Vacancy Announcement: Consultant

Consultancy Title: Country Forecast and Supply Planning Improvement Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Health Section – PG – NYHQ

Duration: 1 April 2024 – 30 December 2025

Home/ office Based: REMOTE

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection, and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations, and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

The goal of immunizing children everywhere is premised on timely availability of vaccines and supplementary materials and the prevention of expiry, unexpected wastages, and overstock. To achieve this, Immunization planning requires dedicated forecasting which triangulates statutory needs with consumption, wastages and variations in product requirements including during diverse disruptions.

While most countries conduct forecasts at the national level based on aggregated target populations and (in few instances) previous consumption, there are wide disparities across sub-national needs and key unreached and underserved populations are not directly and systematically planned for.

To ensure that bottlenecks to providing immunization services to all populations are removed, including recent backsliding due to the pandemic, in-country stakeholders must be supported to ensure that sub-national vaccine and immunization products needs forecasts and supply planning are dynamic and innovative; and that stakeholders while they monitor/triangulate expiry, manage both stock-outs and overstocks and mitigate avoidable wastages; there must be targeted prioritization of unreached and underserved populations. Strengthening stock management systems will be critical to this.

UNICEF and partners recently finalised a forecasting and supply planning (FSP) toolbox- a suite of guidelines, guidance, frameworks, tools, SOPs etc. to provide end to end forecast and supply planning strengthening to national and sub-national stakeholders. As part of operationalizing the toolbox, two FSP trainings held for in-country stakeholders from 35 countries across five (5) regions, where improvement roadmaps were developed.

To support with the roadmap action items, UNICEF is seeking one (1) Country Forecasting and Supply Planning Improvement Consultant to provide expertise in updating current FSP tools, reflect inputs from stakeholders, provide operationalization support and produce evidence of FSP strengthening operationalization.

The consultancy assignment will be supervised by the Health Specialist, Immunization Supply Chain and the consultant will collaborate with a wide range of partners in iSC2, regions and countries. The team does not currently have funding to cover all planned activities that continue until the end of 2025. Some deliverables are planned to be completed if additional resources become available.

Scope of Work:

Under the supervision of the Health Specialist, Immunization Supply Chain, Country Forecast and Supply Planning Improvement Consultant will:

• Development of FSP Prototype and Tool
• Operationalization of FSP Prototype and Tool
• FSP and iSC Strengthening activities
• Country support and capacity building
• FSP Support Scale-up

Consultant requires UNICEF email address while engaging with stakeholders across global, regional, and country levels on above as this is critical to receiving and managing sensitive government supply chain data.

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

Development of FSP Prototype and Tool – By 30 June 2024

• Prototype of FSP tool developed and shared with inputs from global, regional, and country stakeholders appropriately reflected in prototype.
• V1, v2 and v3 of FSP tool developed with feedback from engaging with global, regional, and country stakeholders.
• One produced document of lessons from development and operationalizing of FSP prototype versions informs development of one (1) requirement document for the online FSP tool.

Operationalization of FSP Prototype and Tool – By 31 September 2024

• Conduct trainings for 10 countries (covering national and sub-national stakeholders) on use of FSP prototype tool to strengthen preparation for, development and review of forecasts and supply plans in 10 countries – This includes at least six (6) in-country trainings.
• Team member of FSP Technical Working Groups, Donor engagement and produce ten technical briefs/decks and five informational materials.
• Produce evidence, including two case studies, two articles and three news items based on lessons from development and operationalization of FSP tools.

FSP and iSC Strengthening activities. – By 31 October 2024

• Approach and guidance for min-max stock levels informed FSP developed and incorporated into Forecasting toolbox and FSP tool.
• FSP Assessments conducted in 10 countries.
• FSP methodologies and tools appropriately linked with four iSC tools and functions including (not limited to) stock management (Thrive 360), vaccine arrival reports, cold chain inventory systems etc.

Country support and capacity building – By 31 January 2025

• Five forecast reviews prepared for 5 countries.
• Feedback on forecasts and supply plans in five countries provided.
• TORs with clear roles and responsibilities updated for five countries.
• Five countries FSP teams set up.
• Five countries and 2 regional FSP strengthening workshops are facilitated.

FSP Support Scale-up – By  31 December 2025

• Ten countries’ stakeholders are trained on use of new FSP tool (one training per country)
• Ten forecast reviews prepared.
• Feedback provided on forecasts and supply plans for ten countries.
• TORs with clear roles and responsibilities are updated for 10 countries
• Ten countries FSP teams are set up.
• Prepare one (1) technical requirement document to support development of revised version of online/excel FSP tool.
• Five (5) FSP strengthening evidence materials (2 articles, 2 case studies and 1 news material) are developed.

Qualifications

Education:

An advanced University Degree in Engineering, Public Health, Supply Chain, Development Studies, Social Sciences, Business or Public Administration or related field is required., or other relevant fields.

Work experience:

• At least (8) years of experience in international public health programming including at least three (3) years in immunization and immunization supply chains, with experience in low- and middle-income countries.
• Experience with health systems strengthening including supply chain strengthening.
• Experience with engaging multiple stakeholders at countries’ national and sub-national levels, including communicating ideas in a collegiate manner
• Experience in planning, coordination and working with teams in different time zones is a must.

Competencies/Knowledge:

• Familiarity with in-country supply chain processes and strengthening such as stock and logistics management, inventory policies, allocation, ordering and distribution strategies, temperature monitoring, waste management and other supply chain operations.
• Very good knowledge of country’s national and sub-national forecasting processes and practices.
• Very good knowledge of country forecasting bottlenecks and diverse methodology to address these.
• Very good knowledge of programmatic practices to identify, design, target, measure, and document evidence from supply chain/immunization interventions that seek to reach unreached and underserved populations including remote rural, urban slums, conflict settings etc.
• Ability to work in the multi-cultural environment.

Requirements:

Completed profile in UNICEF’s e-Recruitment system and

• Upload copy of academic credentials
• Financial proposal that will include/ reflect:
  • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability.
• Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.
• At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.
• Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants. Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.