Enterprise Quality Management Systems
ISO 9001 aligned frameworks built to produce evidence rather than paperwork, mapped to the national institutional excellence model so the output converts.
Quality Assurance & Governance
Ahmad Ismail Sayyam
Quality Assurance Senior Director
Most governance fails quietly. Not because people are careless, but because distance without a system will beat good intentions every time.
I build the systems that make governance work at a distance.
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19
Years across governance, assurance and delivery
9
Markets under one assurance framework
30+
Points of compliance gained in twelve months
42+
Professionals developed across the region
64K+
In the professional community he writes for
Profile
My work is to take what an organization has already committed to and turn it into something you can test, evidence and defend.
I lead Quality Assurance for the MEA Business Unit at the Saudi Tourism Authority, where I built the assurance and compliance framework that now governs a marketing and partnership portfolio in the hundreds of millions of riyals across nine markets and representation offices.
Before quality there was delivery. PMO and programme governance at Deloitte, at ministries and authorities across the Kingdom, and ten years before that building e-government systems in the UAE and Jordan. That path is the reason my frameworks tend to survive contact with the people who have to use them.
I write on quality, project delivery and leadership for a professional community of more than 64,000 across the region, and build free offline tools for project and quality teams.
What I build
Six things I have built more than once, and would build again.
Assurance Programs
Annual and quarterly assurance cycles with published scoring thresholds, formal closure reports and a named owner behind every finding.
Compliance Frameworks
Obligation registers, control libraries, evidence traceability and corrective action closure, aligned to Ministry of Finance and Etimad requirements.
Supplier & Partner Assurance
Performance models, service levels and pre-payment verification across distributed partner networks that no one office can see end to end.
Audit Readiness & Response
Root cause analysis, corrective action plans with names and dates, evidence packs and closure verification. Finding the gaps before the auditor does.
PMO & Delivery Governance
Decision rights, change control, stage gates and executive dashboards that make a portfolio legible to the people who have to approve it.
Signature work
Saudi Tourism Authority
The road to compliance
A marketing and cooperative agreement portfolio spread across nine markets, run by agencies and representation offices that no one in headquarters could see end to end.
Framework design
An assurance program that runs itself
Compliance is not a destination, it is a rhythm. The framework had to keep working in quarters when nobody was watching it.
Partner networks
Assurance at a distance
More than thirty global trade partners, each with its own way of working, all of them producing evidence that had to hold up under review.
Tools
I build the instruments I could not find. Each one runs entirely in the browser: the file never leaves the device, there is no server, no account and no upload. Disconnect from the internet and they still work, which is the only proof of that claim worth giving.
More than 1,000 professionals have used these tools.
01
Executive Project Dashboard
One spreadsheet becomes a governance instrument.
Weekly status reporting used to cost me a day: collect the numbers, update the indicators, work out who is late, produce a completion percentage, and start again next week. The data was already in a spreadsheet. The problem was that nobody reads spreadsheets. This reads the file and produces the report, and every time someone changes a value the dashboard updates itself.
- Project health with a RAG rating and the reasons behind it, not just a colour
- Earned value analysis with SPI and CPI
- An interactive Gantt with a today line that surfaces slippage on its own
- A 5 by 5 risk matrix, and resource capacity that warns when approved leave collides with a milestone
- Governance registers: issues, change requests, actions, contracts, deliverables
Runs in the browser · The file never leaves your device · Works offline
02
Team Task Board
Your task file already says what exists. It does not say what matters.
Every team has a task file. What it will not tell you is who is waiting on whom, which delay pushes the whole delivery, and who is carrying more than they can. This turns the same file into a board that answers those three questions, and writes any change back without touching your other sheets.
- Drag and drop kanban, grouped by status, priority, owner or phase
- A Gantt with dependency arrows that marks the critical path in red
- An executive view of what is done, what is late, and what is blocking
- Workload per person, so overload is visible before it becomes a delay
Runs in the browser · The file never leaves your device · Works offline
03
Team Leave Planner
The gap you approve today is the one you discover in a month.
Leave approvals are made one at a time and their consequence only appears in aggregate. This puts the whole team on one calendar, calculates daily coverage, and shows you the gap before you approve rather than after.
- The whole team on one calendar, at year, half year, quarter, month or week
- Daily coverage calculated, with a warning before approval
- Approve, decline or adjust in one click
- Official holidays built in and editable, working week configurable
Runs in the browser · The file never leaves your device · Works offline
Experience
Jan 2025 to Present
Quality Assurance Senior Director, MEA Business Unit
Saudi Tourism Authority · Riyadh · Acting Lead, Operational Excellence Department
- Designed and implemented the business unit's enterprise quality assurance and compliance framework across nine markets and representation offices.
- Built and owns the annual assurance program: six steps, three phases, thirty three control items over five governance aspects, run quarterly.
- Led the business unit's response to internal audit observations, from root cause through corrective action to closure verification.
Jan 2023 to Dec 2024
PMO & Delivery Director, MEA Business Unit
Saudi Tourism Authority · Riyadh
- Directed delivery assurance for a multi-market marketing and partnerships portfolio across thirteen priority international markets.
- Designed a unified delivery governance framework that lifted on-time milestone achievement by more than twenty points in a single cycle.
- Governed more than eighty projects and change requests, strengthening change control and financial discipline.
- Led the PMO for the Riyadh Season sponsorship program, working directly with the Business Unit Chief.
May 2022 to Dec 2022
PMO Director
Deloitte · Riyadh
- Directed PMO governance for client transformation programs, reviewing outputs for quality and consistency and issuing formal observations.
- Established shared delivery standards, templates and quality review processes across EPMO, portfolio and vendor teams.
Dec 2021 to Apr 2022
Senior Consultant, PMO Lead
Tharwah · Riyadh
- Established PMO methodologies, manuals and process compliance monitoring, reporting status and risk to executive leadership.
- Led EPMO setup for the National eLearning Center and PMO and VRO setup for the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources.
May 2019 to Nov 2021
PMO Specialist
Method Corp · Riyadh
- Operated PMO governance, consolidated reporting and delivery assurance for government clients including the King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives.
Apr 2015 to Apr 2018
Project Manager
Accela Middle East · Dubai, UAE
- Delivered regulatory and permitting system implementations for the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing and the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, managing onsite and offshore teams of up to thirty.
Oct 2005 to Apr 2015
Project Manager, Technical Team Leader, Developer
iSoft Emirates, Dubai · STS Group, Amman
- Ten years of progressive delivery on enterprise and e-government programs, including Dubai RTA smart government and e-services transformation and Dubai Municipality smart government implementation.
Credentials
Certifications
ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems Lead AuditorISO 9001
PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)Project Management Institute
Project Management Professional (PMP)Project Management Institute
Professional Scrum Master (PSM)Scrum.org
ITIL Foundation, IT Service ManagementAXELOS
Education & languages
B.Sc. Computer Science · Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman · 2002 to 2006
Arabic, native · English, fluent
Sectors
Government & public sector
Tourism & destination marketing
Giga-programs & transformation
Digital government & e-services
Management consulting
Get in touch
Based in Riyadh. Saudi Premium Residency holder. Open to conversations about quality, assurance and governance at scale.