Akmal is a Naval Architect with Orcades Marine with an MSc in Naval Architecture from Newcastle Universty. He is experienced in mooring design and analysis, Third Party Verification (TPV) review of marine structures and marine renewable technology, floating platform design, and  marine structures design. He has a good understanding of the standards used for mooring design and review and the Common Structural Rules for structural strength and fatigue assessment. He is competent in stability and lightship assessments for small workboats and assessment of structural design requirements.

He is experienced in specialist maritime and engineering software such as Inventor and ProteusDS used in design and analysis tasks. Other specialist maritime software that he has experience using included ANSYS, MAXSURF and AutoCAD. He is experienced in research and development techniques and he also conducts ballast sampling work on inbound tankers into Scapa Flow. He is an active volunteer as a Coastguard Rescue Officer (CRO) with the HM Coastguard SAR service.