MEET THE STAFF SERIES

 

We Provides Geospatial visualization of all our Company’s network and assets - Fatima S. Umar

CCD: Can we have your brief profile?

FSU: My Name is Fatima Suleiman Umar, I've been working with KE for 7yrs in the ICT Department. I started out as the ICT project manager where I was working closely with the Head ICT and all the ICT staff in projects and tasks management, I was later assigned to work in the hardware unit, and later to the data center/networking unit.  I am currently working in the GIS Unit.

CCD: What are your primary responsibilities and how do you manage your daily activities?

FSU: As the Team Lead of the GIS Unit, my tasks involve carrying the entire team along to develop and implement an accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date Geographical Information System for Kaduna Electric. To have a Geospatial visualization of all our Company’s network and assets. We've planned out our daily activities in a task management calendar in such a way that they can run with the ICT project tasks, GIS unit trainings and working with externals such as Engineers without having clashes.

CCD:  Can you tell us more about Geographical Information System?

FSU: GIS is a very powerful tool, it has countless benefits to this utility company ranging from site selection, network mapping, planning, analysis, asset management, facility management, outage management, selection of suitable areas for investment, cost estimation, revenue projections, energy audit, load management, theft detection, information retrieval, infrastructure management, improved decision making and much more! 

CCD: What do you consider as your major achievement since you assumed duty? 

FSU: Naturally, I love finding challenges or bottlenecks that result in inefficiencies and then providing solutions to those problems. This was what gave me the opportunity to work in several units in the ICT department to help others solve complex problems and develop processes, policies, and procedures, design templates and reporting dashboards to document the activities of the department and improve work efficiency. In a nutshell, providing innovative solutions is what gives me deep satisfaction.

CCD: Do you prefer working alone or in a team?

FSU: Honestly, I'm much faster when I work alone, but working as a team gives me more insight and I get to learn more from people. One cannot discountenance the additional knowledge and experience gained from brainstorming and deliberations when working as a team and it makes me appreciate the diversity in people's personalities and the ways they think and process information.

CCD: What are your major challenges?

FSU: Incomplete and Inaccurate data to work with. There is a need to update our network lines and also complete the customer enumeration project started by Zutari.  

CCD: What do you do at your leisure time?

FSU: I don't have leisure time anymore  CCD: Any appeal/suggestion to Staff or Management?  FSU: The management should look into staff welfare, career growth, and employee retention plan.