Background

The Africa region is vulnerable to a variety of natural hazards – floods, drought, landslides, volcanic activity, and wild fires. Disasters are increasing in number, frequency and severity in Africa – particularly the hydro-meteorological hazards due to increasing climate variability. Disasters cause enormous losses of lives and livelihoods as well as reversals in development gains. Factors such as increasing urbanization, environmental degradation, unplanned and unregulated land use, and demographic growth are compounding factors, which couple with disaster risk and generate substantial new risks to human development.  West Africa, for example, is particularly vulnerable to meteorological and hydrological hazards and climate extremes - drought and floods are estimated to account for 80 per cent of loss of life and 70 per cent of economic losses linked to natural hazards.  Vulnerability and exposure to natural hazards are expected to grow in the coming decades and so are the frequency and scale of disasters, particularly those linked to climate change. The region may possibly face unprecedented large-scale crises. Strengthening preparedness capacities to cope with crisis and recover rapidly is therefore a critical element of building resilience to risks.

The post-disaster phase is crucial to mitigate the effects of a disaster and ensure that the necessary measures are taken to foster sustainable recovery. This phase also offers opportunities for addressing underlying vulnerabilities and risk factors and for strengthening disaster risk reduction capacities. While progress has been recorded on disaster risk reduction in most countries in the region, there here is, however, a considerable lack of preparedness among governments to address post-disaster recovery.

In order to address the above, UNDP works to strengthen the capacities of disaster prone countries in preparedness for pre-disaster recovery planning, post-disaster needs assessment and preparation of recovery strategies. UNDP provides strategic guidance and technical assistance in these areas and, as knowledge based organization, also facilitates exchange of experiences and lessons learnt among countries.

UNDP is implementing a global capacity development initiative in pre-disaster recovery planning to reinforce disaster-prone countries’ capacities to effectively manage recovery processes. In Africa, this initiative is currently ongoing in three countries in the Sahel (Niger, Burkina Faso and Cape Verde) and two in Eastern and Southern Africa (Rwanda and Angola) with financial support of the Government of Luxembourg and the Government of Japan. These countries recurrently face disasters (particularly floods and drought) and while they have already established some disaster risk management capacities and DRR institutional frameworks and mechanisms, these mechanisms still remain mostly focused on emergency response and risk reduction and do not yet adequately cover recovery issues. Hence, the need for developing national and local capacities in Preparedness for Recovery Planning (Pre-DRP) and in the institutionalization of recovery.

This initiative will support the development and establishment of policies, institutional frameworks and mechanisms to manage disaster recovery processes and specifically:

• Build capacities to use the post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA) methodology and, on this basis, design a recovery strategy;
• Institutionalize the PDNA methodology as necessary;
• Based on an assessment of current needs and gaps, provide guidance to establish institutional mechanisms for managing recovery – including policy revisions to integrate recovery concerns into DRR policies; and
• Establish capacity for managing recovery processes at national and local level.

The initiative is led by the Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (CC&DRR) Cluster of the UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Program Support (BPPS), which is based in NY and manages the project through its regional team in the Regional Service Centre for Africa in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). The Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (CC&DRR) Cluster of the UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Program Support (BPPS) is responsible for practice development for climate change and disaster risk reduction and recovery. The team’s objective is to provide support to UNDP Country Offices and UN Country Teams in their efforts to strengthen national capacities in climate change and disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and recovery assessments, planning and programmes. The team provides high quality policy advice and programmatic support in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of activities.

In collaboration with the colleagues in NY, the Africa CC&DRR team will provide overall strategic guidance and technical advice to the project and will ensure its implementation at country level. The CC&DRR Team in Africa is based in the UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa in Addis Ababa and has a sub-team in the UNDP liaison office in Dakar led by the Regional DRR and Resilience Adviser. Given the geographical repartition of the project countries, the Project Coordinator will be based in the UNDP office in Dakar. S/he will be responsible for coordination of project implementation in each country and for providing necessary technical advice to UNDP Country Offices for the implementation of the projects. The incumbent will also be responsible for the monitoring of the activities, compiling the financial and narrative reports as well as ensuring that issues and challenges within the project are addressed

As per the in-country implementation of the project, each UNDP Country Office (CO) will be directly responsible for the implementation of the activities.

Duties and Responsibilities

Functions/Key Results Expected

Summary of key functions:

• To coordinate, support and monitor project implementation at country level;
• To provide technical advice and substantial guidance on disaster recovery;
• To liaise with partners - including donors - to support exchange and communication related to the project and look for future engagements to enhance partnership.

Coordinate, support and monitor project implementation in each country:

• Overview the design of the annual work-plan for project activities in each country and the procurement of necessary resources (human and material);
• Participate in the design of monitoring and evaluation tools for project activities;
• Monitor progress in the implementation of project components in each country;
• Maintain a log with emerging issues/challenges and provide support in addressing them through required changes/adjustments;
• Establish mechanisms for regular communication with/among project stakeholders;
• Coordinate the delivery of narrative and financial reports from each country and, on such basis, prepare the annual/final cumulative project narrative and financial reports for the donors;
• Conduct a mid-project review and facilitate the final evaluation of the project in each country;
• Maintain supervisors and the colleagues of the disaster recovery technical unit based in UNDP HQ constantly updated on the development of the project.

Provide technical advice and substantial guidance on disaster recovery:

• Assure overall direction and consistency of individual country projects with UNDP’s approach to disaster recovery and with the overarching project document;
• Provide technical advice and guidance on issues related to preparedness for recovery planning and recovery programming as required by individual country offices;
• Assist country offices to access the toolkits, knowledge products, guidelines, lessons learned documents on disaster recovery that are necessary for the implementation of project activities;
• Facilitate capacity development and relevant training for national partners, working closely with UNDP’s regional centre and technical teams at HQ level;
• Facilitate knowledge exchanges between the project countries and cross-fertilization of experiences;
• Collect information from UNDP Country Offices to ensure compilation of success stories, case studies, and lessons learned to feed into global recovery strategies, policies and guidelines;
• Capture lessons learnt from the project/s implementation and compile in a final report.

To liaise with partners - including donors - to support exchange and communication related to the project and look for future engagements to enhance partnership:

• Strengthen strategic partnerships on preparedness for disaster recovery planning with relevant actors – including donors - at regional level;
• Promote UNDP’s approach and capacity building activities on preparedness for recovery and support mobilization of resources to expand project activities in the region.

Key Results

The key results will have an impact on UNDP’s delivery of effective technical support to five (5) selected Countries in developing national recovery management capacities. The key results will also enable UNDP to strengthen its effectiveness as the disaster recovery practice leader in the project countries  and UNDP Country Offices’ capacity to provide high-quality support to national Governments in disaster recovery programming.

Key deliverables are:

• Annual work-plan for each country is reviewed and finalized by the end of the first month;
• Procurement plan for each country is reviewed and finalized by the end of the first month;
• Project M&E log is prepared and entered into Atlas by the end of the first month and updated quarterly;
• Project issue log is prepared and entered into Atlas by the end of the second month and updated quarterly;
• Mid- year review mission is conducted in all five countries and mid-year review report produced by September with technical recommendations;
• Training sessions organized upon request (as per individual country work-plans);
• One lessons learnt/best practices report is prepared based on countries’ workshops by mid-year;
• Success stories, case studies documented
• Annual narrative and financial report is prepared as a synthesis of annual country progress reports;
• Final project evaluation commissioned and coordinated.

Institutional Arrangement

This is an office based assignment and the duty station is the UNDP Dakar Liaison Office. The Consultant will operate under the overall direction of the Team Leader – CC&DRR Africa team and the direct supervision of the Regional DRR and Resilience Adviser in Dakar.

The Consultant will closely interact with other staff from the CC&DRR HQ Team and with UNDP staff from regional and Country Offices, government officials in the project countries as well as relevant partners in other UN agencies, donors, and other stakeholders.

Duty station & Duration of the Work

The consultant is expected to perform this task based in the UNDP Liaison Office in Dakar starting from 1st April 2015 for a duration of 12 months until 31st March 2016. If travel to the project countries or UNDP HQ in New York, costs will be covered by UNDP as per UNDP Rules and Regulations.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards (human rights, peace, understanding between peoples and nations, tolerance, integrity, respect, results orientation (UNDP core ethics) impartiality;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback.

Functional Competencies:

• Ability to lead strategic planning, results-based management, project management and reporting from a risk management perspective;
• Set clear performance goals and standards, and executes responsibilities accordingly;
• Ability to work both independently and in a team and ability to deliver high quality work on time;
• Actively seeks and promotes innovative methodologies and leads the development of supporting policies/tools to encourage learning and knowledge sharing;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills with proven ability in report writing.

Behavioral Competencies:

• Comfortable in working in dynamic environments that change frequently;
• Able to perform in a high-stress and difficult security environment, with basic accommodation choices;
• Ability to manage relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders and incorporate diverse points of view.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A minimum of a Master’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, management, development studies or other discipline relevant to development and disaster recovery.

Experience:

• 5 to 7 years of professional work experience in planning, implementing and managing development projects – possibly related to disaster risk reduction, response and recovery;
• Experience in capacity building initiatives/projects;
• Field experience and knowledge in the area of post-disaster response and recovery is required -  participation in post-disaster recovery operations will be considered as a distinctive advantage;
• Knowledge and experience of UNDP and/or UN system policies, rules and regulations, procedures, practices and programming is a distinct advantage;
• Full computer literacy, specially office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc);
• Demonstrated ability and experience to take initiative and work in an independent manner;
• Proven experience with organization of events – ex. conferences, workshops, trainings, etc.;
• Experience working in an international organization and multi-cultural environment.

Language:

• Fluency in English and French both oral and written is required.

Other Requirements:

Presentation of Offer

The application is a two-step process. Failing to comply with the submission process may result in disqualifying the applications:

Step 1: Interested individual consultants must include the following documents when submitting the applications in UNDP job shop (Please note that only 1 (one) file can be uploaded therefore please include all docs in one file):

• Personal History Form (P11), indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references (the template can be downloaded from this link: www.sas.undp.org/Documents/P11_Personal_history_form.doc Alternatively, an updated CV can be uploaded however UNDP may later to request a PH11 form to be completed;
• Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment. Indicate available start date.

Step 2: Submission of Financial Proposal

Applicants are instructed to submit their daily rate financial proposals in US Dollars for this consultancy to eeg.jobfinproposal@undp.org, using the financial proposal template available here: http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_file.cfm?doc_id=45780. The proposals should be sent via email with the following subject heading: “Financial Proposal for Consultant, Project Coordinator - Preparedness for Disaster Recovery" by the deadline for this vacancy. Proposals to be received after the deadline will be rejected. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal should be all-inclusive and include a breakdown. The term ‘all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, travel related expenses, communications, utilities, consumables, insurance, etc.) that could possibly be incurred by the Contractor are already factored into the financial proposal.

Evaluation of Applicants:

The award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose proposal is determined as having the highest combined score of the technical and financial scores, calculated as follows:

• Technical criteria weight (70%);
• Financial criteria weight (30%).

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points out of 100 at the technical evaluation will be considered for the financial evaluation.

Technical Proposal (70%)

The breakdown of the evaluation of the technical proposal is as follows:

Interviews may be conducted with the Shortlisted candidates.

Financial Proposal (30%)

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal: p = y (µ/z) where:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in social sciences, management, development studies or other discipline relevant to development and disaster recovery (10);
• 5 to 7 years of professional work experience in planning, implementing and managing development projects - possibly related to disaster risk reduction, response and recovery (30);
• Field experience and knowledge in the area of post-disaster response and recovery is required - participation in post-disaster recovery operations will be considered as a distinctive advantage (30);
• Proven experience with organization of events - ex. conferences, workshops, training, etc. (10);
• Knowledge and experience of UNDP and/or UN system policies rules and regulations, procedures, practices and programming is a distinct advantage (5);
• Fluency in English and French both oral and written (15).

Interview may be conducted with the Shortlisted candidates.

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal (30 points)

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal
z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Please group all your documents into one PDF file because the system allows only one attachment.

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture.  Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply.  All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.