Project Specialist (SCM category management)

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

The United Nations Department of Field Support, Logistics Support Division (UN DFS-LSD) is responsible for implementing Supply Chain Management in support of the Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support (DPKO/DFS) missions as well as Special Political Missions (SPMs). 

The United Nations Department of Field Support provides dedicated support to international peace operations, including to UN peacekeeping, special political and other field missions. Through its four divisions, it supports the requirements of the Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support (DPKO/DFS) missions as well as Special Political Missions (SPMs).

LSD plays an integral role in the global operations of the field missions. It is one of the fundamental infrastructure components that support the substantive work and the delivery of peacekeeping and special political missions’ mandates. Efficient and reliable logistics support is a core strategic, operational and tactical pillar of field missions and the United Nations at large. Therefore, ensuring that a robust and fault-tolerant supply chain infrastructure is in place to sustain operations is a necessary and permanent consideration.

The division is currently implementing an ‘end-to-end’ integrated supply chain management with a view to achieving DFS vision of a well-managed and agile supply chain to support United Nations field missions with effectiveness and efficiency. The overall supply chain management process starts and ends with clients-development and management of consolidated demand/requirements of all clients and fulfillment of client’s requirements through strategic sourcing and delivery. The process is enabled by a robust performance management framework and supported by solution such as Umoja.

Umoja is the project approved by the General Assembly resolution 63/262 that aims at the transformation of the United Nations Secretariat by enabling high-quality, cost-effective service delivery to support the execution of evolving mandates everywhere the Organization operates.

Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili, will unite the many support and administrative entities throughout the Secretariat, including in peacekeeping and field missions, through re-designed and common processes for the management of all financial, human and physical resources; a single integrated information system; and training of staff.

In February 2015, LSD was designated as Umoja process owner for logistics. As logistics process owner, LSD led Phase 1 of the supply chain management deployment of Umoja Extension 2, also known as the Galileo Decommissioning Project that successfully completed the deployment of Umoja supply chain solution to peacekeeping and special political missions in September 2017, replacing the Galileo system.  The project was implemented through a dedicated project team within LSD.  Since January 2017, that project team was merged with DFS IPSAS-Umoja team along with responsibility for coordinating an expanded portfolio of Umoja deployments.  Known as the DFS Umoja Coordination Office, the team is responsible for deploying multiple project streams to peacekeeping and special political missions, including: UE2–Supply Chain Management (UE2-SCM) stream that include: demand planning, supply network planning, transport management, track and trace and material master transformation; the Strategic Planning and Performance Management stream (covering budget formulation and relationships with donors and implementing partners; conference and events management, force management and planning

UNOPS has been requested to assist in the implementation of this activity for DFS/LSD Umoja Coordination Service.

This position is in the Logistics Support Division (LSD), Department of Field Support (DFS). Under the direct supervision of the Project Manager, the Project Specialist will work with project participants in the LSD and the Procurement Division (PD) as well as other business stakeholders. The Project Specialist will perform the following duties:

• Support the development of category strategies by conducting market analyses, spend analyses and demand analyses
• Develop and document procedures and tools to facilitate the implementation of Category Management
• Work closely with cross-functional teams consisting of technical expert staff, procurement officers and internal business stakeholders to produce project deliverables
• Facilitate stakeholder workshops or interviews with UN field missions to analyse and document business requirements as well as to develop category strategies
• Plan and execute communication and change management activities to ensure efficient implementation of Category Management and adoption of project deliverables by the business.
• Compose complex technical documents including business cases, standard operating procedures, guidelines, process documentation and project reports
• Apply knowledge of performance metrics to define appropriate key performance indicators for different categories, which will be used to track implementation progress.
• Assist project manager(s) with project planning, status updates and communications and serve as back-up as and when needed.
• Perform other related duties as required.

• Advanced University Degree (master’s or equivalent) in business administration, supply chain management, data science, engineering or related field is required. A first level university degree and two additional years of relevant experience maybe accepted in lieu of an advanced degree.

Work Experience

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• A minimum of 5 years of experience in management consulting and/or large-scale project management in an international setting is required.
• Strong experience in data analysis and interpretation of complex business data sets is required.
• ExStrong working knowledge of Microsoft Office and of data analysis features in Excel is required.
• perience in Category Management and/or in supply chain management is highly desirable.
• Strong experience in supply market analysis and research is highly desirable.
• Proven experience in change management in large client organisations is highly desirable.
• Strong experience in preparing/giving executive-level written/oral presentations is desirable.
• Diverse knowledge of frameworks and tools for conducting analysis, surveys and workshops related to supply chain management and category management is desirable.
• Proven experience in managing (work streams of) large scale projects in large client organisations and in an international setting is desirable.
• Good working knowledge of any ERP system is desirable.

Languages

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required. Fluency in additional official UN languages is desirable.

Certifications

• Certification in Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) is desirable.

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns. Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.