Senior Project Officer 266 views0 applications

Management Sciences for Health (MSH), a global health nonprofit organization, uses proven approaches developed over 40 years to help leaders, health managers, and communities in developing nations build stronger health systems for greater health impact. We work to save lives by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health. Since its founding in 1971, MSH has worked in over 150 countries with policy makers, health professionals, and health care consumers to improve the quality, availability and affordability of health services.

Senior Project Officer

Job ID: 13-10747
Location: Abuja, Nigeria
Grade: I
Group/Office: PDG (Program Delivery Group)
Dept/Unit: PDGGEN – Program Delivery Group
Project/Program: A559 – Nigeria GF Malaria
Reports To: Project Director

Overview

• The Senior Project Officer works in close collaboration with the Global Fund Malaria Project Director, project staff and project partners on all aspects of project management and implementation.
• S/he provides management and financial oversight and participates in the determination of partner and contractor scopes of work and is responsible for day-to-day project management and overall monitoring of project progress against benchmarks.
• The Senior Project Officer is responsible for ensuring that the project functions efficiently, providing oversight to all partner management issues.  Additionally, s/he assures that all technical activities under the project are implemented in a timely and effective manner.
• S/he contributes to the design and implementation of technical activities in support of the project’s objectives, ensures timely mobilization of needed high-quality technical support to the country team, and provides short-term technical assistance (STTA) as needed.
• S/he liaises with the donor, the in-country Nigerian partner organizations and team members, other MSH technical units, and other partners to ensure that the country program has the required resources to achieve their goals.

Specific Responsibilities
Project management and partner and donor relations:

In collaboration with the Project Director and the in-country team, the Senior Project Officer will:

• Engage partners based on an objective assessment of the partners’ ability to meet skill needs that arise during project implementation.
• Oversee, promote, and participate in the project’s quality assurance process
• Work with partners to define specific, quantifiable performance indicators and targets for country programs.
• Ensure timely implementation of workplan activities by prompting and supporting technical colleagues and operations team to develop implementation schedules and following up for implementation
• Assess activity progress to ensure that the partners and local contractors maintain close adherence to work plans and meet designated milestones, deliverables, and benchmarks; and provide technical assistance when needed.
• Facilitate access to technical assistance for the country program, leveraging available resources: best practices, networks of researchers as well as the technical strengths of partners and other experts. Identify and prioritize technical support needs, develop short-term technical assistance plan and budget. Identify and mobilize MSH global talent and/or external consultants as needed, and ensure timeliness, responsiveness, and accountability of internal and external consultants.
• Coordinate with impact evaluation partner to develop knowledge repository for country learning. Facilitates the documentation of programmatic achievements of field office activities, donor reporting requirements, communication materials, technical reports, and technical reviews.
• Ensure that all technical and operational inputs required for successful implementation of the project are in place, so that the programs run smoothly, adhere to technical quality, fulfill programmatic objectives within budgetary guidelines, and comply with contractual requirements and applicable regulations.
• Monitor program implementation and use of resources. Regularly review financial reports with the project management team.
• Act as point of contact for donor relationship, including drafting terms of reference for joint trips, contributing to donor strategy documents, and maintain on-going communications as needed
• Act as point of contact for international partners and local contractors, including grant agreement and contract oversight, facilitate technical collaboration across partners, and ensure the technical quality of partner work.
• Keep senior management and Project Director informed of project activities, challenges, strategic plans, and team dynamics through scheduled meetings.
• Ensure effective project collaboration, coordination, and partnership with the corporate-level Country Operations Support Team, the COMU, the MSH Representative, and other projects, centers, and offices.

Project technical support:
In collaboration with the Project Director and the in-country team, the Senior Project Officer will:

• Co-lead health systems analysis in selected pastoralist populations and co-write the findings.
• Identify key demand-side barriers to service and work to develop implementation plan to overcome those barriers.
• Provide technical input on best practices in health service delivery in pastoralist populations across sub-Saharan Africa and translate those best practices for testing in Ethiopia as appropriate.
• Work with partner organizations to combine qualitative and quantitative research skills to develop mixed method approaches for health systems research in pastoralist communities.
• With appropriate partners, develop the terms of reference for an African advisory committee on pastoralist health and contribute to the start-up of this group.
• Co-develop a detailed implementation plan for submission and approval by the donor and the government.
• Engage experts as needed; develop scopes of work for internal and external consultants and contractors; oversee those scopes of work for quality and timeliness.
• Ability to travel domestically as required to support program activities

Qualifications and Experience

• Graduate Degree in International Development, Health Economics, or a Health-related field required
• Four years of experience in international development and health systems strengthening required; experience in addressing issues relating to pastoralist populations preferred.
• Experience with equity issues as they apply to health service delivery and social determinants of health and development; ability to apply this lens to pastoralist issues
• Understanding of supply and demand issues as they apply to health systems strengthening and service delivery; can demonstrate concrete methodologies for assessment
• Familiarity with regulations and administrative procedures in the implementation of donor assisted projects; experience with Global Fund funded projects preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain relationships with senior-level colleagues, stakeholders, and donors.
• Demonstrated competence to assess priorities and manage a variety of activities in a time-sensitive environment and meet deadlines with attention to detail and quality
• Excellent writing and presentation skills in English are essential.
• Ability to set up research protocols and complete operations research with appropriate parties.
• Qualitative and quantitative research skills (e.g., interview experience, data translation to run basic statistical analysis); ability to use a variety of tools for health systems analysis, including, Epi-Info, costing tools, modeling tools.
• Training development and facilitation skills