Background

As part of the UN country team in Sudan, UNDP aims to contribute to the significant reduction of extreme poverty throughout the country and to support the establishment of a critical mass among Sudan’s people that is ready and able to engage in the development process of the country. In line with the overarching SDG goal “Leave No One Behind” (embedded among others in SDGs 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 and 13), our programme interventions target localities characterized by high levels of poverty and exclusion and those affected by conflict. UNDP Sudan activities are fully aligned with UNDP’s corporate Strategic Plan as well as with the UNDAF currently being developed and embedded in the global SDG framework. To that end, we support stabilization and governance for peace as well as environmentally sustainable development. We pay particular attention to the inclusion of all groups, including women and youth representing the most promising potential for change in Sudan.

As part of the Environmentally Sustainable Development, the Environment, Energy and Climate Change activities focus on strengthening capacities at local, regional and national level to manage and utilize natural resources in a sustainable way, to enhance resilience and adaptive capacity to long-term climate change including variability impacts and to reduce the associated risk of natural disasters.

Given the urgency and seriousness of climate change, the United Nations and Member States have established a new Green Climate Fund to make a significant contribution to the global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change. GCF is now the world’s largest multilateral fund for taking action on climate change, and will contribute to the achievement of the goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the context of sustainable development, through a series of large scale country investments around the world, the Fund will promote a paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. 

Communities in Sudan are exposed to significantly increased risk of malaria and other major diseases due to effect of climate change (NAPA 2007 and INDC 2015). According to the studies, the results have shown that the risk of transmission potential could increase substantially by 2060. Meanwhile, quality of health services is weak and limited access to reliable electrical power across the country in particular in remote area. The Sudan’s proposed GCF project aims to build resilience to climate change risks in health quality services through a highly innovative set of activities by using access to reliable electricity from solar for subsequent scale-up to other vulnerable communities. The key objective of the proposed project is to increase access to high quality health services by ensuring the reliable running of temperature and hygrometry controls, adequate lighting systems, refrigeration, cold rooms and IT networks for efficient stock and management information systems in health facilities. These measures affect to minimize and reverse the impact of weather and climate impacts on communities from increasing climatic variability and climate change. In general terms, these initiatives involve a hierarchy of activities that span risk minimization, risk absorption, and risk avoidance strategies in health sector and improve health services to help save lives of the local people.

Duties and Responsibilities

The international consultant will be responsible for completing the following tasks over a period of 60 working days with the technical assistance of the UNDP country office, the Regional Technical Advisor (RTA) of Climate Change Adaptation, as well as other technical thematic specialists. In total, 4 national consultants (Renewable Energy Specialist; Socio-economist; Gender specialist and Health specialist) will be recruited: national consultants will support the development of the project document and the development of the feasibility study report.

1. Preparation and Submission of a draft Technical Pre-Feasibility Report: The focus area of the project will be the Health Sector, as prioritized in the National Adaptation Programme and Action (NAPA, 2007) and Intended Nationally Determined Contribution Report (INDC 2015) to UNFCCC under adaptation to climate change section. The consultant should prepare a technical pre-feasibility report as per UNDP guideline and GCF best practice, including a thorough situational analysis identifying gaps, needs and barrier profiles and hence the recommended response to these through the project in development.
2. Preparation and Submission of a concept note for GCF Project: The consultant should identify the climate change adaptation risks in the health sector and possible solutions to adapt the risks of climate change. The detailed concept note will also be based on a review of available literature, baseline information, consultations with communities and authorities at the targeted states. The project concept note will be prepared as per the “template of the Green Climate Fund”. The project concept note should target vulnerable communities who are effected by the climate change across the Sudan. The International Consultant should demonstrate how the proposed concept note is fully aligned with UNDP strategic plans; He/she should develop the project baseline including information on policies, plans and programs that are active in the country, highlighting opportunities for synergies and coordination; and indicate risks, that might prevent the project objectives from being achieved, and propose measures that address these risks. He/she should also prepare the project’s Logical Results framework and the project budget as well as suggesting the institutional arrangements and implementation frameworks. He/she should also be able to demonstrate economic viability of the suggested interventions; the Gender Analysis; financial analysis, Environmental and Social Impact Assessment and Environment Social Management Framework; and any other issues that might be raised post to the review of the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Advisor or the GCF secretariat.
3. A field mission to Sudan for conducting stakeholders for further consultation with Task Force Members and relevant stakeholders to validate the concept note: The Consultant should conduct a mission to Sudan and present the draft documents in slide presentations and invite stakeholder feedback, which could be addressed in the finalization of the documents. This consultation meeting would be essential for capturing the comments on the design of the GCF concept note and the Technical Pre-Feasibility report. Additionally, the International Consultant should identify key stakeholders involved in the project including the private sector, civil society organizations, local and indigenous communities, and their respective roles and work with the Programme Specialist Analyst, Sustainable Livelihoods Unit (SLU) within UNDP Sudan to define indicative amounts of co-financing available and the distribution of co-financing among the different components.
4. Finalization of the draft GCF concept note and the Technical Pre-Feasibility report: Incorporation of comments from UNDP, Implementing Partners and UNDP regional Office and Submission of the final concept note and technical pre-feasibility report.

Expected Deliverables and Schedule of Payments:

The deliverable should be submitted in soft copy via e-mail to the Technical Specialist of the Sudan UNDP Sustainable Livelihoods Unit (SLU) and to the Regional Technical Advisor. The consultant has to use the templates of the Green Climate Fund for both the Pre-Feasibility Study and the Project Concept Note.

Institutional Arrangements

The consultant will have direct contact with the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Technical Advisor, Programme Specialist of the Sustainable Livelihood Unit and Task Force members (S4H) comprising Ministry of Health, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electricity, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of International Cooperation and UNDP. National consultants will be contracted by UNDP, to provide remote support to the international Consultant; avail the required data and reports; and co-facilitate the consultation meeting to be held in last week of April 2017. The national consultants will help the International Consultant to prepare and finalize the GCF concept note document and the pre-feasibility report. In addition, UNDP will recruit five international experts (Gender, Environment, Economist, Renewable Energy and Health) and will review pre-feasibility study and project concept note in consultation with the consultant. 

Duration of the Work

The total duration of this consultancy will be (60 working days), spread over a period from 15 May 2017 through to 15 December 2017. However, the initial submission of the concept note and the pre-feasibility study should be before 15 October 2017 to allow for addressing any additional comments by S4H Task Force, UNDP CO and the Climate Change Adaptation Regional Technical Advisor of UNDP. The final submission of the deliverables is 15 October 2017. The initial submission and majority of work (90% of days) should be completed by 15 October 2017. However, the consultant should be available until mid-December 2017 for any additional revisions to the deliverables after the initial submission to the GCF Secretariat.

Duty Station

This is basically a home-based assignment with 2 missions (8 days visits) to Sudan; the first mission is expected to be in 3rd week of May 2017 for conducting consultation meetings with key stakeholders and the 2nd mission is in 1st week of October 2017 for validation meeting with stakeholders for the Concept Note and the Technical Pre-Feasibility report.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies Functional Competencies:

• Corporate Competencies
  • Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
  • Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
  • Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
  • Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
  • Ability to work with a multi-cultural and diverse team.

• Functional Competencies:
  • Proven ability to frame the concept and data that will support to base line information for the project document preparation
  • Demonstrated experience in project design
  • Demonstrated experience in technical issues related to adaptation to climate change
  • Ability to analyze large amounts of complex and diversified data related to climate change adaptation in least developed countries.
  • Demonstrated strong coordination and facilitation skills;
  • Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to initiate discussions about climate change adaptation and reliance issues specifically in the water and agricultural sectors.

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications

• At least a master degree in environment, climate change, Health and Energy Sector or related disciplines.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in climate change adaptation, Health and Energy sector strategic frameworks
• Out of the 10 years experiences at least 5 years’ experience with project development, project designs and result-based management
• Experience with multilateral supported climate change adaptation specially with the new GCF is an asset
• Experience with preparation of technical feasibility report
• Excellent written communication skills, with analytic capacity and ability to synthesize relevant collected data and findings for the preparation of quality project documents and technical feasibility reports

Price Proposal and Evaluation Criteria:

The consultancy fee will be determined on a lump sum basis. The lump sum amount must be all-inclusive and the contract price must be fixed regardless of changes in the cost components. Payment will be made upon completion of key deliverables as outlined in section D above. 

Submission of Offers:

Applicants are kindly requested to complete and sign and submit all the following documents:

1. Duly completed Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV or P11, indicating all experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
3. Brief description of why the individual/company considers him/herself/itself as the most suitable for the assignment, and a methodology on how they will approach and complete the assignment.
4. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided.

Evaluation Criteria and selection of the consultant

The offers received from the candidates will be evaluated using combined scoring method. The combined scoring method assesses the offers with technical merits of the proposals – where the qualifications and methodology will be weighted a maximum of 70%, and later combined with the price offer which will be weighted a max of 30%.

Eligibility Criteria:

1. At least a master degree in environment, climate change, Health and Energy Sector or related disciplines.
2. Minimum 10 years of experience in climate change adaptation and or health and energy frameworks and
3. Out of the 10 years’ experiences at least 5 years’ experience with project development, project designs and result-based management

Technical Evaluation Gird:

The price proposals of candidates obtaining 49 points and above (or 70% and above) will only be technically qualified; then their price proposals will be reviewed and compared for the assessment of overall ranking of the proposals. Those obtaining lower than 49 points (or lesser than 70%) will be technically non-responsive proposals; price proposals of such candidate will not be compared.

Assessment of the Price Proposals (30 Points) or 30%

The lowest priced bid from among the technically qualified Offerors will obtain the full marks of 30 points in the price proposal. Price proposals of remaining qualified bidders will be prorated against the lowest priced bid using the following formula to derive the marks in their price proposal:

Marks obtained by a Bidder = Lowest Priced Bid (amount) / Bid of the Offeror (amount) X 30 (Full Marks)

Award of the Contract/Award Criteria:

The contract will be awarded to the candidate (bidder) whose proposal obtains the highest cumulative marks (points) when the marks obtained in technical and price proposals are aggregated together.