Background

Malawi Government, through the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA), intends to develop national guidelines for conducting multi hazard risk assessment and use of risk profiles. DoDMA has secured funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to implement a Disaster Risk Management for Resilience Programme (DRM4R) in the country. The programme is focusing on institutionalization of DRM in urban and district local authorities, and implementation of priority risk reduction and interventions to enhance resilience in targeted disaster hotspots.

Malawi is experiencing increasing hazards in temporal and spatial dimension, with urban areas becoming more vulnerable to shocks. Additionally, land use planning is not based on credible risk assessment leading to people staying in hazard prone areas and undertaking development, livelihoods or economic activities in unsafe locations. Disaster risk management interventions have been implemented, both structural and non-structural in some of the high risk areas. Most of these do not complete their life span because some designs are not based on credible risk assessments.

A number of stakeholders have conducted risk assessments in the country at various scales. However, these have usually been at small-scale, aligned to projects, focus on a single hazard, done using different methodology and the usage of risk products has been limited. There is also no regular collection of data that would help track and update performance of other sectors in mainstreaming DRR. Most of these challenges stem from lack of trained and skilled local personnel to conduct risk assessment and apply risk profiles in their work. A key shortfall is lack of guidelines to guide these risk assessments and also on how to use risk profiles produced. The lack of common tools and guidelines for risk assessments and detachment of risk assessments to government planning have created coordination and implementation challenges. Regular risk assessment and risk monitoring could support regular collection of information that would help the government to have an up-to-date master risk profile, linked to government Disaster Risk Management Information System as well as monitoring and evaluation systems. To address these gaps, the DRM4R Programme will, therefore, support development of guidelines for conducting risk assessments and use of risk profiles.

The Guidelines will be used in the national risk assessment that the country plans to undertake, as well as any other risk assessments done for specific projects or local authorities. The guidelines on risk assessments and use of risk profiles will assist in creating a standardized assessments methodology and approach, while ensuring that stakeholders are aware of how to use the risk profiles generated for various purposes. These guidelines will help guide stakeholders to harmonize efforts, will help DODMA track implementation of risk reduction and recovery programs that include building back better, and will also help reporting requirements to global agreement like Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. DoDMA, through UNDP, intends to engage the services of an international consultant to facilitate the development of national guidelines on risk assessments and use of risk profiles.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant is expected to develop national guidelines for conducting multi hazard risk assessment and usage of the risk profile and provide training (including development of necessary materials) to selected officers from national and local government.The consultant will propose the most appropriate methodology to execute the assignment in line with the expected deliverables. He/she will, at a minimum, analyze all relevant information sources, such as previous risk assessment reports, DRM Bill, DRM Operational Guidelines, national guidelines on DRMPs and relevant documents that may provide input on how the assignment should be approached. He/she is expected to facilitate stakeholder consultations at national and sub-national levels and facilitate workshops for presentation of the draft guidelines. Specifically they will:

• Conduct a stakeholder mapping on organizations that have conducted risk assessments and how such products have been used;
• Conduct a scoping exercise on tools and methodologies used in risk assessment among different players in Malawi, and do a SWOT analysis;
• Conduct a willingness to pay analysis for risk assessments services and their products;
• Analyse all relevant information sources, such as relevant reports related to the DRM policy, MH risk assessment reports, DRM plans and relevant documents that may provide input on how the assignment should be approached;
• Consult different assessments done in Africa and other countries including recent assessments done in 16 countries though UNDRR.
• Develop guidelines on conducting risk assessments and usage of risk profile in DRM programming in the guidelines. The guidelines will be developed through a consultative process that will also require travel to a selected local authorities
• Conduct training on risk assessment and use of risk profiles, focusing on both probabilistic and traditional qualitative participatory risk assessments, including development of relevant training modules.

Competencies

• Communication skills and skills in digital media;
• Consultation skills;
• Team management skills;
• Planning skills;
• Demonstrated knowledge of different methods of disaster risk assessments
   

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

• Minimum of Master's degree in any of the following areas: Economics, Disaster Risk Management, Risk Analysis, Physical Planning,  Geography, Climate Change Management or Environmental Sciences.

Experience:

• The consultant must have a minimum of seven years of progressive relevant experience, with practical knowledge in disaster risk management and/or climate change adaptation.
• Experience in conducting probabilistic deterministic and qualitative multi-hazard risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, including hazard mapping.
• Experience in the development of national guidelines and other instruments on disaster risk management and/or closely related areas.
• Ability to use participatory tools and geospatial technologies (GIS and remote sensing). Those with additional qualification in GIS will have a distinct advantage.
• Experience in working with central and local government actors, civil society actors and communities in developing country context
• Excellent analytical, report writing and presentation skills.
• Ability to manage social development dialogue processes.

Language:

• Fluent in English.

Contract Duration:

• The assignment will run from June, 2020 to Auust 2020

Management:

• The Consultant will be accountable to UNDP Deputy Resident Representative (Programmes). The day-to-day assignment and contact will be managed through a Portfolio Manager – Resilience and Sustainable Growth - to whom the Consultant will report directly.

Language:  English.

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications by 26th May 2020, before 5 pm to the following email address: procurement.mw@undp.org.

Technical Proposal:

• A technical proposal detailing applicants understanding of ToRs, proposed methodology, applicants CV.Contacts (email and phone) of 3 former clients or referees.
• A detailed list of similar assignments (copies of these maybe requested as necessary) that the consultant has conducted in the past. Proposals not meeting this requirement will be rejected.

Financial Proposal: An Offer letter including financial proposal breaking down cost for each operational line and professional fees. (form attached)

Contracts based on daily fee.

• The financial proposal will specify the daily fee, travel expenses and per diems quoted in separate line items, and payments are made to the Individual Contractor based on the number of days worked upon satisfactory completion of the required deliverable.

Travel:

• All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station in Lilongwe/repatriation travel.

Evaluation of proposals:
Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodologies:

Cumulative analysis:
When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Responsive/compliant/acceptable, and
• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Technical Criteria weight; 70 points

Financial Criteria weight; 30 points

Criteria A: Technical (based on Technical proposal) 70%

• Minimum educational background and work experience 20%
• Understanding of the assignment from the ToRs 20%
• Methodology and experience with similar assignments 30 %

Criteria B: Financial  (based on financial proposal) 30%

Combined Total Score (Maximum); 100 points.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points in the Technical Evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

The financial score for the financial proposal will be calculated in the following manner:

• Sf = 100 x Fm/F, in which Sf is the financial score, Fm is the lowest price and F the price of the proposal under consideration.
• (Total Financial Maximum points = 100 points)

Total Score:

• The technical score attained at by each proposal will be used in determining the Total score as follows:
• The weights given to the technical and financial proposals are: T= 0.7, F=0.3
• The Total score will be calculated by formula: TS = St x 0.7 + Sf x 0.3
• TS - Is the total score of the proposal under consideration?
• St - is technical score of the proposal under consideration.
• Sf - is financial score of the proposal under consideration.