Afghanistan: Team Lead, Third Party Monitoring, Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), Kabul, Afghanistan

Team Lead, Third Party Monitoring, Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF),

Kabul, Afghanistan

Company Profile: MSI, a Tetra Tech Company, is a Washington, DC metro area international development firm with a 35-year history of delivering development results across the world. Our core expertise is in the fields of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), institutional development, public sector management, governance and anti-corruption. MSI has implemented projects in 90 countries around the world such as Jordan, Kenya, Indonesia, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Colombia, and Mexico. As one of the leading companies in our field, MSI has partnered with organizations across all sectors of international development to support clients ranging from large bilateral and multilateral donors such as USAID, the World Bank and the UNDP to national and local governments, NGOs, think tanks, foundations and universities. For more information on MSI, please visit our website at www.msiworldwide.com.**
Position Summary **

The World Bank's Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) was established in 2002 to provide a coordinated financing mechanism for the Government of Afghanistan (GoA)'s budget and priority national investment projects. Today, the ARTF remains the vehicle of choice for pooled funding, with low transaction costs, excellent transparency and high accountability, and provides a well-functioning arena for policy debate and consensus creation. It is the largest single source of on-budget financing for Afghanistan's development and is delivering important results within key sectors including education, health, agriculture, rural development, infrastructure, and governance. The ARTF is supported by 34 donors and administered by the World Bank.

Since 2015, the World Bank has engaged Management Systems International (MSI), a Tetra Tech company, to provide third party monitoring (TPM) and verification for select ARTF projects. The World Bank established the ARTF TPM program to achieve the following objectives:

1. Given an increasingly challenging security environment, the TPM program provides critical data from the field as input to the World Bank's implementation support and GoA line ministries' own monitoring systems. The TPM program provides data on nationwide project sites, including asset verification and quality assurance, where World Bank staff are not always able to systematically visit the sites of geographically widely disbursed projects.
2. The TPM program provides additional evidence that World Bank-funded programs are being implemented correctly, and provides assurance to donors, focusing on infrastructure quality assurance and social and environmental safeguards, gender issues, and select financial/fiduciary aspects.
3. MSI serves as the Supervisor Agent (SA) which provides GoA line ministries with project monitoring and data collection support, and shows how such practices could improve GoA project performance and results. This also helps strengthen GoA line ministries' own monitoring programs. The SA reports directly to the World Bank, but also works closely with GoA line ministries responsible for project implementation at local and central levels.

Each year, MSI conducts remote and participatory monitoring at over 1,900 sites distributed between five (5) ARTF projects (including roads, schools, canals and other infrastructure) in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

The team lead (TL) will provide overall management to MSI's third party monitoring team, including subcontractor oversight, and will be the primary point of contact between the World Bank task team leaders (TTLs) in Kabul and MSI. The TL will lead the technical design, implementation, data analysis/quality assurance and reporting for third party monitoring. The TL will ensure completion of all third party monitoring deliverables in Afghanistan and related contract compliance.

Responsibilities

The Team Lead's responsibilities within the scope of the ARTF Monitoring Program include:

• Provide overall team management, guidance, direction, and administrative and technical support to the contract.
• Lead the technical design, implementation, data analysis, and report writing aspects of the project.
• Ensure that the quality of the data collected in the field is valid and in line with the technical design of the project.
• Manage MSI's Afghanistan team, including office set-up, personnel recruiting and training.
• Serve as the main point of contact between the World Bank Afghanistan mission and MSI.
• Ensure compliance with the World Bank contract and GoA regulations.
• Ensure completion of all project terms of reference with World Bank TTLs, including site selection, checklist and survey design, monitoring guidelines, report formats, etc.
• Manage implementation and updating of the program's monitoring terms of reference, monitoring, evaluation, and learning plan, data management plan, capacity development plan, quality control plan and security plan as needed.
• Ensure on time submission of well-written weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, ad hoc reports and other deliverables in the required formats.
• Oversee project staff management of GoA workshops to review monthly findings and recommended corrective actions.

• Present program results to the World Bank in Kabul, Afghanistan.

• Communicate frequently and regularly with home office-based support staff.

• Liaise with GoA ministry and World Bank implementation teams in order to determine data collection, reporting, site selection, etc. specifications for monitored projects.

• Manage expat TPM manager, expat deputy TL of operations, expat M&E advisor, and local team of field engineers, citizen monitors and knowledge managers to successfully implement the ARTF infrastructure monitoring workflow, including but not limited to sub-project site selection, mission planning, field data collection, report processing, location verification, content quality assurance, report preparation and submission as well as GoA ministry coordination meetings. Work closely with other MSI and partner teams to ensure efficient monitoring workflow.

• Review and correct, if needed, all monitoring reports prior to submission to the MSI home office. Communicate any monitoring activity shortcomings to the applicable knowledge manager(s), field engineer(s) and citizen monitor(s). Take the appropriate steps to improve team and individual performance when and where needed.

• Ensure organization and implementation of monthly and quarterly workshops with GoA ministries to discuss the utilization of MSI findings, probable deviation causes, as well as possible solutions.

• Ensure periodic (re)training of field engineers and knowledge managers to ensure monitoring plans are accurately met in a timely manner.

• Perform other program-related duties as required to achieve program objectives at a high standard of quality.

Qualifications

The TL shall bring the following skills, education and experience to the monitoring program:

• Master's degree in international development or a related field.
• At least six (6) years of increasingly responsible experience leading international development programs, with at least three (3) years in a fragile state, preferably working in Afghanistan.
• Previous experience implementing third party monitoring programs utilizing mobile and web-based applications for data collection and processing, writing individual and periodic monitoring and verification reports and conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis.
• Previous overall monitoring and evaluation experience strongly preferred.
• Excellent oral and written communication, analytic, interpersonal and management skills.
• An understanding of the indicator framework and monitoring and verification methods employed by the donor community in Afghanistan.
• Experience with MS Office as well as data visualization software.

Only candidates who have been selected for an interview will be contacted. No phone calls, please.

MSI is an EEO/AA/ADA Veterans Employer.

PI101710969

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