Meet the Team: Asfand Ali

Here at NCASS, there’s a passionate team working behind the scenes every day to make sure members get the most out of their membership – and we thought it was about time you got to know them!

This week we chat to Asfand Ali who has been part of the NCASS team for 1 year and 3 months, bringing over five years of software development experience. He works on developing and improving software solutions that support the organisation, combining technical expertise with a passion for creating reliable and efficient systems.

How does your work help our customers or operations?

I’ve been solely responsible for the maintenance and development of the Digital Food Safety System, as well as being a part of the reason the NCASS response times are fast when it comes to technical issues related to NCASS Apps.

Can you explain your work on our Digital Food Safety System?

I introduced the custom checklists feature and the ability to reorder checks and checklists, as well as revamping the DFSS to make it look more modern and be more user friendly. I also have been involved in the work that allows the DFSS to remain usable offline/without internet connection.

What are you currently working on that you’re excited about?

I’m currently working on a new feature for the DFSS that will allow members to build completely custom checks. Currently they are limited to checks where you answer Yes/No/N/A or checks where you can input a temperature for a given dish or equipment such as fridges/freezers. Members will soon be able to construct fully customisable, complex checks that can be composed of multiple components.

What’s one feature you’ve built or a bug you’ve fixed that people might not realize takes a lot of work behind the scenes?

Offline mode in the DFSS is a very complicated problem to resolve. A lot of developers have worked for other businesses where it’s ultimately so difficult they end up dropping the ability to work offline altogether. The main difficulty comes from the fact that using an app offline means you aren’t connected to our servers so when issues occur, we have 0 visibility into the app and your data. It ends up being a true test of how good you really are at your job all whilst having the highest pressure to resolve the issue as fast as possible for members who are in the heat of the kitchen.

What’s your favourite part about working with the Tech Team?

My favourite part about working with the Tech Team is solving new problems on a daily-basis whilst working with very like-minded individuals who have created an atmosphere that is not about blaming each other for incorrectly solved problems, but actually using every difficult situation as a learning experience so that as a team, the next time a similar problem occurs we’re all on the same page and able to deal with things swiftly and get the dopamine boost we’re after when we solve problems.

What’s your go-to comfort food?

My go-to comfort food is pizza and /or any food with massive amounts of chocolate e.g. biscuits, cake, waffles drenched in Nutella, Oreos, Ferrero Rocher etc.

What would you name your food truck?

Asfand’s All-American

What are some fun facts about you?

Outside of work, I like to fill my weekends up with as much team sports as possible such as basketball, football, badminton, padel etc.  One of the reasons I try to play as much sport as possible is to offset the ridiculous number of calories I consume. To put into context what I mean when I say, “ridiculous number of calories”, my face is on the wall of various random independent food businesses for completing different eating challenges. Some examples would be an 8-patty cheeseburger, and a 750g Tomahawk steak. I recently ate 10 individual fish burgers in 10 minutes (I also like to challenge myself to eat food quickly as it increases my mental fortitude).