Background

1. Project Title

00137889 - Umbrella Programme for Socio-Economic Development

1. Project Description 

For the last four decades, Saudi Arabia has realized and sustained remarkable progress along the socioeconomic development path. As a result of this, the Kingdom has been able to move to a high-income country. The GDP, for instance, increased from SR156 billion in 1969 to SR 2,631 billion in 2018, putting the Economy among the top 20 global economies in terms of size. Based on the annual ranking of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the Human Development Report, Saudi Arabia has steadily moved from the medium human development category in the 1990s to the very high human development category in 2018 at 0.857 value of HDI.

The Saudi Vision 2030 represents an ambitious resolve with long-term goals and expectations founded on the strengths and capabilities of the Kingdom. It covers the three themes of a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an ambitious nation. A thorough review of the three themes and their underlying issues of national concern would reveal a holistic approach to development that encompasses the three dimensions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the social, the economic and the environmental.

The Umbrella Program for Socio-Economic Development is a partnership between the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP) and UNDP that aims at mainstreaming social and economic development, national policies, and sectoral and regional plans. It focuses on mobilizing technical assistance and capacity development to MEP to facilitate economic and social transformation, including economic diversification, and inclusive and accelerated economic growth. Specifically, the program framework covers the following main areas:

• SDGs monitoring and reporting.
• Policymaking, policy analysis and regional development planning.
• Producing the National Human Development Report

Within this context, the project seeks to recruit a Senior Territorial Development Expert to support the "Sectoral and Regional Development Affairs" Deputyship at the Ministry of Economy and Planning (Regional Development Affairs Department) at MEP to improve and maintain the Territorial development toolkit of the Department. The Expert will also focus on capacity building and transfer of knowledge to the Regional Development Affairs Department.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Scope of Work

Consultants typically work for consulting firms or as self-employed individuals to help clients succeed in a specialized area. They use their background within one or more industries to offer professional guidance to corporations and individuals. Their job is to evaluate information about their clients to establish growth plans and identify potential errors that affect their client’s success.

They may also be responsible for overseeing the completion of training initiatives, marketing events or other strategic components to ensure success.

Duties and responsibilities

The consultant will:

• Develop Economic diversification strategies
• Design policies, regulations, and ecosystems
• Develop a National Industrial Strategy
• Produce comprehensive recommendations and studies
•  Conduct interviews, surveys, technical working groups, and focus groups
•  Apply sophisticated methodologies and systemic analysis for solving challenges

Deliverables:

Competencies

Competencies

• Conceptualizes and analyzes problems to identify key issues, underlying problems, and how they relate
• Excellent track record of creating high-performing and effective teams
• Ability to identify beneficiaries’ needs and to match them with appropriate solutions
• Shares knowledge and experience and provides helpful feedback and advice
• Excellent communication and interview skills (with groups and individuals)
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to negotiate with diplomacy and tact
• Focuses on results for the client and responds positively to feedback
• Ability to handle a large volume of work, possibly under time constraints
• Strong time management and deadline-sensitive abilities
• Remains calm, in control and works well under pressure
• Excellent report writing skills.

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, and nationality sensitivity and adaptability

Functional Competencies:

• Ability to handle effectively multiple tasks without compromising quality, team spirit, and positive working relationships
• Highly savvy in program design and implementation with strong knowledge- base in the Urban field or National transformation processes.
• Demonstrated ability to conceptualize, develop and oversee complex program implementation.

Management and leadership

• Excellent communication, organizational and management skills
• Focuses on the impact and results of the client
• Demonstrate conflict resolution skills
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive-constructive attitude.
• Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors
• Effectively manages teams and creates an enabling work environment
• Effective coacher and mediator

Institutional Arrangement

• The expert will be reporting to the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economy and Planning and UNDP focal person. A detailed work plan for the expert’s duties and responsibilities will be formulated by the MEP.
• Reporting and follow-up Mechanism: The Expert will report monthly to his/her supervisor and to the Senior Programme Associate Advisor. The Specialist will submit monthly reports to his/her supervisor, including activities, outputs, performance indicators, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations.

The Duration of the Assignment

• The expected duration of work is 12 Months, with the possibility of an extension.
• The anticipated starting date of the assignment is 1st of March 2023. And the expected date of full completion of all tasks under this assignment is 29th of February of 2024.

The Duty Station

• The assignment will be in-country (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). He/ She will be embedded within The Advisor and will be based at the Ministry of Economy and Planning. 
• If unforeseen travel outside the consultant's home-based city is requested by UNDP and not required by the Terms of References (ToR), such travel shall be covered by UNDP in line with applicable rules and regulations and upon prior written agreement. In such cases, the consultant shall receive living allowances not exceeding the United Nations (UN) Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) rate for such other location(s).

• Note: A written approval from UNDP and relevant authorities will be required to facilitate the consultant's travel to any locations than stated on this TOR on official missions where necessary.

Working Arrangements:

• All mission travels must be approved in advance and in writing by the supervisor.
• United Nations Development of Safe and Security – BSAFE course must be successfully completed prior to the commencement of travel.
• The Consultant is responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when travelling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director.
• The consultant is also required to comply with the UN security directives.
• The consultant is responsible for obtaining any visas needed in connection with travel with the necessary support from UNDP.
• The consultant will be responsible for submitting his/her own mission travel arrangements in line with UNDP travel policies.
• The consultant is responsible for required health and life insurance related to work or travel.
• The consultant is expected to have his/her own Laptop/Computer.

Required Skills and Experience

 Education:

• A Master's degree in economics, international Economy, Business Administration, Public Policy, or a related field is required.Experience:
• At least 20 years of progressively responsible relevant experience involving the application of economic principles and policies at the national and international levels.
• At least 15 years of experience in the construction of tools, composite indexes, and model-based analyses (Geographic Information Systems)
• Proven experience in the provision of economic development policy advice to the government
• Proven experience in Preparing reports and economic studies.
• Knowledge of GCC and KSA development situation and challenges
• Extensive experience and understanding of the existing studies and tools related to the economic analysis
• Experience in n drafting policy documents and analytical reports.

Language: 

•  Excellent command of English (both written and spoken) is Mandatory.
• Knowledge Arabic Language is an asset but is not mandatory.  

Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments:

All proposals must be expressed in a lump sum amount. This amount must be "all-inclusive". Please note that the terms "all-inclusive" implies that all costs (professional fees, living allowances, communications, consumables, etc.) that could possibly be incurred are already factored into the final amounts submitted in the proposal.

Payments shall be made to the individual contractor upon successful completion and certification by UNDP that services have been satisfactorily performed, based upon the actual number of working days and accomplishments of each deliverable.

Payment shall be made as a deliverables-based lump upon the receipt of the deliverables and certification of satisfactory performance by UNDP.

The Expert will share a Certificate of Payment (CoP) where he/he needs to indicate achieved outputs. Then the certificate of payment must be verified by the UNDP Team and certified by UNDP top management. The Expert is advised to keep a detailed timesheet of the days worked and tasks performed throughout the consultancy assignment. A bi-weekly update of the timesheet will be requested, and such documentation will support the payment process as deemed needful.

1. Recommended Presentation of Offer

For purposes of generating Offers whose contents are uniformly presented and to facilitate their comparative analysis, it is best to recommend the preferred contents and presentation of the offer to be submitted, as well as the format/sequencing of their presentation. The following documents may be requested:

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. 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.
3. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the template provided. If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP. 

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

Applicants are shortlisted based on the Required Skills and Experience stated in the TOR.

The selection of the best offer from the shortlisted candidates will be based on a Combined Scoring method – where the qualifications and methodology will be weighted a max. of 70% and combined with the price offer, which will be weighted a max of 30%.

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Step I: Screening and Desk Review

Technical Criteria (CV review and Desk Review/Interview optional) – maximum 70 points. Only candidates who obtained at least 70% of points from the CV desk review (who will score at least 49 points) will be considered for the next evaluation stage, i.e., financial evaluation.

Applications will be first screened, and only candidates meeting the following minimum criteria will progress to the pool for shortlisting:

Technical Evaluation (70 Points, 70% weight)

Financial evaluation - Total 30% (30 points)

The following formula will be used to evaluate the financial proposal:

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

Instructions for online submissions

Step 1:  Please prepare all required documents electronically.

Step 2: Combine all documents in ONE SINGLE FILE (preferably in PDF; however, Word format can also be accepted) and upload to the UNDP Jobs links

Step 3: After that, you will receive an auto-reply from the UNDP jobs if your offer is received successfully.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

Given the volume of applications that UNDP receives, only shortlisted offerors will be notified.

UNDP reserves the right to reject any incomplete applications.

Please be informed that we don't accept applications submitted via email.

Interested Offerors are required to submit an application via UNDP Jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP Jobsite system. Please note that UNDP Jobsite system allows only one uploading of application documents, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your online application submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows you to upload a maximum of one document.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email mohammed.abbas@undp.org  with a copy to huda.alsaud@undp.org the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 3 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted on the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain updates related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice.

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.

Interested applicants are advised to carefully review this advertisement and ensure that they meet the requirements and qualifications described. 

The interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=97440

 for more detailed information about terms of references, instructions for the offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer online.

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.