Current Vacancies at Practical Action Kenya

ABOUT THE ROLE

• Reporting to the Country Director, this highly influential role will have their eyes on the big picture and future trends, shaping Practical Action’s strategy in Kenya and setting the Change Ambitions which define the impact the group will make.
• The Head of Impact & Influence will champion Practical Action’s Framework for Change; ensuring that we achieve the most positive impact on the lives of women and men and that we capture the learning and evidence.
• The role leads in strategy development, provide strategic leadership of the country’s MEL approach and how we capture our impact and learning, manages gender as a cross-cutting function, and co-ordinates our communications both internally and externally.

ACCOUNTABILITIES
Leadership and Strategic Alignment

• Lead, manage and motivate the impact and influence team ensuring that they have clear work objectives and individual/teamwork plans and receive meaningful feedback on their performance.
• Work closely with the Business Development and Programs’ teams to support a stream of high-quality new funding proposals.
• Together with the Head of Programs, lead the development process of the country office strategic business plan (SBP), ensuring that change objectives are developed to achieve change in the lives of people that we work with.
• Lead in the routine quarterly and annual reporting of the SBP, working with programs’ team on evaluating impact against change objectives.
• Ensure detailed understanding of organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) to enable effective tracking of progress on quarterly and annual basis.
• Ensure that Practical Action’s work draws on learning and innovation and is shared effectively with the wider Practical Action organization.
• Ensure that Practical Action cross cutting themes on gender and climate technology are embedded in change objectives and measured as part of the organization’s impact.
• Strengthening Profile, Generating Funding and Managing Relationships
• Ensure that the Impact and Influence team contributes to the proposal development process by leading design workshops that build proposals on overall change objectives and Practical Action’s approach to understanding system change is embedded in design.
• Ensure that MEL and Impact functions and processes are budgeted for in proposals and new funding.
• Ensure that impact and lessons from program delivery feeds into organizational profile strengthening through stories of change and impact reporting.
• Participate in learning forums and opportunities to showcase the organization’s impact.

Delivering Quality

• Responsible for provision of effective support to ensure systems thinking, gender and inclusion and MEL practices are at the heart of all our work. Ensure that progress is tracked against project deliverables, working with project team on MEL plans for each project.
• Lead the development of a range of methodologies and indicators to enable a rigorous assessment of our progress against plans. Ensure that data is collected on the reach of our work and is measured, including beneficiary numbers as a standard and global measure of our outputs.
• Ensure that plans adequately define the impact they will make and that they have adequate measures in place to monitor progress, and capture evidence and impact.
• Provide senior management with a periodic high-level assessment of our impact and our learning, and recommendations on ways to maximise our effectiveness.
• Work with the Communications Team to share our impact and our learning internally and externally in a compelling way.
• Oversee the development of the infrastructure and culture to capture knowledge, evidence, impact and learning; contributing to capacity building efforts.
• Working closely with the Heads of Change Ambitions (in the UK) to guide the work of defining impact and participation in the Global Change Hubs, and Gender Group to ensure that learning, evidence and influencing efforts contribute to the Change Ambition work across the group.
• Ensure that evaluation of our work includes critical aspects on how we work, such as gender integration, partnerships (including learning from community partners), and aspects of value for money.
• Lead and support effective processes for reflection, learning, documentation and dissemination. Ensure meaningful participation of field staff, partners and beneficiaries in the reviews.
• Advise and assist programme staff in undertaking quality baseline studies, external midterm and final evaluations of their projects and follow up to ensure that recommendations are acted upon and where appropriate, made available to other members of the group.
• Ensure that MEL staff are working with project delivery teams to design and monitor MEL plans.
• Through regular monitoring, work with finance and award management to understand and capture delivery risks, share with SMT and the wider organization.
• Build capacity of delivery teams and others in the organization on defining and measuring change, consistently working with global teams on implementing the overall MEL Framework.
• Take lead in preparation of quarterly reports including quarterly risk register reviews

PERSON PROFILE
To be successful in the role, the ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate:

Experience & Knowledge

• Proven experience of design and delivery of monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment methodologies in an international development setting.

Essential

• Masters in Monitoring & Evaluation/international development or any other relevant field.
• At least seven years relevant experience, three of which must have been at middle management level preferably in an international NGO setting.
• Substantial MEL training and capacity building experience preferably with field and remote based staff.
• Successful track record of implementing effective MEL systems, including experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection and management.
• Proven analytical and problem-solving skills to understand the range and content of the organization’s thematic work and provide practical solutions to operational challenges.
• A flexible and initiative-taking, proactive, inspiring attitude with the ability to manage and prioritize and unpredictable workload, including the ability and willingness to change work practices and hours in the event of a larger demand.
• A strong understanding of and commitment to gender and diversity.
• Willingness to travel within the country and internationally.
• Fluency in English, with strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Proven project/programme management experience, research experience, including hands on experience in program assessments, problem analysis and project and program design, project cycle management, grants management and donor liaison.

Desirable

• Ability to collect, collate and assimilate information from a variety of sources and to present it to others clearly and simply.
• Competence in managing appropriate database systems for monitoring and evaluation.
• A team player with excellent written and verbal communication skills – able to listen to others, to identify and share important/key information and to influence others in the uptake of new or adapted approaches.
• Understanding and experience engaging in Market System Development (MSD) programming with focus in rural areas including the dry lands.

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Consultancy Objective
The main objective of this consultancy is to:
Coordinate the following pending activities:

• Envisioning workshop to understand the priority sectors for the county.
• Key Informant Interviews.
• Focus Group Discussions.
• Community engagement workshops.
• Solution Development.
• Additional cooking market study; and
• CEP write up.

Consultancy scope
The consultant will be assigned to the county to provide technical leadership in the development of a County Energy Plan. The work to be conducted by the consultant is described in five work packages below:
Work package 1:Baseline survey execution
Under this work package, the consultant will:

• Collect primary data through a sample survey in the county to understand the status of energy access for households, community facilities and enterprises. Primary data gathering will be used to fill any data gaps remaining after the literature review, and to help triangulate findings, for example, where secondary data from the literature is less recent.
• Carry out qualitative surveys too get deeper insights on the context opportunities and challenges within the focus sectors through a range of data gathering activities on the ground including Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs).
• Conduct an in depth survey to understand the status on cooking energy in the county focusing on the market for both cooking technologies and fuels
• Support the county to complete baseline analysis and prepare for community needs assessment
• In conducting these activities, the consultant shall pay attention to ensuring inclusivity of minority and marginalised groups(special interest groups) e.g., people with disabilities, youth, religious communities, female headed households.

Work package 2: Stakeholder Engagement and needs identification at community and sector level
Under this work package, the consultant will:

• Work with the county CEP team to assess and establish the true needs and expectations of the local community in terms of development, welfare economic activities, health care, education etc and the role of energy in meeting these needs. This will be done through.
• Key informant interviews with actors from key sectors while taking a value chain wide approach to include producers, aggregators, transporters distributors end users…
• Focus group discussions on specific sectors to further scrutinize the views and priorities from the perspective of energy as an enabler
• Sectoral workshops to further interrogate the priorities derived from KIIs and FGDs linked to wider sectoral priorities and plans
• Develop a long list of priorities based on the baseline survey findings. The long list will be based on the following structure:
• Needs at household level focusing on lighting, cooking, heating, productive use in cottage activities, education for children, security
• Needs at the community level for a range of community services such as health, education, access to credit, or community services related to economic activities (access to water, street or marketplace lighting, storage capacities, to training and sensitisation)
• Needs at the County level focussing on the macro-economic development (e.g agriculture, trade and industry) and the resulting need for development of energy sources. This shall help the counties to develop a vision for the energy plan and priorities to be implemented for the next 10 years. It will also identify the short-term priorities to be developed for the next 3/5 years and the medium-term priorities to be sketched and included in CIDP/ADPs

Work package 3: Development of energy solutions including mainstreaming of clean cooking in the CEPs

• Under this work package, the consultant will guide the county to draft solutions that respond to the priority needs identified particularly those ones to be developed/answered by the first generation of CEPs. Other priorities will be developed in subsequent versions/revisions of the CEP (after 3 years). The process of solutions development will be guided by the INEP Frameworks stages 6-10

The solutions should cover the following aspects:

• Electrification for households, institutions and businesses(Grid and off grid options)
• Clean cooking
• Bioenergy
• Energy efficiency and conservation

Solutions development will further include:

• Identifying policies, programmes, and projects to be implemented in order to achieve the county vision and energy goals
• A financing strategy showing the financial requirements for different types of actions, potential financing sources and mechanism (grants, debt, Results Based Financing.
• Establish operational responsibilities.
• A risk analysis framework
• A plan for performance measurement and reporting.

Work package 4: CEP write up
Under this package the consultant shall;

• Coordinate the write up of the CEP involving compilation of inputs from different work streams and aligning these to the CEP template provided under the INEP framework.
• Present the draft CEP for review and validation by the County CEP Technical committee

Work package 4: CEP write up

• Develop at least three ICS/ sector knowledge products (booklet, audio or video).

Time Frame and Key Deliverables

• Overall, the assignment shall be undertaken and completed within 40 days upon signing of the contract.

Selection process
The bidders shall submit a technical proposal responding on the following:

• The profile and experience of the bidders including demonstration of the eligibility criteria.
• Maximum 15 pages technical concept and approach excluding annexes on how the tasks listed in the section above (section 2) shall be delivered and achieved.
• Consultant’s CV showing relevant experiences.

Requirements Technical Lead Consultant

• Minimum of a master’s degree in a field related to renewable energy, environmental planning, environmental studies, natural resources, social sciences/ development studies.
• At least 7 years’ experience in clean cooking and bioenergy, renewable energy, energy planning, research
• Demonstrate experience in energy planning (demand assessment, solution design, modelling) and research and analysis.
• Experience with energy delivery model approaches(desirable)
• Experience in developing tools and templates.
• Experience engaging with counties governments is an advantage.

Costing requirements

• As the contract to be concluded is a contract for works in line with the deliverables, the bidder should offer a lump sum price that covers all applicable costs but should be provided for each deliverable/milestone as illustrated in the table below. The price bid will be evaluated based on the specified lump sum price per deliverable.