Manager, Programme Coordination and Implementation Oversight

Country or Region: Based on Sint Maarten, serving 12 Countries and Territories

Appointment duration: 12 months renewable, until September 2024 (full time)

Project reference: 18DDU0C052

The Caribbean OCTs Resilience, Sustainable Energy and Marine Biodiversity Programme (RESEMBID) is a €40M programme financed by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France, the development cooperation agency of France.

RESEMBID supports the sustainable human development efforts of the Caribbean OCTs through three highly strategic lines of action:

• Marine Biodiversity: improving protection, restoration and management of marine biodiversity;
• Resilience: strengthening resilience to adapt to extreme and recurrent natural events (cross-cutting component)
• Sustainable Energy: increasing energy efficiency of infrastructures with high impact on energy consumption;

The twelve Caribbean OCTs are:

• Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten
• Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands
• Saint-Barthélemy

The Programme is implemented throughout the twelve OCTs and is based on Sint Maarten. It is backstopped by Expertise France Headquarters at Paris, France.

Great emphasis is given to a participatory approach in the design of the programme and its management, involving from the outset all relevant stakeholders (beneficiaries, civil society, private sector, funding institutions, among others).

The RESEMBID office is composed of staff based on Sint Maarten that attend to the different workstreams of the Programme: governance; programme coordination and implementation oversight; programme formulation, design and implementation; grant and procurement management; financial and administrative management, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning; strategic communications and visibility. The team is complemented by senior sectoral technical experts who are standing members of the team and are deployed as needed.

The role

The Manager, Programme Coordination and Implementation Oversight ensures coordinated, strategically aligned, responsive implementation of the Programme in action. The incumbent, based on a sound understanding of strategic direction and priorities, of the implementation of the portfolio regionally and at the national level, and of relations with partners, especially the OCTs, will have the following key responsibilities:

• Oversees the overall implementation of the Programme, ensuring strategic alignment, coordination and execution of agreed-upon actions
• Manages the workplan as a dynamic tool for strategic navigation and implementation oversight, ensuring that it is constantly in line with evolving priorities and direction
• Manages the dashboard, leveraging its use for results management, governance accountability and strategic communication on progress and results with partners
• Co-leads, with the Expert, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL), the development and implementation of the MEAL system, to enhance programme quality, effectiveness and results accountability
• Manages the governance process, and senior counterparts in tandem with the Programme Director. Counterparts include: office of the Prime Minister/Cabinet Office of 12 OCTs; the European Union; Expertise France Headquarters; the World Bank, inter alia.
• Works closely and collegially with the entire team, developing a 360-degree understanding of team culture, thinking and work agenda
• Works closely and strategically with the Programme Director to: stocktake and plan ahead; anticipate and/or troubleshoot strategic, political, operational or relational developments; seize opportunities for action and innovation; initiate and/or develop and/or manage special initiatives.
• Serves on the Communication Steering Committee ensuring leadership and implementation of all Communications activities by the Communications Unit

Examples of specific responsibilities and accountabilities, among other, include the following:

1. Programme coordination and strategic alignment

• Engaging collaboratively and collegially horizontally across the team; facilitates alignment of outputs and messaging; facilitates 360-degree feedback, as appropriate
• Produces oral and/or written stocktake analyses of status of programme development (commitments) and implementation against targets (delivery)

• Continuously updates/populates and tracks the implementation of the Programme Management Workplan
• With the support of the ICT team, ensures the appropriate development, adjustment, or update of all ICT management tools to ensure systems are perfectly fit for purpose

• As point person for the Dashboard of Performance Indicators, supports the Programme Director, the team, Expertise France Headquarters senior Management, the European Union, and external stakeholders, with reports, graphics and presentations as needed, for example, on the following:
  • Programme outputs (in liaison with the Programme Managers, Grant Management Unit and MEAL expert)
  • Programme milestones (through the workplan)
  • Programme finance (in close liaison with the Manager Finance and Administration
• Support the elaboration of periodic reports to the European Union and other internal management reports
• Support the Expert, MEAL, in the development and implementation of the MEAL system, ensuring that it is successfully embedded within the project cycle
• With technical support, responsible for dashboard of performance indicators, including its maintenance, population and deployment

• Prepares action minutes and tracks implementation and follow up for periodic internal Management and Governance meetings as needed
• Supports the Director as secretariat for the governance process, including the preparation and organisation of periodic milestone governance meetings, such as the Strategic Steering Committee, Operational Steering Committee and the Project Review and Approval Committee
• Coordinates presentations by different actors (internal, and even external) to Governance, harmonising inputs and ensuring, in liaison with the Manager, Communications and Visibility, brand integrity, visual quality and alignment
• Maintain frequent communication with Programme Managers to ensure programme activities, objectives and outputs are communicated (in close link with the Programme Communications and Visibility Manager)
• Develops and nurtures excellent relations with authorities, and other international and local implementing agents and stakeholders in the field; aiming to build credibility and full trust

• Drafting of strategy documents; think pieces; nuanced communications to stakeholders; NFRs
• Translate ideas into structured, manageable initiatives
• Liaises with senior technical advisers/experts as required
• Develop/manage/lead special initiatives
• Represent the Programme Director as required

The above list of key responsibilities is illustrative, and not exhaustive. It is subject to the evolving operational needs of the Programme and the initiatives of the incumbent!

Minimum eligibility criteria

• Minimum of 8-year track record in technical assistance work on international development projects
• Minimum 5 years’ country-level experience implementing programmes of technical cooperation on the ground essential
• Experience working in SIDS and especially in the Caribbean region a distinct asset
• Experience in programmatic results management, M & E systems in technical assistance an asset
• Excellent spoken and written nuanced command of English essential; French desirable

Competencies

• Passionate, committed to sustainable development and poverty eradication
• Intuitive, emotionally intelligent, proactive
• Excellent sense of humour, flexible, tolerant
• Good ability to think strategically and programmatically, allied with a capacity for operational tasks and outputs, executed carefully and thoughtfully
• Results orientated with a high capacity for work and initiative, in a fast-paced, multicultural team and environment
• Energised by the complexity of a multi-dimensional, multi-site programme
• Solid experience in implementation of technical cooperation programmes on the ground, including project managementStrong sense of team building and belonging
• Interest in results reporting and performance management, dashboards
• Familiarity with EU policies an asset
• Perfect written and spoken, nuanced, command of English; French desirable