Project Manager

Agency UNDP

Title Project Manager MZ

Job ID 36771

Practice Area - Job Family Democratic Governance

Vacancy End Date (Midnight New York, USA) 27/04/2021

Duty Station Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Education & Work Experience G-Bachelor's Level Degree - 7 year(s) experience, I-Master's Level Degree - 5 year(s) experience

Languages Required: Desired: English

Grade SB4

Vacancy Type Service Contract (SC)

Posting Type External

Bureau Europe & the CIS

Contract Duration 12 months

Only BiH citizenship

Background

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.

The Strengthening the Role of Local Communities (Mjesne Zajednice/MZs) project is a joint project of the Government of Switzerland and the Government of Sweden, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). The overall goal of the second project phase is to improve the quality of life of the citizens of BIH through empowered, gender responsive local communities (MZs) that facilitate active citizen engagement in public life, stand for people-centred performance of local governments and catalyse democratic transformation at the local level. The project focuses on encouraging community led local development and revitalising community governance through MZs in order to achieve this goal. MZ is the smallest administrative unit for direct government engagement with citizens in BIH. With the budget of USD 10 million, the project is geared towards working with 41 local governments and 200 MZs in the country, with the hopes of extending practices to at least additional 10 local governments and their adjoining MZs. The project aims to reach over 400,000 beneficiaries.

The focus of this project phase shifts towards wide horizontal upscaling and replication of successful legislative and institutional approaches, as well as maintaining the policy dialogue that help empower MZs at the local level. Hence, efforts will be channelled along the following three outcomes:

Outcome 1: Local governments create a conducive environment that enables pro-active engagement of MZs in decision-making and community-led local development.

Outcome 2: MZs as legitimate and sustainable community spaces translate citizens’ voice into quality, gender-responsive and inclusive services and use MZ networks for replication of successful MZ models countrywide.

Outcome 3: Higher government authorities take responsibility and act in response to increased citizens demand for an improved MZ regulatory framework, moving forward broader local governance reforms at country level.

The project's implementing strategy will be to support and drive forward change from bottom-up by engaging citizens and communities and giving them a voice in local governance processes, and by revitalising MZs as spaces where citizens come together to interact, to identify and solve problems, to transmit their concerns to the local government and participate in the ways it makes its plans, spends money, and takes decisions that affect people’s lives. In doing so, the project places MZs and their communities at the centre of its work, while also relying on a broad range of relevant stakeholders to sustain and expand project results and increase democratic accountability. This approach will be capitalised upon to address the current flaws in the system, and to build momentum and drive forward the process of local governance reform to produce long term and sustainable change. To reach this goal, the project will build on successes from Phase 1, utilize existing legitimate local governance structures and processes to implement planned interventions, thus ensuring that improvements related to capacity of MZs and LGs, quality of service outcomes, enabling MZ-related regulatory environment and accountability of municipal decision-making processes are embedded and sustained within the system. The project will seek to develop partnership with civil society organizations as strategic partners and potential owners of the future actions.

The Project Manager will be based in the UNDP BIH office in Sarajevo with frequent field travel.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the direct supervision of the Sector Leader, the Project Manager will assume the overall responsibility for the management of the project. In line with the relevant project documents, UNDP rules and regulations, as well as the UNDP internal control framework, the Project Manager will have the following main functions:

• Overall project management and supervision of the project team.
• Policy advice and technical guidance in the course of project implementation.
• Project monitoring, reporting and quality assurance based on the principles of result-based management.
• Partnership and advocacy.
• Mainstreaming gender equality and ensuring knowledge management.

1. Overall project management and supervision of the project team:

• Provides the overall leadership and ensures coordination of the activities in close consultations with the donors, project partners and other stakeholders.
• Applies programming tools and policies in line with the UN Result-Based Management Approach, prepares annual activity and procurement work plans, as well as budgets based on expected year-end outputs.
• Builds, motivates, and leads a high performing team consisting of project personnel, expert consultants, service providers, and conducts performance assessments of team members.
• Provides direction and guidance to the project team and responsible parties, where applicable.
• Reports to the Project Board to assure the overall direction and integrity of the project implementation.
• Secures proper and efficient use of projects budget, as per the project documents.
• Ensure full accountability, transparency, and the principle of competition in the allocation of resources, procurement of services, works and goods and selection of recipients.
• Manages financial allocations and approves expenditures according to the authority delegated and ensures timely payments in accordance with UNDP rules and regulations.
• Ensures that all UNDP project management quality standards are observed and applied in the project implementation.
• Presents the project to all relevant stakeholders and acts as a UNDP lead focal point for the project.
• Complies with security and safety requirements and regulations and ensures the same are respected by all project personnel.
• Ensures that the project is implemented in line with UN and/or UNDP procedures and PRINCE II.

2. Policy advice and technical guidance in the course of projects implementation:

• Provides conceptual guidance and technical advice to the project team and projects counterparts, with focus on sustainable solutions, including women empowerment and gender mainstreaming.
• Identifies sources of information related to policy-driven issues, identifies, and synthesises best practices and lessons learnt directly linked to project goals.
• Provides advice and inputs to UNDP strategic analytical reviews and studies in the field of local governance, community engagement, citizen participation and similar.
• Ensures strategic synergies and coordination with other relevant interventions.
• Enhance, whenever possible, the capacity building focus of the local community development projects.
• Ensures that achieved policy and legislative results will be mainstreamed within the project field work, other relevant UNDP-implemented interventions, as well as promotes their application beyond UNDP scope of work.
• Advises on issues of further programme development, including writing of concepts and proposals, as well as resource mobilisation.

3. Project monitoring, reporting and quality assurance based on the principles of results-based management:

• Reviews on a regular basis project details, schedules, deliverables, and budget as articulated in the Annual Work Plans - AWP (evidence of progress towards expected outputs, according to schedule, within budget) with the project team.  
• Ensures close monitoring of activities in line with the project monitoring plan, guiding the design and regular use of adequate project monitoring tools and systems, enabling evidence-based tracking of progress, achievements, and results, against the project logical framework indicators.
• Conducts field visits and quality checks of project events, sites, activities and deliverables.
• Monitors and analyses the projects progress, using applicable monitoring and evaluation and risk management tools in ATLAS.
• Ensures data and information inputs, as necessary, to the regular Country Office programme monitoring and reporting processes.
• Ensures that all project-related issues and risks are identified and reported in a timely manner and suggests corrective measures.
• Ensures the existence of successful quality assurance for financial, procurement and administrative processes in order to make sure that they are conducted in line with prevailing UNDP rules and regulations as well as in line with the project timelines.
• Ensure high quality reporting on progress and financial expenditures to the project’s donors.

4. Partnership and advocacy:

• Establishes good working relations with relevant institutional and organisational partners, as well as with relevant international organisations.
• Provides inputs in identification of linkages between the projects and other relevant UNDP and non-UNDP implemented interventions, in the country, or beyond, maximizing the efficient and effective use of resources.
• Participates in UNDP programme-level committees and working groups, national and international forums, making substantive contributions as appropriate.
• Encourage active participation of all stakeholders in order to promote empowerment and ownership of national counterparts and stakeholders.
• Advises management in preparing for high-level consultation meetings with donors and government authorities.
• Advocates with relevant governments in the country for legislative changes.
• Leads strategic cooperation with the Associations of Municipalities and Cities and local governments for creation of long-term solutions for the MZs/community resilience/local development.
• Ensures wide dissemination and visibility of project achievements.

5. Mainstreaming gender equality and ensuring knowledge management:

• Ensures gender mainstreaming throughout the project activities, work plans, budgets, reports, research, analyses and, where specifically relevant, analyse it in detail.
• Supports continuous learning by the project team and contributes to the UNDP in-house thematic knowledge and practitioners’ networks.
• Prepares analytical reviews and systematically captures lessons learnt from the project implementation, identifying follow-up actions, and submitting them for consideration to the Project Board.
• Establishes connections of exchange and learning with national and regional local development networks and resource persons.
• Ensures all project products and heritage are duly stored and made available to the broader programme.

Impact of Results

The general impact of this post will be reflected in the overall effective and efficient implementation of the project, as defined within the project document. The key results have an impact on local development, strengthening of local governance, social inclusion, and vitalisation of local communities in BIH.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

Advocacy/Advancing A Policy-Oriented Agenda / Level 1.2: Preparing information for advocacy:

• Identifies and communicates relevant information for a variety of audiences for advocating UNDP’s mandate.

Results-Based Project Development and Management / Level 1.2: Contributes into results through primary research and analysis:

• Assesses Project performance to identify success factors and incorporates best practices into Project work;
• Researches linkages across Project activities to identify critical points of integration;
• Monitors specific stages of Projects/Project implementation;
• Analyzes country situation to identify opportunities for Project development;
• Participates in the formulation of Project proposals and ensures substantive rigor in the design and application of proven successful approaches and drafts proposals a

Building Strategic Partnerships / Level 1.2: Maintaining a network of contacts:

• Maintains an established network of contacts for general information sharing and to remain up-to-date on partnership related issues;
• Analyzes and selects materials for strengthening strategic alliances with partners and stakeholders.

Innovation and Marketing New Approaches / Level 1.2: Enhancing processes or products:

• Generates new ideas and approaches, researches best practices and proposes new, more effective ways of doing things;
• Promotes and persuades others to consider new ideas.
• Takes calculated risks on new and unusual ideas.

Resource Mobilization / Level 1.2: Providing inputs to resource mobilization strategies:

• Analyzes information/databases on potential and actual donors;
• Develops a database of Project profiles. Identifies opportunities for Project proposals for presentation to donors.

Promoting Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing / Level 1.2: Basic research and analysis:

• Adapting to change and engaging in continuous learning and critical thinking to promote the growth of the individual and the organization.
• Documents and analyses innovative strategies and new approaches.

Job knowledge /Technical Expertise / Level 1.2: Fundamental knowledge of own discipline:

• Understands and applies fundamental concepts and principles of a professional discipline or technical specialty relating to the position
• Possesses basic knowledge of organizational policies and procedures relating to the position and applies them consistently in work tasks
• Strives to keep job knowledge up-to-date through self-directed study and other means of learning;
• Understanding of the overall political, administrative and institutional context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and neighboring countries;
• Familiarity with key local and regional public policies and trends related to peacebuilding;
• Demonstrates good knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments;
• Demonstrates in-depth understanding and knowledge of the current guidelines and Project management tools and utilizes these regularly in work assignments.

Client Orientation / Level 1.2: Establishing effective client relationships:

• Researches potential solutions to internal and external client needs and reports back in a timely, succinct and appropriate fashion;
• Organizes and prioritizes work schedule to meet client needs and deadlines;
• Anticipates client needs and addresses them promptly.

Core Competencies:

• Demonstrating/safeguarding ethics and integrity.
• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
• Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation.
• Self-development, initiative-taking.
• Acting as a team player and facilitating teamwork.
• Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to convey complex concepts and recommendations, both orally and in writing, in a clear and persuasive style tailored to match different audiences.
• Able to identify priority activities and assignments and allocate appropriate time and resources for effective and efficient work completion.
• Creates a work environment which minimizes stress and ensures an even distribution of workload.
• Creating synergies through self-control.
• Excellent conceptualization and analytical skills.
• Managing conflict.
• Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each employee.
• Informed and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking and develop mitigation strategies.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Advanced university public administration, development studies, economics, political sciences, or other related areas.
• BA degree with additional two years of qualifying work experience may be accepted in lieu of MA.

Experience:

• Five years of proven professional experience in the field of local governance, local development, and community development in BIH (Seven years is required with BA)
• Relevant work experience in project management; previous experience in managing similar projects is considered an asset.
• Rich previous experience in partnering and interaction with governmental institutions at state/entity/local levels, as well as with civil society organisations.
• Previous practical work at the community/MZ level is a distinct asset.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English and the official languages of BIH, with excellent drafting and presentation skills.

Other:

• Excellent computer skills (especially Microsoft Office applications) and ability to use information technologies as a tool and resource.

Disclaimer

Important applicant information

All posts in the SC categories are subject to local recruitment.

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