The AVANSE project is a five year (3 year firm plus 2 option years) project whose objective is to raise small farmer revenues in the Northern Corridor of Haiti through investments in agricultural productivity and improved natural resource management. Now at the beginning of its second year, AVANSE is facing a ramp-up of field activities and procurements in all technical areas. With waiver, approval and procurement processes taking sometimes up to several months, AVANSE requires detailed procurement and activity planning to ensure not only that the needed inputs are available, but also that the project’s technical teams have developed the required operational level planning models with critical paths of needed steps and resource requirements specified on an implementation plan calendar. This process of combining both procurement and technical actions will become more complicated over the second year of the project as AVANSE engages outside Implementing Partners (IPs) to provide field-level staff and supervision of select activities.

Until now, AVANSE has been asking the managers of its main project components to complete all the needed planning for their activities. It is apparent that this burden is becoming heavier as the scale and content of AVANSE field interventions is increasing. Furthermore, it is apparent that this “stove-piping” of planning responsibilities is creating an unnecessary barrier to the integration of activities across the components. Therefore the AVANSE project direction has decided to create a new LTTA post, a Planning Director, who will report to the Chief of Party (COP) and be responsible for working with the components to develop, maintain and update comprehensive operational plans integrating activity requirements, resource needs and budgeting on a computer-based platform such as Microsoft Project. This is a long term (one year renewable) position.

Specific Tasks:

Task 1: Develop operational plans for all Work Plan activities with each component that will be combined into an AVANSE Operational Plan.
Task 2: Develop resource requirement schedules with planned subcontracts and grants, expected STTA/consultations and materials procurement needs.
Task 3: Hold bi-weekly planning status review meetings with each of the components to track implementation progress against the Operational Plan.
Task 4: Produce a quarterly financial tracking report that will allow project management to follow spending on sub-contracts, grants, STTAs and materials procurement at the component level for reporting to USAID.

Deliverables

• Initial Operational Plan,
• Regular updated versions of the Operational Plan
• Quarterly implementation spending tracking reports.

• A University degree in a technical field of relevance to AVANSE (engineering, agronomy, business, finance).

• Experience doing complex activity planning using a project planning software platform such as Microsoft Project.

• Professional experience working with project teams organized into multiple components

• Excellent communications and interpersonal skills.

• Good quantitative skills and experience working with large spreadsheets on Excel.

• Fluent French and/or Kreyòl is mandatory. Good English is desired.

To apply for this position, please submit your application including motivation letter, resume and copy of diplomas no later than July 31, 2014 to: