Project Management Support Senior Assistant

Under the supervision of the Project Management Support Specialist, the Project Management Support – Senior Assistant is responsible for providing efficient and integrated support to the operations of the Infrastructure Project Management Group (IPMG) and Procurement Group (PG). The operations of both groups are managed together by Portfolio Support. 

Maintaining the highest degree of personal and professional ethics, the Senior Assistant demonstrates a collaborative, client-focused, quality and results-oriented approach. The Senior Assistant is required to work in close collaboration with the Integrated Practice Advice and Support (IPAS) teams, an integrated support services and advisory function of UNOPS, for the provision of efficient support services to IPS, as well as the UNOPS Headquarters Support services team

 Functional Responsibilities

Administrative Suppor:

• Process incoming and outgoing mail and documentation addressed to/from PS email inbox (and other shared IPMG-PG inboxes as applicable, such as Portfolio Support and IPMG mailboxes); maintain the corresponding email register and distribute as appropriate.
• Ensure correct access to all IPMG-PG email groups and inboxes, as well as any other groups or community platforms as requested.
• Maintain filing systems in IPS, especially the Google Team Drives pertaining to administration, procurement and budget.
• Maintain relevant hard copy and electronic records and files, e.g. commitments and expenditures, contracts, personnel information (if any and treated as confidential).
• Focal point for controlling and tracking of lending of IPMG equipment and assets, as well as IPMG library management, and maintaining records on assets management.
• Act as the focal point for the organization and logistics, including the procurement activities, for the Team Building and other shared activities in IPMG-PG.
• Provide clerical support, including but not limited to managing team meeting invitations and room bookings, emergency communication tree and organigramme updates, taking meeting minutes, and entering requests in the various UNOPS portals and tools as requested.
• Gather information and provide support in drafting a wide variety of reports, documents, presentations, correspondence and communications as requested.
• Act as the travel focal point for IPMG-PG, including by providing travel related assistance to IPMG-PG personnel and external affiliates as necessary, and booking flights in the UNOPS Travel tool.
• Contribute to the revision and maintenance of the PS Support Services RACI matrix for areas of work.
• Provide ad-hoc support to the drafting of PS Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documents and how-to guides; support their regular review/update and maintenance.
• Manage the ad-hoc logistical support to workshops and trainings, working in close collaboration with the Headquarters Support services team, the workshop or training coordinator, including but not limited to agenda set-up, room set-up, checklist, printing, budget updates, logistical guidance to the participants

Onboarding Support:

• Ensure that all onboarding and offboarding activities for newly recruited personnel are duly executed.
• Contribute to the update of the IPS induction handbook, including maintenance of hyperlinks.
• Focal point of the buddy program

Procurement of IPMG-PG goods and service:

• Launch and facilitate the procurement exercises related to IPMG-PG; act as procurement official for IPMG-PG procurement exercises up to 4,999$ and purchases against LTAs/BPAs (inc. drafting requirements, drafting evaluation reports, preparing the request for award documents, call-off orders, purchase orders, shopping notes, etc.).
• For low-value procurement, responsible for preparing the submissions to the necessary internal review and clearance bodies and authorities to finalize awards and contracts (IPAS procurement reviewer, IPAS Legal, UNOPS Enterprise Architecture Application Review Board, Procurement Authority) and communicating the award decision to the bidders.
• Initiate and support all other procurement exercises in coordination with IPAS procurement and IPAS Legal as applicable, including contributing to the drafting of the RFP, RFQ, review of the service-level agreement, researching available LTAs, etc.
• Compile and maintain the IPMG-PG Procurement plan; maintain status reports on procurement activities and work in progress.
• Coordinate with the IPMG-PG Petty cash custodian for the acquisition of goods online and prepare the Mastercard form or facilitate the use of Petty cash as applicable.
• Follow up with the delivery of goods and ensure physical receipt from the mailroom by the procurement delivery date agreed upon with the supplier.
• In charge of raising purchase orders in the UNOPS ERP system for IPMG-PG’ procurement activities; or coordinating their creation and management through the HQ Support services unit.
• Initiate payment requests upon receipt of goods/services.
• Manage the IPMG-PG supplier relationship (for goods and services, excluding infrastructure related services), inc. the organization of regular coordination meetings, tracking their performance and use against service level agreements, reporting and identifying performance issues.

Budget Management Support:

• Preparation and submission of budget corrections (GLJE) with complete supporting documentation, follow-up with Finance Group and IPAS Finance.
• Assist in compiling complete supporting documentation to enable payment process; provide guidance to IPMG-PG personnel (inc. retainers) as necessary.
• Assist in preparing the IPMG-PG monthly and ad-hoc financial reports, including extraction of
• financial data from oneUNOPS, maintenance of specific budget monitoring tables (such as for travel, procurement activities or payments to retainers).
• Support the review and monitoring of expenditures against the administrative budgets under the IPMG-PG business unit, bringing to the attention of the supervisor any problem or discrepancy that warrants further review.
• Support the year-end financial closure exercise, including timely payments of all outstanding commitments.
• Ad hoc support on follow-up of retainer payments.

Knowledge building and knowledge sharing:

• Contribute to developing and delivering training and learning initiatives for personnel on areas of expertise.
• Provide sound contributions to knowledge networks and communities of practice by synthesizing lessons learnt, creating SOPs and disseminating best practices in his/her area of work.
• Collect feedback, ideas, and internal knowledge about processes and best practices and put to use productively.
• Undertake research on a range of issues related to administration and procurement and provide content for notes/reports including quarterly and year-end reports for monitoring, statistical and review purposes by management.

Monitoring and Progress Controls:

• Setting standard, personal and development objectives in PER;
• Ongoing assessment of task completion, which meets quality expectations;
• Successfully meeting deadlines;
• Willing and ability to learn.

Functional Responsibilities:

Education:

• High school diploma is required.
• A Bachelor or master’s degree in accounting, procurement, finance, business administration or related field will be considered a strong asset and may substitute for some of the required years of experience.

Work Experience:

• Mandatory requirements
• 5 years of experience in general office administration/ financial support functions are required with a high school degree. A BA or a MA degree may substitute for some or all the required years of experience respectively.
• Within the 5 years of experience, 2 years of public procurement experience acting as a procurement official or a procurement authority or procurement reviewer for low-value procurement procedures is required.

Assets:

• Working knowledge of Google suite, in particular Google sheet.
• Knowledge of an ERP software.
• Experience in a project management support function.
• Experience in event administration or logistical coordination.
• Public procurement experience for $5,000 and more value procurement procedures.

Languages:

• Fluency in English required.
• Fluency in French and/or Spanish and/or Arabic is an asset.
• Knowledge of Danish is an asset.

Source: https://jobs.unops.org/Pages/ViewVacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=28348#1