Emergency Programme Manager – Engineering WASH, Surge Team
Our vision, our mission and our work are all defined by one goal – ending extreme poverty, whatever it takes. We believe that no-one should have to live in fear that they won’t have a home to sleep in or enough food to feed their children. For over 50 years we have been working with the world’s poorest people towards this goal.
Today we are a team of over 4,400 highly skilled and dedicated professionals from 50 countries who share an exceptional depth and diversity of experience. We want committed, values driven staff to join our HQ team and are currently looking for an Emergency Programme Manager – Engineering WASH, be part of our Surge Team in our Emergency Directorate.
We are committed to providing our staff with the skills needed to excel in their jobs. Concern offers in-house management and leadership courses and tailored organisation-wide learning opportunities both in-person and online. All employees are required to undertake training in equality, diversity and inclusion; the Code of Conduct; and safeguarding, along with any other training required for the role.
Our culture is values driven and friendly. A global engagement survey conducted in 2022, responded to by 3,577 of our staff, showed that 89% of our staff would happily recommend Concern as a great place to work and 94% are proud to tell people that they work for Concern.
Members of Concern’s Surge Team will be deployed to various Concern country programmes for varying time periods ranging from six weeks up to six months. When not deployed, team members will work from home.
Contract details:
- 8 weeks annual leave increasing to 10 weeks after completion of first full year and R+R where applicable
- Up to 3 week’s home-based work
- All Surge Team members must be available to travel overseas within 24 hours of being requested to deploy
- Unaccompanied position
The job: To respond quickly and flexibly to new emergency situations and to provide management, technical advice and support to Concern’s water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure projects, in order to improve the quality and sustainability of these projects. While this role focuses mainly on supporting WASH interventions it may also be required to support other types of engineering works and infrastructure projects, such as emergency/transitional shelter, road, school or clinic construction. To fill appropriate staffing gaps in non-emergency programmes and existing chronic emergencies. This may involve deployments in a specialist advisory as well as programme management capacity.
If you join us, this is what you will be doing:
Emergency response:
- Participate in emergency assessments.
- Plan and implement infrastructure/WASH/technical aspects of emergency response and recovery projects.
- Develop action plans to ensure timely and effective delivery of engineering/WASH support and other programme components as needed.
- In association with logistics staff, advise on procurement and distribution of engineering and/or WASH materials and on-site and store management.
- Assist Concern and partner staff on technical project design, the supervision of on-going works, and adherence to legal, contractual and professional standards.
Programming:
- Ensure that standards of technical quality for our engineering interventions are in line with good international practice and are appropriate to the operating context.
- Ensure that any design elements of the intervention are appropriate to requirements and meet good practice standards.
- Provide technical advice and support to all programme teams in planning and budgeting of construction activities, including supporting the development or assessment of engineering designs and approving these where appropriate.
- Ensure that, in all WASH/engineering interventions, robust contracts consistent with good practice (e.g. FIDIC) are developed and adhered to in a manner consistent with organisational standards and processes.
- Support staff or partners with contract tendering and contractor selection and other aspects of contract management as requested.
- Provide technical support to field staff for their community mobilisation work related to construction, the management of infrastructure and the promotion of hygiene and sanitation.
- Explore and promote innovative approaches to address engineering needs of our programme responses.
Administration, Finance, Logistics and HR Systems:
- Manage any associative HR, Logistics, Finance and Administration functions.
- Ensure full contractual management of any relevant projects.
- Ensure that line managed staff are adequately supported and receive regular performance development reviews in line with Concern policy and procedures.
- Ensure core Concern policies including the Concern Code of Conduct and associated policies are upheld by all members of the team, ensuring that all staff and partners are informed of and trained on the various policies and report actual or suspected cases of breaches to the relevant country team for action.
Monitoring and Evaluation:
- Conduct reviews at field level of WASH/engineering work when requested.
- Provide support to field teams to develop systems for monitoring the operation, maintenance and management of infrastructure.
- Plan, design and lead (or otherwise participate) in formal evaluations of Engineering/WASH projects and programmes as required.
Ensure consistency with Concern’s policies, strategies, etc.:
- Ensure that WASH and construction projects are designed in such a way as to reduce risk and vulnerability and inequalities among the beneficiary population and that disaster risk reduction issues are considered.
- Provide support to field teams in writing and/or reviewing funding proposals and donor reports.
Networking role:
- Develop and manage relationships with engineering groups or other networks globally that can provide technical support to Concern programmes.
- Represent Concern in various engineering/WASH-related consortia, fora, clusters, working groups and conferences where appropriate and on request.
Training and capacity development:
- Conduct site visits as requested to build the performance capacity of Concern’s WASH/engineering staff.
- Develop and/or provide input to guidance manuals, and technical or policy documents as needed.
Support Functions:
- Assist in the recruitment and training of engineering field staff as requested.
- Demonstrate leadership on workplace equality, diversity and inclusion and role modelling a positive safeguarding ethos.
Skills you will bring:
Essential:
- Chartered Civil or structural Engineering (preferred) or other relevant engineering/WASH qualification.
- At least 5 years of professional and progressive experience in the field of civil engineering/WASH (or similar) including logistics and supply work. In emergency response situations.
- Significant infrastructure contract development and management experience.
- At least three years of experience with NGOs or other agencies in low income countries on hardware/software components associated with WASH projects and programmes
- Experience in training and capacity building of local contractors, technicians, government technical staff and working with community groups, etc
- Understanding of the role of quality assurance and advisory functions and how they link and contribute to overall programme quality.
- Good collaboration and interpersonal skills with local, national and civil society stakeholders.
- Excellent English – written and spoken
- Excellent report writing skills.
- High level IT skills – word processing and Excel, AutoCAD proficiency.
Desirable:
- Training/post graduate qualification in contract management and use of participatory methods – assessment/ management and monitoring, etc
- Contract management experience with managing large scale WASH and infrastructure projects.
- Experience in construction of non-WASH infrastructure such as emergency/transitional shelter, road, school or clinic construction.
- Working command of French – written and spoken
You will report to the Head of Emergency Operations overall and between deployments, and to the Country Director/Programme Director while on deployment. You will manage relevant programme staff in country when deployed.
The salary is from €51,402 to €60,472 (band 5) and this is a 2 year full time, fixed term contract
We encourage all eligible candidates, irrespective of gender, ethnicity and origin, disability, political beliefs, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status to apply to become a part of the organisation. Concern is against all forms of discrimination and unequal power relations, and is committed to promoting equality.
If this role sounds right for you, please apply with your CV and cover letter. We will respond to every applicant. Please be aware we may offer positions before the closing date.
If you have any concerns about our recruitment process and need particular assistance – for example if you have a visual impairment or are neuro-divergent – please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you.
