Regional WASH Specialist – Infrastructure Quality at World Vision | April 2024

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

Local – Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term)

Job Description:

Purpose of the position

The Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Business Plan outlines our strategy to leverage $1 billion between 2021 and 2025, impacting 15 million people with safe water, 14 million people with improved sanitation, and 18 million with improved hygiene. As part of our goal to demonstrate sustainable impact, we are working to define and foster a Culture of Quality (COQ) to maintain infrastructure quality as our programming grows in complexity. Therefore, this position aims at creating a COQ to strengthen and promote reliable, long-lasting services in the communities and sound stewardship of donor funds for increased impact.

The position will oversee the Culture of Quality (COQ) strategy implementation primarily in the East Africa region and specifically in the listed countries: Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda 

​Major Responsibilities:

1. Strategic Priorities & Technical Oversight

• Working with WVI WASH SLT and Support Offices Technical leads to outline a strategy to improve organizational quality culture including shared messaging, quality-specific objectives, and a plan for adaptive management.
• Support the Regional WASH Director and Support Offices to manage WASH infrastructure activities in the designated duty counties by providing quality assurance and quality control for the design and construction of limited to medium-scale WASH infrastructure, which are to be in compliance with WVI and Global WASH standards, environmental and construction codes, reporting, and management requirements.
• Developing and maintaining a quality management system for WASH infrastructure.
• Provide technical guidance on WASH infrastructure design
• Routine reporting on quality metrics to the regional WASH Director
• Working with 10+ countries to build technical capacity and implement their country-specific quality management strategy
• In collaboration with other leaders, lead training on quality and technical issues (e.g., adequate supervision, hydraulic modeling best practices, material sourcing)
• Serving as a quality ambassador for your region of responsibility including presenting on quality-focused topics at routine meetings and conferences
• Performing periodic audits and surveys to understand our culture of quality and ways to improve
• Review of WASH infrastructure designs including engineering standards adherence, review of contracts, and review of material selection for adherence to World Vision policies
• Participating in audit reviews and post-audit corrective action plan development

2. Resource Development (Prepositioning work, programs development & grants management)

• Support prepositioning for donor funding where necessary and participate in regional networks raising the profile of World Vision.
• Establish networks and alliances with stakeholders in the field for the purpose of enhancing program quality.

     3. Evidence and Learning  

• Contribute towards completion of WVI inventory of WASH assets in the global monitoring and evaluation database. Support in the data critical for updating monitoring of WASH programs and mapping of WASH assets using geographical information systems.
• Ensure accountability by using evidence and learning, analysis, and interpretation of data to provide regional evidence of impact for the sector.
• Coordinate the documentation, publication, and dissemination of promising quality assurance/quality control practices across the partnership.
• Promote adoption and scale-up of promising practices, project models and innovations in the WASH infrastructure domain.
• Facilitate cross-learning between NOs, learning from Support Offices (SO), other regions and peer organizations
• Contribute to the development of annual regional impact reports in collaboration with SEL, Communications, and the other sector leads.

4. Collaboration and cross-functional working

• Participate in the global WASH community of practice and major sector networks in the region.
• Mobilize technical expertise across the region, ensuring effective knowledge management, learning, and continuous improvement of programming in the region.
• Collaborate with key regional entities on defined collaboration matrix and joint projects

6. General Responsibilities

• Contribute towards other regional office strategic initiatives and Technical Working Groups (TWGs) as necessary.
• Providing direct support during the planning, design, procurement, and installation of WASH infrastructure depending on NO needs
• Provide key quality improvement input by closely overseeing WASH infrastructure projects and activities undertaken by contractors in the field.
• Support National Offices in the production of tender documents, contracts, and bills of quantities and provide inputs on WASH infrastructure site selection, surveys and designs, specifications, deliverables, and evaluation criteria.
• Collaboration with Supply Chain in bid evaluations to aid in the selection of qualified contractors or vendors for WASH procurements.
• Perform any other tasks assigned by the Regional WASH Director and World Vision US Quality Assurance and Control Engineer.

Qualifications:  Education/Knowledge/Technical Skills and Experience

Essential:

• Bachelors’ degree in Engineering – Civil, Electrical or Mechanical required 
• Master’s degree strongly preferred in engineering, water policy, water resource management, economics, business, industrial engineering, or another complementary discipline. 
• Work experience of 10+ years required in areas of water and sanitation design, construction, supervision, and quality assurance/quality control data collection.  
• Engineering license in country of residence 
• Demonstrated competencies using Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, EPANET, and/or other alternative software 
• Demonstrated competencies in interpersonal communication, stakeholder engagement, and cultural intelligence 
• Demonstrated experience working in cross-functional and remote teams for the purpose of program implementation, development of technical standards, and resource acquisition.
• Excellent facilitation skills, strong interpersonal communication skills, both verbal and written, strong negotiation, diplomacy, strong leadership, and teamwork skills.
• Strong written and oral communication skills in English
• Also required are analytical skills for synthesis of materials, evaluations, and preparation of presentations/articles for publication as well as experience in a PC environment and the MS Office suite of software.
• Experience in working with faith organizations, faith actors, and faith-related issues in development
• Experience in HEA and fragile contexts. 
• Effective in written and verbal communication in English.  Additional languages representative of the countries WV serves in an advantage.

Preferred:

• Master’s degree in Water or Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering
• Experience developing and implementing quality assurance / quality control programs for WASH infrastructure or for other industries.
• Proven experience leading WASH infrastructure development programs in a variety of contexts. 
• Experience working with and managing large grants in sector programming for major bilateral and multilateral donors.
• Previous experience working in a Country Office/National Office or Regional Office setting will be advantageous.
• Experience working in fragile, conflict, post-conflict, and/or difficult operating environments is preferred.
• Experience with mWater use, or any other water mapping technology
• East Africa experience is highly preferred.
• Female applicants are encouraged to apply.

Working Environment / Conditions:

• The position requires the ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 40% of the time.

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local Applicants Only