News
Business Development Manager Yovan Muhsin, Country Representative Åsa Forsman, Finance Officer Linet Lutukai, NYPA Christina Paabøl Thomsen and TVET consultant James Wamwangi
The disruptive election process in Kenya last year created uncertainty about investment in the economy, negatively impacting domestic as well as international business. We’ve also felt the effects in our NIRAS Kenya office as it has been a slow year, with anticipated tenders from both donors and ministries being postponed or, in the worst case, cancelled. But thankfully a few months ago, the situation started to change. "Now we are back to the normal business in the hub of East Africa, with plenty of opportunities in the pipeline and a constant flow of tenders," Åsa Forsman, Head of our Country Office for Kenya explains.
In parallel with this positive development, NIRAS Kenya moved to new attractive offices and employed a finance and administration officer. Our small Kenyan office has thus grown from two to three permanent staff members. We also have more consultants from different projects working from our office, as well as NYPAs on an almost permanent basis.
"This growth is important for us, as it increases our network and enables us to focus more on intelligence, which is otherwise being down-prioritized when there is too much urgent work with ongoing tenders and projects to handle with small staff resources. Increasing our resources in finance and administration, simply releases more time for other staff to focus on market development," Åsa says.
In addition to our business development work and the regular contacts with our ongoing projects’ staff and clients, the Nairobi office is increasingly doing fund and contract management for different NIRAS head offices. Thus the Kenya office has lately been focusing on compliance issues, ensuring that all Kenyan consultants are paying their taxes, contracts are in accordance with Kenyan labour laws and tax regulations, and all mandatory requirements for pension funds and the like are fulfilled. We have framework contracts with tax advisers, a human resource expert and a lawyer so we are well prepared for both project- and office-related compliance issues that may occur. These services are of course also available for the NIRAS head offices should need be.
Åsa invites you to pay them a visit. And besides, there is always fresh Kenyan coffee available. Karibu!
NIRAS new offices are located at: NIRAS Kenya, The Mvuli, WWF compound, Mvuli Road. P.O. Box 1493, 00606
