UNDP Jobs - 55307- International Consultant

International Consultant - Quality Assurance for Outcome Studies and Designing M&E Strategy & Baseline Studies for future Urban Programme

Location :

Dhaka, BANGLADESH

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

15-Apr-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

60 working days over the period of 4 months (May-August 2015)

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. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Project Description

Approximately 40 million people in Bangladesh live in urban areas, out of which 21 per cent live below the poverty line. Such poor urban households live in inadequate and insecure houses, often in unsanitary conditions. Difficulties in accessing employment are made worse by having little or no social protection. There is limited access to health and education opportunities. With one of the highest urbanization rates in Asia, the situation continues to worsen for an increasing number of urban poor in Bangladesh.

The Project

UPPR is the single large urban poverty reduction programme in Bangladesh supporting improvement of living conditions and livelihoods of 3 million poor and extreme poor, especially women and girls of 23 cities (City corporations) and Municipalities. Implementation of the project led by more than 3,000 community organizations in collaboration with Local Government Institutions (LGIs) and technical support of UNDP and UN-Habitat. The executing agency of the project is Local Government Engineering department (LGED) under the Ministry of Local Government, Rural development and Cooperatives (MoLGRD&C), UK-Aid is the key financing partner of the project proving USD 120 million for the entire project period 2008-2015. The project has already achieved or even exceeded the targets by June 2014. The current focus of the project is to document and disseminate key successes and lessons of the project and support sustainability of the achievements by LGIs and communities. The key outputs of UPPR are:

Urban poor communities mobilized to form representative and inclusive groups and prepare community action plans;
Poor urban communities have healthy and secure living environments;
Urban poor and extremely poor people acquire the resources, knowledge and skills to increase their income and assets; and,
Pro-poor urban policies and partnerships supported at the national and local levels.

UPPR has already mobilized more than 3 million urban poor and extreme poor into about 2600 Community development Committees (CDCs, each with 250-300 households) more than 250 Cluster CDCs (each with 8-10 CDCs), 23 CDC Town federations in 23 towns and 13 Community Housing development Fund (CHDF) Committees in 13 towns. Over 90% of the leaderships of these community organizations are provided by women and they manage planning, implementation and monitoring of the project activities following participatory approaches include Participatory Identification of the Poor (PIP); the development of the Community Action Plan (CAPs); and oversee the implementation of community contracts.

To improve living conditions and livelihoods, UPPR has achieved all targets and supported significant changes in the lives of the people in mobilized communities. Furthermore, about 1000 partnerships and linkages have been established in project towns and national level for supporting sustainability and value additional to UPPR achievements.

Based on the experiences and successes of UPPR, a new National Urban Poverty Reduction Programme (NUPRP) is under preparation to be led by the government and be supported by DFID, UNDP and other development partners. The first phase of NUPRP is planned to be started in last quarter of 2015 to cover 6 million urban poor in 6 years period.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work:

The consultancy will have the following scopes:

Coordinate and support RELU (Research and Learning unit) and the National M&E Consultant to deliver timely the quality reports, communication materials and other knowledge products. Enhance capacity of RELU to coordinate and support implementation of on-going and future outcome studies and surveys with academia, researchers, government and donor agencies at national and international levels for commissioning research and studies;
Work with firms and national and international consultants to finalize research reports, in particular advising on sampling and the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. Studies will include: study of Local Government Institution (LGI) capacity, study on CDC (Community Development Cluster) maturity and sustainability, study on private sector work, and study on partnerships and linkages. Provide quality assurance on data analysis and final reports by firms and national and international consultants;
As required, provide technical guidance to the M&E Coordinator in the development of sampling strategies, data collections tools, and data collection plans and on qualitative and quantitative data analysis and quality assured analysis products;
Contribute to the writing and design of research reports and associated communications material as well as the development of donor reports for UK aid;
Provide advice and comments to the Government of Bangladesh, UNDP and UK aid on other research and evaluation activities pertaining to urban poverty as required;
Liaison with RRMC of UNDP and government organizations (LGED, BBS, IMED) to mainstream RELU’s work in UNDP and GoB.
Ensure that the proposed M&E system will adopt an appropriate MIS system, measure and report on results in a timely and technically sound manner with a especial focus on engaging the national staff and counterpart organizations in the M&E system and implementing the Decision Support System through M&E;
Review experiences of UPPR, project documents and design a baseline survey for new project;
Review existing M&E systems of UPPR and develop a framework of M&E system for new project.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables:

Quality assured and completed reports for all outcome studies (likely to be study of Local Government Institution (LGI) capacity, study on CDC (Community Development Cluster) maturity and sustainability, study on private sector work, and study on partnerships and linkages). The consultant will review and provide feedback to consultants or firms on the appropriateness and quality of the reports;
The consultant will review analysis and provide feedback to firms and/or UPPR staff and provide advice on the quality of the final analysis. The consultant will provide feedback to firms and provide advice on the quality of all final reports;
A report incorporating revised project understanding and approach, an overview of how the M&E framework and baseline research design would be determined and timeline of the tasks;
Report on M&E framework including the log-frame to be implemented in the project with detail description of M&E strategies. This report also should include the brief outline of M&E plan with schematic diagram of data flow and MIS implementation plan;
Final report detailing the Baseline Study Design incorporating revised project understanding and approach; sampling strategy; an overview of quantitative and qualitative tools; analysis framework; and timeline.

Estimated Duration to Complete the Expected Outputs & Deliverables:

An inception report (Estimated duration: 5 days);
Finalization of outcome studies and quality assured of all final reports (Estimated duration: 25 days);
Report on M&E framework including the log-frame (Estimated duration: 15 days);
A final report detailing the Baseline Study Design (Estimated duration: 15 days);

Institutional Arrangement / Supervision and Performance Evaluation:

The assignment will be overseen by the International Project Manager, UPPR and coordinated by the M&E Coordinator, UPPR.

Duration of the Work:

The work is estimated to require 60 working days over the period of four months commencing from 1 May 2015 to August 2015.

Tentative Payment Schedule:

1st payment: 5% of total contract value will be paid after submission of An inception report inception report;
2nd payment: 35% of total contract value will be paid after finalization of outcome studies and quality assured of all final reports;
3rd payment: 25% of total contract value will be paid after submission of report on M&E framework including the log-frame;
4th payment: 25% of total contract value will be paid after submission of final report detailing the Baseline Study Design;
5th payment: 10% of total contract value will be paid after submission of final assignment report.

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.

Functional Competencies:

Demonstrate openness to change, flexibility and ability to manage complexities;
Development and poverty knowledge (especially in urban context);
Proven research and evaluation capacities;
Proven ability to write very high quality reports (in the English language);
Proven strong written, networking and communication skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Masters’ degree in economics, statistics, urban planning, social research, policy advocacy, or related area of study.

Experience:

Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible relevant experience at international level with in undertaking research and evaluation work with a focus on effective programme design;
Experience in result based management, monitoring and evaluation is highly desirable;
Experience of managing at least five separate research studies for INGOs or multilateral aid agencies, including at least one in an urban poverty context;
Experience in the design and implementation of surveys, censuses in particular in the areas of questionnaire design, sampling design defining the specifications of analysis;
Previous experience in UN agencies in the area of monitoring and evaluation is desirable.

Language:

S/he must have excellent skills in written and spoken English and capacity to provide high quality reports in a professional and timely manner.

Application procedure:

Financial Proposal:

Financial Proposal will be prepared on lump sum basis and would include:

The Financial Proposal shall consist of a comprehensive budget. The budget will be prepared in USD and would include all fees and associated costs, i.e. professional fee, travel cost, subsistence per diems, etc.
In order to assist UNDP in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposals will include a breakdown of this amount disclosing the key assumption employed in costing the tasks.

The Budget of the successful bidder will be fixed, therefore, comprehensive and all inclusive budget should be prepared. The assignment will be time bound and no extension and/or financial addition is expected to be provided. The price should take into account all HR costs and professional fees, travel costs, DSA, subsistence and ancillary expenses.

UNDP shall effect payments, by bank transfer to the successful bidder’s bank account, upon acceptance by UNDP of the deliverables as specified in the ToR. Payments will be made in tranches based on the following percentages and milestones.

Evaluation of the Candidates:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology.

Cumulative analysis:

The award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant up on Cumulative Analysis/evaluation and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum 70% mark in technical evaluation will be considered eligible for financial evaluation.

Technical Evaluation Criteria (Total 70 marks):

Educational qualifications (10 marks);
At least 10 years of experience in the field of M&E with experience of designing and implementing M&E in at least two multi-lateral projects (20 marks);
Experience in conducting qualitative and quantitative research studies for different development projects (20 marks);
Approach to developing M&E system following RBM and Randomized Control System (20 marks).

Financial Evaluation (Total 30 marks):

All technical qualified proposals will be scored out 30 based on the formula provided below. The maximum points (30) will be assigned to the lowest financial proposal. All other proposals received points according to the following formula:

p = y (µ/z)

where:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

Personal CV or 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;
Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment, and a plan on how they will approach and complete the assignment.

Please group all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.