National Programme Management Officer

The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners' peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world.  Mandated as a central resource of the United Nations, UNOPS provides sustainable project management, procurement and infrastructure services to a wide range of governments, donors and United Nations organizations. With over 8,000 personnel spread across 80 countries, UNOPS offers its partners the logistical, technical and management knowledge they need, where they need it.  By implementing around 1,000 projects for its partners at any given time, UNOPS makes significant contributions to results on the ground, often in the most challenging environments.
In response to the request of the Government of Ukraine, UNOPS opened an office in Ukraine (UAOC) in 2017, which provides a broad spectrum of services to the Government and the people of Ukraine. Currently, its portfolio of projects exceeds USD 100 million and covers the areas of rule of law, environment, energy efficiency, crisis recovery, good governance, human resources management, procurement, and logistics.  The projects are funded by the European Union (EU), the Government of Ukraine, the Global Fund, UNHCR, USAID, the Japanese Government, and the Canadian Government.

The Programme Management Office (PMO) was established in April 2018, to provide a decision-enabling and delivery support structure for UNOPS Ukraine, needed to ensure that the UAOC has the right programmes and projects in place, that operational and change priorities are balanced, the governance and decision making is facilitated and that the UAOC has the resources and capability to deliver consistently well. The PMO acts as the overall project assurance capacity and supports the promotion of best practices. It strongly contributes to moving UAOC toward achieving its mission-focused goals and objectives.

The Programme Management Office (PMO) has three high-level functions: support strategic planning (doing the right projects), delivery support (doing projects the right way) and the Centre of Excellence (doing projects consistently and well).

Under the overall guidance and direct supervision of the Head of PMO (HoPMO), and in close coordination with the Deputy Head of Office/Head of Programme (DHO/HoP), the National PMO will be responsible for:

Development and planning

• Contributes to the development of resource tracking systems for use within the PMO, complementary to UNOPS' online tools, to ensure effective planning, forecasting and tracking of delivery across the Office, in line with the service agreements and projects’ documents; responsible for the weekly updates of the resource tracking system
• Analyses key programme and project resource requirements as well as tracking and maintaining of dependencies
• Provides support to the development, implementation and amendments of project budgets and staffing resources, ensuring synergies across the Office

• Provides support for identification and analysis of risks and issues and formulation of mitigation measures
• Contributes to the preparation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of gender action plans.

Set-up and closure

• Contributes to the analysis of draft programme/project plans, including the collation of lower-level plans into programme/project-level milestones
• Liaises closely with the Finance Manager all finance related issues in the project set-up and closure phases
• Supports all project closure activities, including but not limited to the overall coordination, disposal of project assets, timely and effective final (operational) reporting, initiation of financial disbursements during Defects Notification Period, updating information in the UNOPS Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems (oneUNOPS and oneUNOPS Projects) and effective handover of closed projects to the UNOPS HQ for financial closure processes.

Monitoring and reporting

• Responsible for establishing and quarterly updates of the UAOC Lessons Learned Log, Risks/Issues Register, Stakeholder Register, Quality Register, Internal and External Communications Action Plans, and other logs, registers, reports and plans kept by the PMO
• Provides analytical and technical support in the development and implementation of systems to ensure the monitoring and evaluation of programme and project activities
• Supports preparations of project reports in accordance with the donor guidelines for reporting
• Contributes to the review of projects’ statuses, evaluating performance criteria (scope, cost, schedule and quality)
• Participates in the routine oversight and analysis of delivery data within the dashboard system, using oneUNOPS and oneUNOPS Projects
• Participates in routine maintenance and implementation of effective monitoring and evaluation systems of programme and project activities, in line with logical framework matrices

• Provides secretarial role at the Senior Management Team (SMT) meetings and assists in the preparation of agendas, scheduling and preparing the minutes
• Participates and contributes to the meetings of the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) and updates the data about UNOPS’ activities at the UN Info Portal.

Stakeholder engagement

• Provides analytical support to the development of stakeholder profiles and the formulation of stakeholder engagement strategies
• Supports formulation of the Office, programmes and projects’ stakeholder engagement plans
• Contributes to stakeholder engagement and communication, ensuring effective timing and interdependency management of communications across programmes and projects
• Supports organisation of events and preparation of communications products, including, but not limited to: official letters, speeches, invitations, briefing notes and reports
• Prepares and facilitates meetings, workshops and other events in close collaboration with the Head of the PMO
• Translates short texts into/from English to Ukrainian/Russian.

Quality assurance

• Leads in the organisation of quarterly assurance meetings and preparation of meetings’ minutes
• Supports periodical “health checks” to ensure projects are implemented to the scope, budget, time and quality
• Conducts regular financial variance analysis of UNOPS Ukraine programmes and projects
• Assists Programme/Project Managers in the implementation of Project Management Manual and other UNOPS administrative instructions and organisational directives
• Contributes to the quality reviews of programme/project documents and deliverables
• Works with internal audit and finance to ensure compliance with organisational requirements
• Works with the Procurement Unit to ensure effective interface with suppliers' quality systems
• At the request of the HoPMO, assumes PMO oversight of UNOPS Ukraine portfolio at any one time.

Knowledge management and innovation

• Supports the HoPMO in UNOPS Ukraine initiatives related to the enhancement of project management maturity
• Supports organisation of learning workshops, training or other capacity building activities on processes and systems in order to enhance the long-term and sustainable capacity of the personnel
• Participates in, and advocates for Programme/Project Managers’ participation in relevant Communities
• Contributes to knowledge management procedures, ensuring that lessons learnt are captured and shared in line with the UNOPS standards

• Contributes to coordination with the Infrastructure and Project Management Group (IPMG) on the Organisational PMO (OPMO).

-       A Master’s degree preferably in Project Management, Business Administration, International Development, Economics, Finance or another relevant field is required.

-       A combination of a Bachelor’s degree with an additional two years of relevant work experience may be accepted in lieu of the master's degree.

UN Professional Certifications are highly desirable.

-       With a master's degree, a minimum of two (2) years or with a bachelor's degree a minimum of four (4)  years of relevant progressive professional experience in project management, successful implementation or oversight or programmes/projects, data analysis and management reporting are required.

-       Prior experience of working in or within a PMO environment is an advantage

-       Prior experience of working in the United Nations, international organisations, international development, post-disaster and/or emergency contexts, UN financial/procurement rules and regulations is desirable.

Fluency in oral and written English required. Fluency in Ukrainian and Russian required.

[Instructions: Please delete this paragraph and insert relevant information below:

1. Contract type: Individual Contractor Agreement
2. Contract level: Local Specialist Level 9
3. Contract duration - Ongoing ICA – ‘Open-ended, subject to organizational requirements, availability of funds and satisfactory performance.’

• 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
• 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.

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.