Individual consultant for remote support on financial modelling and broader strengthening rural water supply professionalised maintenance models job at Self Help Africa

Individual consultant for remote support on financial modelling and broader strengthening rural water supply professionalised maintenance models

Background to SHA’s rural water activities:
Self Help Africa (SHA) is a Dublin-based INGO with programming presence in 14 countries, with a vision of healthy lives and sustainable livelihoods in a changing climate. SHA, which merged with United Purpose in 2021, works towards its vision through programming in sectors including agriculture, climate and environment, energy, enterprise, nutrition, and WASH.

To date, SHA/UP’s WASH work has reached over 5 million people with safe water.

SHA undertakes an increasingly strong focus on the ongoing sustainability of rural water services, and also the progressive upgrading of service levels. In this, SHA is testing and evolving service delivery and financing models to support the aims of universal, sustainable access to WASH services.

SHA applies a systems strengthening approach, empowering a range of different local actors, to ensure water points remain functional, water is safe for drinking, and to ensure that systems are in place for proper management and maintenance of water facilities. It consists of:

Professionalizing services for repair and maintenance of water points/schemes, i.e. reinforcing capacities of hand pump technicians (Area Mechanics) or local businesses specialising in solar powered piped schemes, facilitating access to service providers in rural communities, promoting water maintenance service level agreements or guaranteed service contracts, reinforcing supply chains of spare parts, ensuring tariffs for water are affordable,
Strengthening demand and willingness to pay, dialogue with communities around the risks to ongoing functionality and water quality and what their roles are to address such risks
Building capacities of communities and water points committees, including on topics like ensuring payment for water services, saving funds for maintenance in a transparent way, promoting preventive maintenance, sensitizing users on accountability of service providers,
Collaborating with and strengthening WASH institutions, such as local governments and/or traditional authorities, to monitor the performance of maintenance services and the ongoing levels of service in the schemes/wider area, and support in the enabling environment for such service delivery models to work and scale, such as coordination across actors, strategic planning etc.
We aim to bring fresh ideas and approaches to the challenge of scale and sustainability to the local context, introducing new or adapting existing service delivery and financing models, and in doing so, not only increasing sustainable water access, but helping to serve as a demonstration and learning opportunity for the wider country WASH sector.

Setting clear service level and maintenance service Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and gearing innovative financing around achieving and rewarding these, are a key element of our work in several countries, including in our collaboration with Uptime in Malawi, and our work on carbon finance in several countries.

SHA has ongoing pilot programs that are evolving and strengthening rural water service delivery models in Malawi, The Gambia and Nigeria (and Bangladesh and Kenya, to a smaller extent, and not part of the scope of this ToR).

Purpose of this consultancy:
SHA seeks the consulting inputs of a relevant specialist, to augment SHA’s in-house global and country level capacities, to provide drawdown technical support and financial modelling inputs, to further enrich SHA’s thinking and activities on rural water service delivery/maintenance/financing models.

Specifically, the consultant would be contracted on a draw-down arrangement, to provide demand-responsive support to SHA global WASH team and the three country program teams (Nigeria, Malawi, Gambia), on aspects of financial modelling/life cycle cost analysis of water services, together with broader inputs on discussing and reviewing the approaches for maintenance services and providing suggestions on how to strengthen and financing arrangements around them, and how to monitor their effectiveness (including some review of their effectiveness).

The consultant will be expected to bring capacity to conduct rapid review of learning from other organisations/countries to benefit the thinking on SHA projects, and bring experiences and insights from rural water SDMs elsewhere, to augment the ideas of the SHA team.

This ToR provides initial areas of envisaged technical support, and the precise focus of actual inputs will be influenced in part by the consultant selected and their respective expertise and value add relative to the SHA team. It may also evolve over time, as per the needs of the projects, but within what is possible and realistic within the initially contracted draw-down quota of days.

This role would suit, for example, a researcher (e.g. ongoing PhD or post-doc) or practitioner/consultant with relevant background, who can take on part-time consulting work. Experience on both handpumps and piped water services (with pre-paid meters and solar powered) would be highly beneficial, given this is what SHA is working on in the various countries.

Key areas of technical and action-research support:
Financial Modelling to inform tariffs, performance-based bonus, and wider lifecycle cost budgeting
Defining data / cost-input requirements, and analysing data provided by the country teams, to model costs and (where applicable supported by pre-paid meters) consumption levels, identify required tariffs, and appropriate amounts for performance-based bonuses, which may be required to ensure high-quality service delivery meeting defined service KPIs.
Undertaking different scenario modelling, to help inform service costs / tariffs / bonuses over different scenarios – such as with varying economies of scale of the service, and projecting costs over time (e.g. as economies of scale grows / customer willingness to pay increases)
Supporting the SHA teams in increasing their understanding of life cycle cost analysis of rural water services, and providing inputs to survey design and data analysis, to help determine life cycle costs modelled / projected over geographic areas (such as district-wide), which will be used to input into wider cost elements of district-wide/ service scale-up costed strategic plans
Providing an external sounding board, and sharing insights and advice on approaches to professionalising rural water service delivery, from insights gained beyond SHA/the pilot countries
Joining periodic online calls with the global and country WASH teams, to understand and give ideas and suggestions to the overall thinking, and periodic reviews, of the approaches being piloted. In this way, service as a ‘sounding board’ and ‘fresh eyes’ on SHA’s ideas.
N.B.: with the limit that the sharing of our intel to the wider sector will need to be agreed first

Where needed / requested, undertaking rapid desk review to collect and share information or learning on rural water SDM elements, that can further inform the thinking / ideas of SHA
Advising on research and MEAL elements of the pilots, and inputs into analysis / review of MEAL findings to inform adaptation, approach strengthening, and appraise effectiveness of the model
Engaging in discussions with global WASH team and country teams on elements that should be tracked and reviewed over the course of the pilots (e.g. feeding ideas into MEAL frameworks around the pilot), aiming for data and feedback loops which would help to strengthen the piloted model and review its effectiveness
Inputs into analysis of survey findings / monitoring information, in collaboration with the SHA team, and feeding findings/reflections/suggestions back to the team
(if time allows / defined value-add of consultant vis SHA team): Providing inputs on water quality research and piloting
Engaging in SHA team discussions and providing insights/advice as applicable, around approaches to ensure zero CFU/100ml in the supported water schemes
As mentioned, the consultant would be engaged on a drawdown contract, and the relative level of effort and expectations between the consultant vis SHA team would be discussed after contracting, and periodically during the assignment, to ensure expectations are aligned to available consulting days.

Modalities:
The work will imply regular online exchanges with the global WASH advisory team and country WASH Teams in the 3 pilot countries. This assignment can be conducted entirely remotely, via online calls, google/teams/skype online text exchanges, and email inputs. The consultant’s input will be coordinated by the Global WASH advisory team, who will be the overall ‘client’ and who will support coordination of this assignment across the country teams. On commencement of the assignment, the consultant’s ToR will be further refined through calls with the global and country teams, highlighting areas of priority support (e.g. ‘need to have’ versus ‘nice to have’ inputs if time allows). The ToR may be subject to adaptation over time, based on the emerging needs of SHA and perceived areas of value add of the consultant. These expectations on the consultants time will be based on what can be achieved within the quota of days.

The consultant will be required to keep SHA updated as to utilisation rate of days, and refinement of ToR objectives will be made where needed to maintain within the contractual quota of days, unless subject to a cost extension (subject to fund availability).

Duration and inputs:
We are estimating the number of consulting days to be contracted for the support to be in the magnitude of 20 days in total over an estimated duration of 6-9 months. The precise number of days to be included in the initial drawdown contract with the consultant will depend on the fee rate agreed with the consultant.

The precise timing of inputs required from the consultant will be determined by need, and discussed during the initial kick-off calls. It could be for example that initially, around 1-1.5 days per week is required, but this will likely vary over the contract period. The consultant may need to demonstrate some flexibility on days of the week they can be available, at least for emails or quick contacts, but this can be discussed during contracting/inception with the selected consultant.

Expected profile of the consultant:
It is envisaged the profile would be someone with good academic / research/ practitioner background on topics related to the scope of this consultancy (e.g. rural water sustainability / maintenance models), with some practical experience / time spent in low-income settings, ideally on this topic.
At least MSc level, if not higher, on relevant subject (eg. engineering, public health, environmental/social sciences, etc)
Ideally with 2-3 years of professional experience
Proven experience and understanding of lifecycle and financial modelling of rural water supply services, and good data analysis capacity
Knowledge and experience in researching / monitoring rural water services / models
Knowledge of a range of examples of rural water service delivery models in low-income contexts, knowledge of financing models and results-based funding a plus
Flexible, client-oriented, efficient, self-driven, and able to work effectively with a diverse team of differing backgrounds and educational levels, and communicate complex issues in simple terms
Theoretical and/or practical experience on handpumps and solar pumped piped water supply
Knowledge of inline chlorination and other approaches to ensuring water quality useful, but not required
Experience in any of the 3 pilot countries useful, but not mandatory
The Terms of Reference for the assignment can be downloaded here.

Applying for this consultancy:
Interested candidates should apply by 18/11/2024

sending an email to tenders@selfhelpafrica.org – copying mathieu.metois@selfhelpafrica.org

Applications should state Research on financial modelling of rural water services in the email heading.

Please include:
A 1-2 page (maximum) cover letter stating interest, availability and relevance for this assignment, together with a proposed daily fee (inclusive of all costs and any applicable taxes)
An updated CV, and contacts of two referees / former clients
If you wish, include examples of / links to relevant documents that are examples of your past work on this topic