How Global Collaboration Is Shaping ITE and Transportation’s Future with ITE Global District Director Farukh Ijaz, PE

Thank

you for having me.

I want to get it started by talking about your background.

You, as I mentioned in the opening, are the managing partner and president of Consulting Services USA.

I want to find out how did you get to that position? How did you first get started in the transportation industry? And tell me a little bit about that journey, if you would, please.

Absolutely.

So I think there was one quote a while back.

Once you look back, it all connects.

So that's where I'll start.

So I was born in Pakistan.

And when I was four years old, my family actually moved to Saudi Arabia.

And that's where I grew up.

And from the very beginning, my life was about, you know, more adapting, learning, embracing new places.

So I always loved that.

And the My father is a civil engineer as well.

As a kid, I used to follow him through his office just to watch.

I didn't understand what he was doing, but I knew that it mattered.

And that feeling stayed in me the whole life.

And after I graduated high school, I went to Pakistan and then got my degree from the same university that my dad went.

It's University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore.

And basically, my real career kicked in when I graduated and came back to Saudi Arabia and started working with Wilbur Smith Associates, which is a very known, you know, premier firm in the whole world.

back in the day and now it's called CDM Smith.

So I started working in Riyadh and I had a lot of incredible mentors at that time.

So the work I was doing was so meaningful and I truly understood like the transportation isn't just roads and signals, it's about more people, how they move.

So that was my starting point of the journey Then my my all my all this vision was to study more.