Sub Award Manager At DAI Global

USAID’s four-year (2021-2025) Resilience through Agriculture in South Sudan (RASS) Activity will improve food security and community household recovery and resilience in 13 target counties, reducing long term reliance on humanitarian assistance. To achieve this ambitious aim, RASS will employ a resilience pathways approach to improve the effectiveness of local systems and strengthen the capacities of community groups to achieve gender responsive and diversified market-sensitive production; facilitate increased production of diverse nutritious foods by strengthening productivity, reducing food loss, and improving nutrition behaviours; and strengthen and expand household and community opportunities for sustainable, locally driven livelihoods. RASS targets graduating communities from high integrated food security phase classifications to low IPC acute food insecurity and support a change from a focus on humanitarian assistance to inclusive development assistance and economic growth.

CONTEXT AND GENERAL TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

RASS will work through local partners to ensure the sustainability and local ownership of RASS interventions—building the capacity of local partners and local stakeholders, where it is needed. To achieve this, RASS will establish and manage an Inclusive Partnership Facility (IPF) to administer competitive grants, pay-for-performance subcontracts, and technical assistance to local actors. The Sub-Award Manager will work collaboratively with the RASS objective and field teams, driving the compliance and award process for use of the IPF.

The issuance of grants under the IPF will be administered through simplified requests for applications (RFAs), in compliance with the USAID-approved Grants Under Contract (GUC) Management Plan and DAI policies and procedures. For local subcontracts, RFPs will be developed and released for the competitive award of performance-based subcontracts, whereby pay-for-performance will be prioritized. The Sub-award manager will work closely with the RASS Construction Manager for issuance of local construction subcontracts. Technical assistance will be administered either through long-term staff or the contracting of short-term consultants.

POSITION DESCRIPTION AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The Sub-Award Manager provides daily oversight and management of the IPF for compliance, ensuring adherence to USAID and DAI’s policies and procedures. S/he will supervise a Procurement Specialist for the timely award, delivery and cost effectiveness of grants, local subcontracts, and construction awards, as well as needed technical assistance by the objective, county, and field supervisory teams. The Sub-Award Manager will work collaboratively with all RASS team members—including DAI Home Office staff—to ensure program descriptions, technical requirements, and objectives are accurately captured in scopes of work. The Sub-Award Manager will ensure adequate, effective, and efficient systems and processes are in place for sub-awards, adapting systems as learning occurs through RASS implementation and as the country context evolves and shifts to meet the needs of the Activity.

The following comprise main responsibilities of the Sub-Award Manager:

Compliance and Risk Management Responsibilities

• Develop, oversee, and implement the Grants Under Contract Management Plan in accordance with USAID and DAI policies and procedures, including recommending modifications or adaptations to the GUC Plan as required.
• ·Establish and implement clear and effective sub award policies, procedures and systems that can be successfully achieved in the South Sudan context, including simplified templates and award selection procedures, where possible.
• Advise the RASS team on successful use and measures for IPF implementation.
• Ensure full compliance with local law, DAI and US government policies, best practices, and procedures relating to subcontracts, grants, and technical assistance.
• Ensure the issuance of all sub-awards conform to DAI’s Field Operations Manual—namely, Chapters 8, 9, 12, and 13—and that there is an effective and appropriate match between technical requirements and the award agreement mechanism.
• Effectively communicate compliance requirements to the RASS team through staff trainings, development of quick reference guides, clearly written guidance, or verbal communication in meetings.
• Ensure issuance of sub-awards under the IPF comply with approved work plan activities and budget for meeting the quality standards and requirements as defined in RASS technical strategy and policy manual documents.

Sub-Award Responsibilities

• Oversee and manage the full award cycle for grants, local subcontracts, construction subcontracts, and use of technical assistance (STTA, independent consultants).
• Develop and finalize templates for the issuance of expressions of interests (EOIs); Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) in the forms of Annual Program Statements (APS) and Request for Applications; Requests for Proposals for local subcontracts and construction; and Co-creation / Co-development with local partners.
• Direct the development and finalization of sub-award agreements—grants, local subcontracts, construction subcontracts, and STTA—ensuring proper negotiation of the terms and conditions in accordance with DAI award requirements.
• Proactively build synergies between teams ensuring effective communication for anticipating modifications to sub awards, problem-solving, and enabling latitude and agility to sub awardee performance for achieving results.
• Manage the engagement with potential applicants and offerors during the competitive period – providing feedback, answering questions, managing any applicant conferences, etc.
• Ensure all sub-award budgets—including internal estimates and award budgets—meet the standards of allowability, allocability, cost reasonableness, and consistency.
• Organize and lead technical evaluation committees and cost reasonableness reviews, preparing award approval documents, assisting technical leads with implementation management, and ensuring monitoring, evaluation and learning agenda requirements are captured in award agreements.
• Provide capacity building support to non-traditional partners for administrative compliance.
• Conduct pre-award audits of prospective sub awardees, ensuring adherence to eligibility requirements, DUNS number registration (as appropriate), vetting requirements, and compliance with pre-award responsibilities as defined by DAI policies and procedures.
• Monitor and track payments and spending of all sub-awardees against approved budgets, including tracking deliverable or milestone schedules for proper closeout of sub-awards.
• Provide support to activity staff as well as sub awardees to ensure adherence with sub award policies and the delivery of technical excellence under the IPF.
• Identify, develop, and track relationships with new potential sub partners, curating a robust sub-partner database to manage the program’s extended network of both traditional and non-traditional USAID subcontractors, consultants, and grantees in South Sudan.
• Integrate sub-partner feedback on upcoming solicitations and scopes of work to ensure implementation is continuously evolving with the operational context and needs of the local sub partners for meeting the objectives of the contract.
• Create and implement on-boarding procedures for sub awardees, as necessary.
• Contribute data and reporting for monitoring and evaluation, funding capture, and grant and subcontract learning and close-out under the IPF.

Systems Records Management Responsibilities

• Oversee and ensure capture of complete documentation and reporting in accordance with USAID and DAI guidelines for all sub award files (develops and maintains file checklists).
• Conducts periodic file reviews during implementation and at close-out of sub awardees.
• Raises issues related to risks with IPF implementation to senior leadership.
• Ensures sub award file management conforms to the approved DAI RASS records map and that appropriate software and databases are being used, i.e. TAMIS Pro, SharePoint, etc.
• Assists in the preparation of reports, analysis, and presentations on sub award performance.

Other Responsibilities:

• Supervise, develop, and coach the Procurement Specialist, demonstrating leadership capacity to the RASS team by remaining effective in times of stress and using feedback to enhance performance and team cohesion.
• Conduct interactions with colleagues, sub-partners, authorities, stakeholders, and vendors in a manner that builds credibility and leads to inclusive and positive interactions.
• Completes tasks or other responsibilities as defined by the Director of Finance and Operations.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES

The Sub Award Manager will directly supervise and provide leadership to a Procurement Specialist.

QUALIFICATIONS

· Education and Work Experience: Bachelor’s degree in international development, economics, business administration or other relevant degree and eight years of relevant work experience or master’s degree in international development, economics, business administration or other relevant degree and five years of relevant work experience.

· Demonstrated Professional Knowledge: Proven working knowledge and application of USAID Automated Directive Systems (ADS) and Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) pertaining to grants under contract, construction subcontracts, and procurement.

· Demonstrated Professional Ability: Proven ability to lead sub award processes and multi-stakeholder discussions for driving the evolution of program descriptions and/or scopes of work from solicitation to activity award to closeout.

· Demonstrated Communications Skills: Excellent writing and communication skills with particular experience in developing Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs), Requests for Proposals/Quotes (RFPs/RFQs), memorandum of negotiations, award selection documentation, cost reasonableness reviews, development of manuals, policies and procedures, reporting for grants and subcontracts management, developing, leading and facilitating bidders conferences and trainings for internal staff in grants and procurement. Professional fluency in English and Juba Arabic. Local languages a plus

· Demonstrated Management Skills: Proven experience managing a team of at least one, providing supervisory and coaching, and/or demonstrated leadership within a team through the assignment of progressively higher-level responsibilities within an organization.

REQUIRED ATTRITBUTES OF ALL RASS TEAM MEMBERS

• Be Flexible and Adaptive – given the pace and frequency at which conditions may change in South Sudan, team members are expected to be agile with position requirements, adapting to changing circumstances to successfully meet the objectives of the contract with USAID.
• Be Collaborative and Inclusive –individual team members are expected to model openness to new and competing ideas, seek feedback from colleagues, demonstrate and internalize respect for diverse opinions, and proactively create safe spaces for participation in decision-making processes to ensure the views of different groups, gender, and levels of understanding and experience within systems where RASS operates are considered and incorporated into activity programming, security, and development of RASS policies and procedures.