DelAgua - Regional Programme Manager

Location: Eastern Indian States, mainly West Bengal. Up to 50% travel

Positions reporting to this post: Assistant Programme Managers, Area Programme Coordinators, Systems Integration Manager

Duration: Longterm

Background: DelAgua (www.delagua.org) is working in collaboration with the West Bengal Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) to provide innovative water quality testing services throughout all 18 districts utilising mobile laboratories, smartphone data collection and coordination of fixed laboratories.

THE ROLE: As the Regional Programme Manager, you will have the overall responsibility for ensuring the successful delivery of all projects in Eastern India, with priority on West Bengal. You will manage 3 Area Programme Coordinators who will be coordinating with 18 District Consultants, who will in turn be managing and coordinating up to a total of 250 water testing laboratories. You will also oversee the systems integration team who are responsible for rolling out new IT systems across the States, as well as managing water quality analysts and a quality assurance team. You will ensure that systems are in place and being followed to ensure that both progress and quality are measured, quantified and reported. You will be mainly based in West Bengal but will travel to other States to give presentations, demonstrations, trainings and start and support new programmes. You will have a background in science and experience of working with the PHED or similar government departments. You will understand the difference between coordination and management, and have established management, coordination and people skills. You will be proactive, hardworking and take pride in working for DelAgua, a global leader in innovative solutions, and alongside the prestigious West Bengal PHED.

Key Roles And Responsibilities:

- Create and ensure that project plans are in place, understood by all and followed such that weekly and monthly targets are understood and met or exceeded.

- Communicate with Area Programme Coordinators on a regular basis to check progress and provide support as required.

- Work with the Senior Programme Manager to create and ensure that management systems and structures are in place and followed, including clear reporting structures and frequencies.

- Create and ensure that roadmaps are in place to respond to incoming reports as needed and in a structured way.

- Ensure efficient human resource management, ensuring all staff have clear workplans, objectives and are fully utilised.

- Compile information received from the field into electronic formats that clearly show progress and achievements against targets. Be aware of project progress, strengths and weaknesses, and plan remedial actions where problems are found. Ensure that all activities, reports and feedback are recorded electronically in real-time.

- Submit weekly and monthly reports to the Senior Programme Manager and Country Director.

- Coordinate and develop training materials in various Indian languages for the programme as needed.

- Coordinate and plan training programmes for the project team, including preparing presentations, training agendas, session plans and feedback systems.

- Organise and lead State level review workshops and progress seminars for the project team and Government.

- Ensure that the quality assurance team are reviewing completed data coming from the field, checking for errors and identifying areas where support may be required.

- Conduct rotating visits to rural districts to support Area Programme Coordinators and ensure that water quality testing procedures and data collection methods are understood and being implemented correctly and accurately according to the protocol.

- Directly collect and compile feedback from the laboratories, District Engineers and State level PHED's to ensure customer satisfaction and create improvement plans where issues are found.

- As required, support general office coordination and set up under the direction of the Country Director.

- Conduct project planning and prepare proposals and BOQ's for new projects coming online in other States as required.

- Other work, coordination and support as directed by the Senior Programme Manager.

Skills And Competencies:

Full training will be provided regarding the mobile laboratory, data collection and management systems. You are expected to have the ability and enthusiasm to become a leading technical expert in this field, with the ability to find and implement technical and managerial solutions for your team. The following background, experience, skills and competencies are required:

- Excellent skills in verbal and written Bengali and English. Must be able to translate technical material and write excellent reports in English.

- A relevant qualification to at least Bachelors, although Masters is preferred. Relevant fields include Public Health, Environmental Engineering, Chemistry, or other science related disciplines; a Social Sciences background may be considered. Relevant experience and proven ability can substitute the need for formal qualifications.

- Significant experience of managing and coordinating large projects.

- Should have the ability to give convincing and engaging presentations and demonstrations.

- Must have excellent training and mentoring skills with proven experience.

- Familiarity with water, sanitation and health and hygiene issues is desirable. Experience with water quality testing is highly preferable.

- Must be available at short notice to travel nationally for presentations and demonstrations to government offices.

- Ability to spend up to 50% of his/her time travelling to different States in Eastern India and rural districts, often at short notice.

- Practical experience of quantitative or qualitative research is desirable.

- Field and/or NGO experience would be seen as a strength.

- Must be excellent with computers, able to produce quality documents in Word, complex data analysis in Excel and comfortable with the operation of smartphones. Some experience of 1 or more programming languages is an advantage.

- Must be willing to work flexible hours as required.

- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills is essential with the ability to communicate complex technical information to a wide range of audiences and make it understood.

Interviews will be held in Kolkata and/or Delhi.

This is a high level and caliber position. If you do not meet the above criteria please do not apply.