Background

Organizational Context

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat, is the agency for human settlements and sustainable urbanisation. It is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. Leading efforts to advance UN system-wide coherence for sustainable urbanisation, UN-Habitat is playing a key role implementing the Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015 as well as the New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016.

Founded in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, was established with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration, aiming to promote collaboration and cooperation among Member States, as well as, to advance the interests of the region as-a-whole. Today, there are currently 10 Member States: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, forging ahead together towards the achievement of ASEAN Community Vision 2025.

Since 2008, UN-Habitat and the ASEAN Secretariat have engaged in a variety of UN and ASEAN Secretariat engagements. Most notably, UN-Habitat has been developing a new generation of sub-regional programmes which target all or selected ASEAN countries, especially in the area of cities and climate change. Meanwhile, the Bangkok Office of UN-Habitat is increasingly engaged in knowledge programmes with fellow UN agencies, on issues of migration, health, resilience and urban data in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and implementation of the New Urban Agenda.

About the project

Half of the 600 million people in the ASEAN region already live in urban areas and by 2025 a further 70 million people in ASEAN will be city dwellers. Seeking to address this “mega-trend” of urbanization, the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy (ASUS) was launched at the 22nd ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) Meeting in November 2018, as one of the initiatives under the ‘Sustainable Infrastructure’ strategic area of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) 2025.

Nearly one year after its launch, the ASUS and its two accompanying toolkits remains key to raising the standards of living of the citizens of ASEAN, enhancing shared prosperity of cities and regions, as well as strengthening climate action and resilience. In this regard, the period between 2020-2021 will be crucial to accelerating the implementation of the ASUS, with a special emphasis on small to medium-sized cities and intermediate cities, which are witnessing most of the growth in the ASEAN region over recent years and which will continue to exhibit significant upward population and economic trends.

As such, the accelerated implementation of ASUS will provide ASEAN cities with the opportunity to prioritize actions to achieve sustainable urbanisation, while implementing practical activities customised to their unique city contexts, designed to raise the standards of living of those within ASEAN which lie at the core of the New Urban Agenda and ASEAN Community Vision 2025.

Towards this end, the ASUS has been disseminated to city networks in ASEAN, with many cities in each of these networks sharing common priorities and concerns. While some technical support is provided through the various city networks in ASEAN, further resources are needed to help cities develop credible action plans and/or financially viable project proposals. As part of this project, an implementation plan integrating several initiatives and intended to accelerate sustainable urbanization during the period of January 2020-June 2021 (Phase 1) could support the achievement of the expected ASUS outcomes by 2025, with a second phase of intensified action at the local level between 2022 to 2025.

In summary, these initiatives and proposed key outputs in Phase 1 includes:

1. Technical advisory support to 8 selected pilot cities within ASEAN established as leaders in ASUS implementation in developing high-quality proposals within the ASUS Framework;
2. Organisation of an ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Forum bringing together diverse stakeholders from across ASEAN and supporting the development of improved urban policies;
3. Research and development of a report detailing the “State of Urbanisation in ASEAN”.

Duties and Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

The Local Project Officer - ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation, will be responsible for the coordination of project development and management of the project in the city location. The regular tasks include:

City Technical Support

• Conduct of preliminary background assessment to understand the needs and capacity of the local government partner and areas which the proposed intervention is intended to address.
• Coordination with National, local Authorities and key stakeholders to perform participatory and consultative city diagnosis and action plan development in each selected ASEAN pilot city;
• Preparation of the technical proposals in alignment with specifications outlined by UN-Habitat and ASEAN requirements, based on relevant documents and materials provided;
• Analysis of technical proposals to include areas not limited to (i) Definition of the Intervention
• (ii) Aim and Objective of the Services (iii) Context and Rationale (iv) Scope and Deliverable of Services (v) Strategic Impact and Risk Assessment and (vi) Implementation;
• Support peer-to-peer exchanges between ASEAN pilot cities regarding the proposed interventions
• Provide information to the dedicated lead author for the Report on State of Urbanisation in ASEAN including support in the identification of subject matter experts.

 Meetings Coordination

• Support in-country arrangements for project review and follow-up missions;
• Support the city-specific contribution to the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Forum and associated events;
• Coordinate document preparation, compilation and dissemination to meeting participants and key stakeholders including National, local Authorities and Local Project Officers;
• Support research information in support of project materials and activities and assist with translations, interpretation and other support to the Project Team Leader as required;

Country Office support

• Performing other relevant tasks related to urban development/project implementation as necessary and required by the Habitat Programme Manager, Cambodia.

Monitoring and Evaluation

• Regular monitoring and reporting on all project activities with partners and stakeholders to ensure a high quality of outputs being delivered within the agreed upon time frame;
• Support scoping studies and data collection to evaluate the interventions within the local strategic context and helping to address the feasibility, potential impact and any barriers;
• Supporting the mainstreaming of gender, environmental and social issues into the project activities and carrying out social and gender analyses across all project deliverables;

 Expected Outputs and Deliverables

With reference to the tasks captured in the scope of work in the previous section, the Local Project Officer will be required to complete and provide the following deliverables as part of the contract:

Institutional Arrangement

The project will place a Local Project Officer in each of the selected ASEAN pilot cities. Under the overall guidance of the UN-Habitat Regional Representative, Regional Office of Asia and the Pacific, and with direct supervision of the Chief of UN-Habitat Bangkok Office supported by the Project Team Leader - ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation. In each country, the UN-Habitat Country Office will help assess the performance of the Local Project Officer and provide inputs to substantive activities.

Duration of Work

The duration of assignment will be from 10 August 2020 to 9 May 2021 over 9 months. The maximum no. of working days is expected to be 110 days.

Duty Station

The assignment is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as a duty station with domestic travel expected along with the possibility of international travel in the South-East Asia region.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism.

 Technical Competencies:

• Analytic capacity and demonstrated ability to process, analyse and synthesise complex, technical information;
• Proven ability to support the development of high quality knowledge and training materials, and to train technical teams;
• Proven experience in the developing country context and working in different cultural settings.

 Communication:

• Communicate effectively in writing to a varied and broad audience in a simple and concise manner.

 Professionalism:

• Capable of working in a high pressure environment with sharp and frequent deadlines, managing many tasks simultaneously;
• Excellent analytical and organizational skills.

Teamwork:

• Projects a positive image and is ready to take on a wide range of tasks;
• Focuses on results for the client;
• Welcomes constructive feedback.

Required Skills and Experience

Requirements

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

Consultant must send a financial proposal based on Lump Sum Amount. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, medical insurance etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal. The contract price will be fixed output-based price regardless of extension of the herein specified duration.

If applicable, travel or daily allowance cost (if any work is to be done outside the IC’s duty station) should be identified separately.

Payments shall be done upon verification of completion of deliverables/outputs and approval by the IC’s supervisor of a report indicating deliverables in the period and as per below percentages:

In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon between the respective business unit and the Individual Consultant prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

In general, UNDP shall not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

Travel costs shall be reimbursed at actual but not exceeding the quotation from UNDP approved travel agent. The provided living allowance will not be exceeding UNDP living allowance rates.

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology

Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted technical criteria (70%). and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

Technical Criteria for Evaluation (Maximum 100 points)

• Criteria 1 Relevance of Education – Max 10 points
• Criteria 2 Work experience - Max 70 Points
• Criteria 3 Language requirement – Max 20 points

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% of the total technical points would be considered for the Financial Evaluation. Interview session may be conducted if needed.

Applicant receiving the Highest Combined Score and has accepted UNDP's General Terms and Conditions will be awarded the contract. The successful candidate will hold a UNDP Contract.

Recommended Presentation of Offer

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

a)  Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability and Financial Proposal using the template provided by UNDP;

b)  CV, Indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references;

c)  Brief description of why the applicant considers him/herself the most suitable candidate

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. The short-listed candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified

Annexes:

Annex I - TOR_UNHabitat_LocalProjectOfficer_Cambodia
Annex II General_Terms_and_Conditions_for_Contracts_IC
Annex III Offerors Letter to UNDP_and_Financial_Proposal
Annex_IV_P11 Form_for_ICs_optional

***All documents can be downloaded at: https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=68082

For any clarification regarding this assignment please write to procurement.th@undp.org under subject: JobAds 92864 - Local Project Officer - ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation_Cambodia