Background

UNDP Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has corporate responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan.  BPPS’s staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogue initiatives, South-South and Triangular cooperation initiatives and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas.  BPPS works closely with UNDP’s Crisis Response Unit (CRU) to support emergency and crisis response.  BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working.  BPPS supports UNDP and partners to provide high quality, technical support to UNDP Country offices for the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programme support activities.  

In liaison with the Bureau of Management (BoM), the Resources and Operations Management (ROM) Unit enables the effective and efficient delivery of policy advisory and support functions by BPPS.  It ensures internal control, HR and ICT coordination, and the delivery of high quality, compliant, in-house and outsourced operational functions for BPPS. 

Under the overall guidance of Operations and Finance Advisor and direct supervision of the Travel Analyst, the Travel Associate will support travel related services in BPPS ensuring high quality and accuracy of work in order to obtain the optimum travel services. He/she supports analyses and interpretation of rules and guidelines regarding travel and entitlements and provides solutions to a wide spectrum of complex issues related to travel.  The Travel Associate monitors travel expenditures and internal cost and ensures their timely and accurate billing, settlement and cost recovery. The Travel Associate promotes a collaborative, client-focused, quality and results-oriented approach in the delivery of travel services.

The Travel Associate works in close collaboration with the Travel Unit in BoM and Regional Hubs, Programme and Operations Teams in BPPS/HQ and outposted BPPS units, other UN agencies staff and travel agencies to exchange information and ensure consistent service delivery. S/he reports to Travel Analyst.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will be responsible for the following outputs and related activities:

Implementation of effective travel management processes for BPPS

  • Full compliance of administrative and travel management ensuring that services are performed in adherence to UN/UNDP rules, regulations, policies and strategies;
  • Review and approval of Travel Requests and Expense checklists at Level 1 in Atlas ensuring accuracy of all computations, availability of budget and completeness of supporting documentation;
  • Follow-up with Travel Unit and/or contracted travel agent to ensure provision of high quality professional service and most competitive price;
  • Provision of information to the staff on travel including entitlements, travel route and hotel arrangement;
  • Processing of travel authorization and travel claims in line with travel entitlements for staff, consultants, UN and visitors, and that the travel arrangement follow the UN rules of most direct route and most competitive prices;
  • Support as required to ensure arrangements for security clearance (when required), visas, requests for UNLPs and/or UN Pass have been made for international staff;
  • Reconciliation of settlements to be paid by the Finance Unit.

Review reports from the Travel and Expense Module in ATLAS

  • Identifying and generating periodic reports from the Travel and Expense module;
  • Review and analysis of the information to ascertain the accuracy of the data;
  • Synthesis of data to conduct a spot check of the various travel-related expenses;
  • Offer of guidance and training to BPPS units towards empowering them to carry out the spot checks, and improving their understanding and compliance with policy in the processing of travel-related expenses.

Review and Process Travel Request/Expense Reports/ Travel Claims (F-10)

  • Regular review of sample of Travel Requests and Expenditure Reports for single and multi-leg itineraries;
  • Review of ATLAS reports to ensure that a checklist is completed after every trip has been finalized.Submission of exception reports where checklists have not been completed;
  • Review of a sample of F-10 documents processed by the various BPPS units for accurate application of travel policies;
  • Reviews to be based on application of entitlements in accordance with UNDP travel and financial rules and regulations;
  • Review of complicated and multi-leg-itinerary F-10 documents to ensure that correct entitlements are applied and that UNDP rules and regulations are complied with.

Institutional Arrangement:

The consultant will report to the Travel Analyst, BPPS.

Duration of Work:

This is a temporary consultancy appointment. The duration of work will be from the earliest date of availability of individual and last until 16 October 2015.

Competencies

Core competencies

  • Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
  • Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN;
  • Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
  • Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional competencies

  • Strong theoretical knowledge on UNDP policies and procedures travel management;
  • Hands on experience in processing tranactions in tlas Travel module (ERP system;
  • Demonstrated ability to communicate complex issues in a concise and clear manner.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Secondary Education with specialized training in procurement and travel desirable;
  • University Degree in Finance, Business or Public Administration desirable, but it is not a requirement.

Experience:

  • 7 years of relevant administrative experience in the areas of administration or travel service;
  • Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and knowledge of automated systems, experience in handling of web based management systems;
  • Familiarity with the UN System, in particular UNDP.

Language Requirements:

  • Proficiency in written and spoken English;
  • Good working knowledge of another official UN language is an asset.

Application Procedures and 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 shall submit their application through UNDP job shop and include:

Step 2: Submission of Financial Proposal

  • Only applicants meeting all minimum requirements and obtaining a minimum of 70% on technical evaluation will be approached for submission of financial proposals and considered for the Financial Evaluation;
  • Financial proposals must be all inclusive and must be expressed on the basis of a daily fee in USD (United States Dollar);
  • Payment will be made upon monthly submission of a certificate of payment request, indicating outputs achieved and days worked to be verified and cleared for payment by the supervisor.

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

  • Only those candidates who meet the minimum level of education and relevant years of experience requirements will be considered for the technical evaluation;
  • The technical evaluation will include a desk review and may also include interviews with shortlisted candidates;

The following evaluation criteria will be used for the desk reviews:

  • General experience relevant to the position - 20 points;
  • Experience in managing travel in complex, diverse, multi-cultural environments – 15 points;
  • Familiarity with UNDP and UN system - 15 points.
  • In case if interviews are also conducted, evaluation criteria will be based on the competencies and qualifications requirements in this Terms of Reference;
  • Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% on technical evaluation will be considered for the Financial Evaluation;

For the financial evaluation (30% of total obtainable scores) the following formula will be used:

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

The selection of the best offer from the shortlisted candidates will be based on a Combined Scoring method – where the technical evaluation (desk review and interview) will be weighted a maximum of 70%, and combined with the price offer which will be weighted a maximum of 30%.

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