Roles and responsibilities:

You will have responsibility for the day-to-day management and coordination of the UK government’s Urban Resilience programme (£8m) in South Africa which is delivering technical assistance to municipalities (metros and secondary cities) to strengthen the resilience to climate and economic shocks, through projects that support township economies, build data and digital capabilities in municipalities, and enable sustainable growth in cities. The programme currently has 3 external delivery partners with an additional delivery partner to be appointed shortly. The role may expand over the year to absorb new programming on infrastructure investment pipeline development. You will report the the Head of Urban Economic Development, who is the Programme Responsible Owner (PRO).

This includes:

 Programme and risk management

• Work with FCDO PRO to support a successful delivery of urban portfolio (£8m) ensuring projects are delivered on time, with expected quality and within budget, in accordance with the project plan and the FCDO’s programme operating framework.
• Lead on due diligence assessments of potential partners including scoping, site visits and reporting; and support PRO in procurement and partner mobilisation activities.
• Support the design and delivery of a robust programme monitoring, reporting, evaluation and learning framework. This will include critical appraisal of partner reports, climate mainstreaming/ICF KPI reporting, gender equity and social inclusion review, troubleshooting day-to-day project issues, maintaining, and monitoring risk registers and supporting FCDO annual and programme completions reviews as needed.
• Coordinate FCDO relationships with programme delivery partners/ suppliers, key donors, and stakeholders to maintain excellent delivery quality for programme outcomes.
• Work collaboratively with PRO and other programme managers across the FCDO South Africa to support the delivery of objectives, share lessons and best practice, and flex to provide cross-cutting programme management support as needed.
• Manage programme documentation including file management on MS Teams, ensure compliance and maintain log of internal reporting milestones.

Financial management

• Manage the urban resilience programme budget, monitor expenditure and costs against delivered and realised benefits/outputs throughout the project lifecycle.
• Ensure all requisitions, purchase orders and receipting/payment of invoices meet FCDO’s financial rules, and are linked to agreed project milestones and/or partner or supplier reporting obligations.
• Ensure budgets are accurately recorded, forecast, and profiled throughout the life of projects and payments actively managed in line with FCDO benchmarks and quality standards.
• Ensure that the programme team and delivery partners are consistently practising sound financial management, delivering Value for Money.

Communication and knowledge management

• Develop an effective external communication plan by identifying impactful opportunities for sharing thematic learnings from the programme such as international conferences, media and publications.
• Support the PRO to deliver the communication plan using internal FCDO resources and external delivery partner budgets.
• Organise programme events with support from Programme Admin Officer and engage delivery partners and other stakeholders to ensure attendance
• Coordinate proactive reporting on projects, emerging risks and lessons learned, for the programme.
• Working with communications colleagues in the region, support team in developing and implementing a communications strategy to disseminate programme results, outputs and outcomes to internal and external audiences.
• You may also be asked to provide high quality contributions to briefings and other parliamentary and ministerial deliverables
• Effective adoption of practices to ensure sustainability of programme activity, assessing and capturing key learning from programme activity, including through completion of Programme Completion Review and any wider evaluation practices.
• Contribute to the development of future project and programme proposals.
• You will also be expected to act as a gender champion in your role, ensuring Gender Equality Act (2014) compliance and supporting the implementation of gender policy and guidance so that, at the least, no harm is done and gender inequality is not worsened. You will actively support Economic Growth team’s ambitions on women’s economic opportunities, inclusive growth and poverty reduction through your role.

All of this makes for an exciting, busy and varied job with travel opportunities. You will be a dynamic individual with good communication skills and able engage credibly with senior people, internally and externally.  You will be good at delivering at pace, managing complex portfolio of projects, and be creative in solutions to challenging problems. You will have a proven ability to build good relationships with stakeholders and suppliers. You will be an exceptional team player, able to work closely with colleagues across the British High Commission to ensure activity is joined up and well represented across the One-HMG platform, and have the confidence to represent to interests of the SA economic growth team.

As all other staff in BHC, the job holder is expected to participate in wider BHC activities. These may include being active on various staff engagement committees and in other corporate roles.

South Africa is a culturally and racially diverse country, with a complex history. You will be skilled in navigating diverse social and cultural environments and committed to creating an inclusive workplace.