them to teach?

The art of troubleshooting problems in operating facilities. During facilities design, 1 + 1 always equals 2, but during operations it is not necessarily true. Operating facilities usually operate away from original designs and there are margins of error in most measurements, uncalibrated meters, process disturbances, and many other factors affecting process parameters. The skills of troubleshooting and understanding the interaction between different process parameters is thus a key skill to acquire as a chemical engineer working in operating facilities. Unfortunately, most schools don’t teach you this and you only learn it during the job.

What don’t most people know about you?

I knew almost nothing about chemical engineering before I selected it as my major. Fortunately, I don’t regret that decision at all!

How many ChEs does it take to screw in a light bulb?

One only and he will simply ask the mechanical and electrical engineers to do it!

Do you have any advice for current or future young professionals reading ChEnected?

Get involved now with your AIChE local section. If there is no local section in your area, try to join the nearest section to your location, or join the Virtual Local Section. The experience gained is definitely worth it!

You can contact Ahmed through his LinkedIn profile or on Twitter @shaiaa1d.