About

Aggreko’s business model of providing interim power solutions is much in demand in the Middle East, but provides unique challenges for its legal department to overcome. As well as providing temporary power for countries which lack the capacity themselves, it also provides power for events as needed; this means a large amount of work is taken up by bidding procedures and due diligence on a wide variety of projects. Head of legal for MENA is Khaled Shivji, who founded the function himself in 2014 and has overseen the incorporation of new legal entities in Afghanistan, the UAE, Jordan and Lebanon. Reflecting on the challenges the department has faced, Shivji explained that the team has had to consistently do more with less: ‘We’ve always had to cope with austere legal budgets whilst being expected to simultaneously support demanding bids, strategic decision-making and cash collection priorities. We’ve achieved success with this by deploying market-leading eProcurement, eSignature and contract-management tools. We have also undertaken a wholesale reappraisal on the processes that we owned and devolved quasi-legal processes into the hands of area managers. In parallel, this freed up our time to up-skill employees and to develop links with the management layers and departments who traditionally were never able to access first-hand legal advice’. Shivji concludes by summing up the lessons this experience has taught him and that he can pass on to other in-house professionals: ‘Lawyers need to use their influence and reach to build efficient processes and to continually reassess how to do things better, faster and more cheaply. We’ve done that whilst maintaining our focus on delivering high-quality legal services. It’s a classic win-win outcome’.