National consultant to develop Business Continuity Plan for NECOC

Contract

This is a National Consultant contract. More about National Consultant contracts.

Background

Since October 2019, a number of districts in Uganda are affected by floods and landslides. The disaster impact is widespread, causing severe disruptions in the infrastructure systems and access to basic services. Namely, roads and bridges were severely damaged or destroyed causing interruption of transit and isolating several communities/villages. Houses have been destroyed or damaged; schools, health care facilities and equipment, water and sanitation infrastructure in different areas were destroyed and/or severely damaged causing disruptions in access to basic services. In rural areas, crops, plantations and agriculture land were destroyed. In addition, the widespread floods and landslides across the country have affected thousands of people and with dozens of deaths recorded.

On other hand, the second round of locusts outbreak in Uganda occurred, as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarm’s form in parts of east Africa region and spread to Uganda, is threatening Uganda’s food production. Karamoja, the already chronic food insecure sub region of Uganda is under attack from these locusts. This is feared to worsen the food insecurity situation in this sub region.

COVID-19 pandemic became another challenging hazard causing havoc within a country and causing a number of economic and health disruptions. The fight against landslides, floods and locusts is somehow hampered by the occurrence of COVID 19 which diverted attention of actors.

Since the occurrence of the aforesaid disasters, the Government of Uganda, humanitarian agencies, development partners, both national and international, have provided humanitarian relief and emergency assistance. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has mobilized financial resources to support the Government of Uganda in assessing the disaster effects and impacts on human development, crisis response and recovery. Another project is set to enhance national resilience through strengthening coordination mechanisms both at national and local levels. UNDP’s support in this regard is farmed by “Enhancing National Resilience to Multi-hazard Induced Disaster Risks” project.

The project has the following four key objectives to deliver.

• Enhanced Multi-sectoral Coordination Capacity of National (NECOC) and Local Governments (DECOC) for integrated multi-hazard Response;
• Strengthened Disaster Risk Assessment Capacity;
• Enhanced Disaster Risk Communication;
• Improved Border Surveillance and Tracking.

Disasters usually interfere and disrupt the normal functioning of societies and government offices. COVID-19 could be mentioned as a typical example of disaster which has changed the way of doing business.

In the event of a disaster which interferes with government in general and OPM and LGs’ ability to conduct business from one of its offices in particular, there is a need to have business continuity plan. This plan is to be used by the responsible individuals to coordinate the business continuity and recovery of their respective areas and/or departments. The plan should be designed to ensure the normal functioning of key government businesses. For this very reason, under a project titled “Enhancing National Resilience to Multi-hazard Induced Disaster Risks” development of business continuity plan for OPM, Disaster Preparedness and Management Department, and Local Government was planned.

The objective of the Business Continuity Plan is to enable OPM/LGs to coordinate business continuity and recovery of critical business functions in managing and supporting the business recovery in the event of a facilities disruption or disaster. This can include short or long-term disasters or other disruptions, such as fires, floods, epidemics, earthquakes, terrorism, extended power interruptions, and other natural or man-made disasters that interferes with the organization’s ability to deliver essential business services.

The project, therefore, planned to hire consultant to lead and develop the business continuity plan. The consultant will report to and receive guidance from the project coordination group, led by Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and UNDP.

Duties and Responsibilities

Duties:

Conducts risk assessment that include:

• Evaluation of the OPM/Disaster Department and LGs risks and exposures;
• Assessment of the potential impact of various business disruption scenarios;
• Determination of the most likely threat scenarios;
• Assessment of recovery options; and
• Prioritization of findings and development of a roadmap

Conducts Business Impact Analysis (BIA) thorough collecting information on:

• Recovery assumptions, including recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO);
• Critical business processes and workflows;
• Interdependencies, both internal and external;
• Critical staff including backups, skill sets, primary and secondary contacts;
• Future endeavors that may impact recovery; etc.

Undertakes Business Continuity Plan Development

• Synthesizing the Risk Assessment and BIA findings to create an actionable and thorough plan;
• Develop full-fledged Business Continuity Strategy and Plan (national and LG level plans) that the OPM and LGs will control/implement to maintain business continuity in the event of a facility disruption. The plan encompasses actions and proposed recovery team members with lists of the team functions, those individuals who are assigned specific responsibilities, and procedures on how each of the team members is to be notified and Team Procedures that determines what activities and tasks are to be taken, in what order, and by whom in order to affect the recovery;
• Reviews the Business Continuity Plan with key stakeholders to finalize

Responsibilities:

• Conduct consultations with OPM, LGs , stakeholders and partners’ (including national and local governments, representatives from affected communities, civil society agencies and private sector partners) to assess disaster risks and gather inputs for drafting the business continuity plan;
• Conduct desk reviews and establish evidences on importance of business continuity plan and to sharpen recommendations;
• Facilitate (virtually) multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder consultation on the draft business continuity plan to validate priorities identified, confirm feasibility, efficiency, acceptability and sustainability of the approaches proposed;

• Validation: validate that the activities and arrangements proposed in the plan are obtainable/ realistic and meet the objectives that are stated in the BIA. Validate the strategy devised to maintain business continuity in the event of the facilities disruption are also feasible.

  Expected Outputs and Deliverables:?

• Inception Note: work-plan, methodological approach, assessment tools and calendar (timelines) for this consultancy service are developed (deliverable 1);

• Draft Business Continuity Plan for OPM and LGs (deliverable 2);
• Final full-fledged Business Continuity Plan for OPM and LGs incorporating feedbacks from stakeholders (deliverable 3).

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Excellent communications and networking skills;
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team;
• Strong interpersonal and negotiating skills;
• Ability to work in a multicultural environment;
• In-depth knowledge and expertise of business continuity plan development;
• Commendable understanding of shock/threats/hazards in Uganda and knowledge and practice of disaster risk management.

Functional Competencies:

• Communicates effectively both verbally as well in writing to a varied and broad audience in a simple and concise manner;
• Has demonstrable knowledge of disaster risk management, risk assessment, business continuity planning concepts and practice.

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications

Minimum Master’s degree in areas of disaster risk management, public administration, social sciences or other related fields. Additional training and hands-on experience in Business Continuity Planning is an added advantage.

Experience:

• Demonstrated experience in disaster risk assessment and formulating preparedness strategies;
• Proved track record in Business Impact Analysis;
• Established experience in Business Continuity Planning for disaster disruptions and response;
• At least 7 years of professional experience in disaster risk management and planning;
• Strong experience in leading and coordinating discussions and consultations with a range of stakeholders, both national governments, multi-lateral and bilateral agencies;
• Previous work experience with UN, International Organizations and familiarity with processes of tripartite partnerships is an added advantage;
• Experience in developing Business Continuity Plan is highly needed .

Language requirements:

Fluency in written and spoken English is essential.

Proposal Price and Schedule of Payments:

The contract will be based on professional fees presented on a daily rate basis. Consultant must send a financial proposal based on a Lump Sum Amount inclusive of all cost components required to perform the deliverables identified in the TOR, including professional fee, travel costs to duty station, living allowance, medical and travel insurance, and communication. The contract price will be fixed output-based price regardless of extension of the herein specified duration. Payments will be done upon completion and certification/approval of the deliverables/outputs and as per below percentages:

The payment will be made in four milestones upon the completion of the following:

• 20% - Inception Note: work-plan, methodological approach, assessment tools and calendar (timelines) for this consultancy service are developed (deliverable 1);
• 30% - Presentation and Draft Business Continuity Plan for OPM and LGs (deliverable 2);
• 50% -Final full-fledged Business Continuity Plan for OPM and LGs incorporating feedbacks from stakeholders (deliverable 3).

Submission of Application:

The candidate is required to submit an electronic application directly uploaded on the UNDP jobs website with all the requirements as listed here below. Annexes and further information may be downloaded on http://procurement-notices.undp.org no.93465.

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document to this website - http://jobs.undp.org no. 69114.

• Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP (Annex II);
• Personal CV, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.

Technical proposal:

• Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
• A methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment;
• Financial proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (Annex II);
• Annexes 1 and II - may be downloaded from the UNDP Procurement Notices Website -http://procurement-notices.undp.org/. For further clarifications, please contact; [email protected]; [email protected]