Deputy Director – Disaster and Water Resilience Programme

Deputy Director – Disaster and Water Resilience Programme

SPC – Secretariat of the Pacific Community

Suva, Fiji

The role – Deputy Director – Disaster and Water Resilience Programme will oversee the people and programs in the Disaster and Community Resilience Programme in the thematic areas of disaster risk management and water security. This involves providing high level leadership and management oversight, providing technical excellence across the thematic areas and functions of the programme, driving resource mobilisation and managing financial aspects of the programme and integrated programming within and across GEM and SPC.

The key responsibilities of the role include

Leadership and management

• Provide people leadership, engagement, and operational guidance to contribute to the effective delivery of all projects within the technical programme;
• Design, implement and effectively deliver annual work plans and work plan reports for DCRP within budget and in accordance with established targets, results and outcomes;
• Develop guidance tools such as communities of practice, participatory workshops, learning events, templates, to enhance the project management capacity of the technical programme;
• Provide supervision of project level reporting and reviews to ensure Programme/project activities and budgets are executed in accordance with contractual requirements and approved budgets;
• Ensure that monitoring, evaluation, reflection and learning (MERL) activities and methods and are incorporated into project implementation and service delivery.

Technical excellence of functions and outcomes of the portfolio

• Provide technical leadership to develop the area of scientific and technical programming;
• Lead, coordinate and facilitate multi-stakeholder consultative approaches and forums to develop, negotiate and later evaluate and reflect on strategic/programmatic areas of work including at a high level for regional and national priority areas;
• Drive awareness of this capability with members and donors ensuring regional coordination and collaboration;
• Develop and maintain an integrated divisional work programme that focuses on technical and scientific priority areas of member countries and territories;
• Oversee and manage the outcomes of projects within the portfolio to deliver across the thematic and functional areas of DCRP and GEM.

Resource mobilisation and financial management

• Contribute to, drive and support mobilisation initiatives with funding agencies and advocate for long-term funding support for the work of the division among the donor community;
• Explore new work opportunities that align to new/emerging development priorities of PICTs;
• Manage budget allocations within areas of responsibility with appropriate costings in place; ensure the strategic direction of budget allocations is consistent with Divisional priorities;
• Ensure audit compliance levels adhere to SPC and donor standards in areas of scientific programming.

Integrated programming

• Learn from SPC ‘better practices’ to define programming approaches for the design, implementation and evaluation of programmes and projects that will contribute to long term development impact in the region;
• Investigate research and evaluate ‘best practice’ business processes to enable an integrated programming approach;
• Support and promote communities of practice, participatory workshops, learning events on programming policies to absorb the programming design approach into all potential opportunities across the technical programme;
• Identify strategic and development communications pieces through relevant channels to both documents, highlight and encourage the benefit of strong programmatic design into the technical programme.

Key selection criteria

Qualifications

• A Master’s degree from a recognised institution in a discipline relevant to project/programme management, international development, climate or disaster risk management, water and sanitation, or equivalent body of knowledge and experience.

Technical expertise

• At least 15 years of demonstrated management experience in a public sector or research environment in managing science related resources or a similar field, including financial management;
• Demonstrated ability to lead strategically with a solid understanding of programme management with prior experience working in Pacific Island countries and territories;
• Demonstrated experience in relationship building and working with a wide variety of donors and development partners with awareness of their policies and procedures;
• Proven history of successfully building and leading multi-disciplinary teams, including people of different national and cultural backgrounds, and demonstrated ability to manage professional, technical, and program support staff in a team environment, ensuring everyone’s role contributes to successful team outputs;
• Demonstrated experience of leading and coordinating high level strategic consultation processes for regional positioning across a relevant sectoral agenda;
• Proven ability to influence work collegially and in partnership with stakeholders and internal partners towards an agreed outcome;
• Demonstrated skills and experience in continuous improvement and facilitating innovation across teams;
• Demonstrated experience in strategic resource mobilisation with development partners to address gaps and needs of priority areas;
• High-level verbal and written communication skills and the capacity to represent SPC at regional and international forums;
• Proven ability in project design, management, and reporting;
• Ability to work constructively to resolve issues, concerns, or differences of opinion.

Language skills

• Excellent English communication skills (oral and written) with a working knowledge of French being an advantage.

Interpersonal skills and cultural awareness

• Ability to work in a multicultural, inclusive and equitable environment.

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