Business/Operational Plan Expert

Based on a long-standing partnership and UNDP previous experience in implementing large and medium-size EU funded urban upgrading and infrastructure projects in the Turkish Cypriot community, the European Commission requested UNDP to continue supporting this type of infrastructure projects through the establishment of a new instrument called “Local Infrastructure Facility”.

The Facility will help identify, screen, mature, prepare for tender, and implement local infrastructure investments, targeting the funding on competitive basis to ensure best value for money and providing support also to those communities with a lower technical and administrative capacity. This will in turn result in a greater positive impact on the standard of living of local populations and increase the visibility of EU interventions in the priority areas.

Specifically, two of the identified projects are for the construction of social infrastructure. These two projects are described below.

Risokarpaso/Dipkarpaz Multicultural Children Daycare and Multi-communal Women Handcrafts Centre

Through the project, a new facility will be built that will host the two interlinked units. The objective of the first unit will be to provide families with children with an affordable day care centre that will help manage the household economy, while providing a degree of independence to the women of the area and increasing the interaction of different communities through their children. For the second unit, the objective is to give a degree of economic independence to the women in the household in Rizokarpazo while introducing an additional multi-communal social area and providing handycrafts products to be sold to visitors.

Vatili/Vadili Child Welfare Project

Under this project, the LIF project will build a new facility whose objective is to provide a healthy and safe environment for child development and parent-children quality time as well as enable interactions between kids from different cultures.

For the projects to move forward in their implementation, it is important to define the factors that will contribute to the sustainability of both facilities. In that context, it will be important to define the financial, organisational and oversight aspects needed for the successful management of the facilities. Based on the analysis of these aspects, the expert will provide his recommendations about the viability of such facilities.

The specific objective of this assignment is to develop a comprehensive business/operational plan for both facilities that will ensure the sustainability of the infrastructure to be built. The specific objective will be attained through the achievement of four assignment deliverables.

The business/operational plan must be in such details as to give guidance to the beneficiary in putting in place measures and procedures to implement the business plan.

More concretely, the Business/Operational Plan Expert will be expected to perform the following tasks for each project: 

Task 1 – Collection of information

Under this task, the Business/Operational Plan Expert will:

• Familiarise him/herself with the intended project;
• Obtain information from the beneficiary about their human, admin, technical, financial capacities;
• Organise consultation with the beneficiary, citizens associations and any relevant interested parties to define the expectations and better define the expected results of the project; and
• Collect information and data from similar facilities in Cyprus.

Task 2 – Analysis of data collected

The Business/Operational Plan Expert is expected to:

• Define more in details the services that could be provided in the facility. For that purpose, it is expected that the consultant could conduct additional consultations with interested parties;
• Conduct a presentation with all interested parties during which the expert will present the services that could be provided in the facility and obtain their consent;
• Define the human and material resources needed to run the facility and provide the intended services;
• Quantify the operational and maintenance costs of the facility and the services to be provided and ledger these in expenditures;
• Quantity the potential revenues that could be generated by the services and ledger these in revenues;
• Collate a 10-year projection of revenues and expenditures; 10 years from 2022

Task 3 – Preparation of the draft business/operational plan

Based on the information collected and its analysis, the Business/Operational Plan Expert will:

• Prepare a draft report that should contain, but not limited, to the following sections
  • Introduction
  • Objectives of the facility
  • General physical description of the facility
  • Description of the services
  • Human resources
  • Physical resources
  • Administrative and operational requirements
  • Financial projections
  • Oversight of the facility management
  • Recommendations
  • Conclusions
• Conduct a presentation of the report along the proposed sections to the interested parties. A draft of the presentation should be submitted to UNDP at least 72 hours before the meeting.
• Collect comments and suggestions from interested parties

Task 4 – Preparation of final business/operational plan

Based on the provided comments and suggestions collected under the Task 3, the Business/Operational Plan Expert will:

• Revise the report;
• Submit the revised report for final review to UNDP;
• Receive final comments;
• Conduct final revision based on the final comments;
• Submit the final version of the report for approval

Schedules of assignments(tentative)

Tentative schedules is provided below.

The work of the Business/Operational Plan Expert will be directly supervised by the UNDP LIF Project Manager.  She/He will submit reports and seek approval of changes to the plans from the UNDP LIF Project Manager.

DELIVERABLES/OUTPUTS:

The Business/Operational Plan Expert shall submit the following deliverables/outputs:

• Multicultural Children Daycare and Multi-communal Women Handcrafts Centre Draft Business/Operational Plan;
• Multicultural Children Daycare and Multi-communal Women Handcrafts Centre Final Business/Operational Plan;
• Child Welfare Project Draft Business/Operational Plan; and
• Child Welfare Project Final Business/Operational Plan.

Deliverables shall be submitted in one hard copy and one digital version.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic all field trips and contacts with the public should be made in accordance with the guidelines issued by the health body and if needed personal protection and social distancing must be implemented. The meetings or contacts should take place where feasible through remote tools (MS Teams, Zoom, Skype etc.). The service provider is also responsible for the protection of their staff’s health, safety and social rights while providing the required services and shall ensure that possible measures have been taken into consideration against possible risks of COVID-19 e.g. by using PPEs equipment etc.

Functional Competencies:

Promoting Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing

• Researches best practices and poses new, more effective ways of doing things;

Job Knowledge/Technical Expertise

• Understands the main processes and methods of work regarding to the position;
• Demonstrates good knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments;

Promoting Organizational Development

• Demonstrates ability to identify problems and proposes solutions;

Client Orientation

• Reports to internal and external clients in a timely and appropriate fashion;
• Organizes and prioritizes work schedule to meet client needs and deadlines;
• Establishes, builds and sustains effective relationships within the work unit and with internal and external clients;

Promoting Accountability

• Prepares timely inputs to reports;

Core Competencies:

• Demonstrate cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Have good management skills;
• Good communication (written and spoken) and interpersonal skills;
• Ability to work well under pressure;
• Good understanding of the sensitive and bi-communal work of CMP;
• Acting as a team player and facilitating team work;
• Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others;
• Respond positively to critical feedback.

Education:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in finance, business development, economics or any other related field

Experience:

• At least 5 years of professional experience in developing business and operational plans
• Experience of the Cyprus context will be an asset

Language Requirements:

• Excellent English skills (both written and verbal)
• Knowledge of Turkish Language is an asset

Application: Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• CV or Personal History (P11): Applicants are required to submit CV or a P11 Form. The UNDP P11 Form can be downloaded from: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/Careers/P11_Personal_history_form.doc 
• Reference; Contact details of 3 references
• Financial Proposal:  Applicants requested to submit financial proposal for the deliverables/outputs defined in this term of reference as: A lump sum financial offer in Euro for the outputs defined (draft and final versions of the Business/Operational Plan for each project); shall cover all expenditures including fees, health insurance, vaccination, international (all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel) or local travel (place of residence to office and office to place of residence), cost of living and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services. Leave benefits (annual, sick, paternity, maternity) are not applicable to Individual Contractor and absent days including weekends and office holidays are not payable.

Pricing shall be given as follows:

Logistics of the Assignment:

The Consultant shall arrange her/his own local travel, if needed. Please note that consultants will need to provide their own laptop, mobile phone and other relevant equipment for working purposes.

Evaluation / Selection Process: All applicants will be screened against qualifications and the competencies set above. Candidates fully meeting the requirements will be further evaluated based on the criteria below.

Technical Criteria (CV review and interviews) – 70% of total evaluation – max. 70 points

CV review: 30 points:

• Educational qualification as defined in the ToR (15 points)
• Experience as defined in the ToR (15 points)

Only candidates who obtained at least 70% of points from the CV review (who will score at least 21 points) will be eligible to be invited for an interview/desk review.

Desk review: 40 points:

• Relevant professional experience to the outputs defined in this ToR– 15 points
• At least 2 business plans developed for private entities – 10 points
• At least 2 business plans developed for public and/or parastatal entities – 10 points
• Knowledge of the Cypriot context in relation to the ToR – 5

Only those individual consultants who obtained at least 70% of points from the interview and written test (28 out of 40) will be considered for financial proposal evaluation.

Financial Criteria – 30% of total evaluation – max. 30 points.

Financial scores will be calculated using the formula [lowest offer / financial offer of the candidate x 30]. 

UNDP applies the “Best value for money approach” – the final selection will be based on the combination of the applicants’ qualification and financial proposal.

Payment Term: Payments will be made against the outputs/deliverables accepted by UNDP.

• Draft outputs and presentation for both projects
• Final outputs for both projects