Background

With a rapidly growing population of presently close to 32 million, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia faces a number of challenges including growing urbanization and environmental change. While urbanization poses great pressure on regional water and sewage infrastructure and bears pollution risks, environmental challenges include depletion of aquifers and increasing torrential flood risks. Earning relatively high annual revenues from natural resources, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in development and upgrading infrastructure during the past few decades, including in water and sewage infrastructure, road networks, housing, hospitals, and schools.

Due to Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture’s (MEWA) recent initiatives, efficient water use and governance in the municipal and irrigation subsector, reuse of wastewater and exploitation of shallow aquifers caused significant reduction of groundwater abstractions.

Nevertheless, a set of bolstering measures towards sustainable water supply even in stress and emergency situations and minimizing the climatically induced environmental risks needs to be formulated. These actions or interventions simultaneously should target the supply side; curtail water demands in various productive sectors; and mitigate the environmental risks.

However, to make a transition from the current patterns of water administration to sound water management mode, two prerequisites are required. First, there is strong need to strengthen the technical and organizational capacities of the MEWA to deal with the triple challenge of water exploitation and distribution (operational side), research for additional resources and cutting-edge technologies to satisfy the increasing demand (research side), and rigid control and administration of all water-related aspects (control side). Second, a sound information base covering data on groundwater availability, quality, withdrawal, and usage is about to be put in place.

The transformation of this information into an all-encompassing water resources management requires sustained long-term efforts, especially since the MEWA has limited capacity and experience in this field. It needs to go a long way in terms of development and strengthening its technical capacities in order to be able to meet its mandates.

To this effect MEWA partnered with UNDP Country Office to address challenges being faced in capacity development and strengthening institutional role of the Ministry. The project has been designed to initiate a systematic process of capacity development to help in sustainable development of water resources and management of water-related affairs in the Kingdom to ensure permanent and sufficient supply.

Annual evaluations are set within this project document to ensure targets are met and course of action corrected when needed during the lifetime of the project. This 2019 annual evaluation, the first since the start of the project, is meant to gauge the progress of all outcomes, in terms of delivery and also in how far the indicators are being met and to recommend the changes needed.

This intervention requires working with all heads of departments involved with the various outcomes as well as all consultants on the project and other relevant project and ministry staff.

The evaluation will take place in Riyadh, within the offices of MEWA but may require meetings with various national stakeholders .

Basic Project information can also be included in table format as follows:

Duties and Responsibilities

Methodological approaches:

• Evaluation should employ a combination of both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods and instruments.
• Document review of all relevant documentation. This would include a review of inter alia
  • Project document (contribution agreement).
  • Theory of change and results framework.
  • Programme and project quality assurance reports.
  • Annual workplans.
  • Activity designs.
  • Consolidated quarterly and annual reports.
  • Results-oriented monitoring report.
  • Highlights of project board meetings. 
  • Technical/financial monitoring reports.
• Semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders
  • Development of evaluation questions around relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability and designed for different stakeholders to be interviewed.
  • Key informant and focus group discussions with men and women, beneficiaries and stakeholders.
  • All interviews should be undertaken in full confidence and anonymity. The final evaluation report should not assign specific comments to individuals.
• Surveys and questionnaires when relevant or meetings not possible
• Field visits and on-site validation of key tangible outputs and interventions.
• The evaluator is expected to follow a participatory and consultative approach that ensures close engagement with the evaluation managers, implementing partners and direct beneficiaries.
• Other methods such as outcome mapping, observational visits, group discussions, etc.
• Data review and analysis of monitoring and other data sources and methods.
  • Ensure maximum validity, reliability of data (quality) and promote use; the evaluation team will ensure triangulation of the various data sources.

The final methodological approach including interview schedule, field visits and data to be used in the evaluation should be clearly outlined in the inception report and be fully discussed and agreed between UNDP, stakeholders and the evaluators.

Evaluation products (deliverables):

• Evaluation inception report (10 pages max). The inception report should be carried out following and based on preliminary discussions with UNDP after the desk review, and should be produced before the evaluation starts (before any formal evaluation interviews, survey distribution or field visits) and prior to the country visit in the case of international evaluators.
• Evaluation debriefings. Immediately following the evaluation, UNDP expects a preliminary debriefing and findings.
• Draft evaluation report (within an agreed length). The programme unit and key stakeholders in the evaluation will review the draft evaluation report and provide an amalgamated set of comments to the evaluator within two weeks of receiving draft, addressing the content required (as agreed in the TOR and inception report) and quality criteria as outlined in these guidelines.
• Evaluation report audit trail. Comments and changes by the evaluator in response to the draft report should be retained by the evaluator to show how they have addressed comments.
• Final evaluation report.
• Presentations to stakeholders and/or the evaluation reference group (if requested in the TOR).
• Evaluation brief and other knowledge products or participation in knowledge-sharing events, if relevant.
• One-page evaluation summary to be presented to HE the Minister. The one pager is to highlight key achievements of the project and their impact.  

A length of 40 to 60 pages including executive summary is suggested.

Competencies

People Management:

• Empowers team managers to act independently
• Holds  units accountable for  setting challenging goals
• Sets high peer standards for measuring success and provides encouragement
• Anticipates and solves organizational conflicts
• Models best corporate practices and highest ethical standards
• Creates an atmosphere of trust; builds acceptance and seeks diverse views, cultures and individual needs within the team
• Actively mentors and develops leaders

People Skills:

• Promotes a learning and knowledge sharing environment
• Facilitates the development of individual and multi-cultural/team competencies

Managing for Results:

• Plans and prioritizes work activities to meet organizational goals
• Strategic approach to problem solving

Partnering & Networking:

• Builds and sustains relationships with key constituents (internal/external/ bilateral/ multilateral/public/private; civil society)
• Seeks and applies knowledge, information, and best practices from within and outside of the project
• Demonstrates the ability to handle working relationships with senior officials, academics and technical experts.

Innovation & Judgment:

• Conceptualizes and analyzes problems to identify key issues, underlying problems, and how they relate
• Generates creative, practical approaches to overcome challenging situations
• Devises new systems and processes, and modifies existing ones, to support innovative behaviors
• Provides technical backstopping to the short-term consultants and coordinate and facilitate their operations;
• Advises and assist in designing, implementation and enforcement of the monitoring assessment framework;

Required Skills and Experience

Required qualifications:

• Ph.D. degree in relevant discipline, minimum 10 years’ experience in evaluations, preferable in the field of Water Resources Management, knowledge of Saudi, region or similar context, a plus.

Technical competencies:

• Evaluation skills and experience, technical knowledge.

Language skills required:

• Fluent English, knowledge of Arabic considered an asset.