Overview
The Emergency WASH Specialist will deploy to support Country Offices or regional responses to establish, strengthen, or recover safe, inclusive, and gender-responsive WASH services during emergencies. The role provides technical leadership and operational support across the emergency programme cycle.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead or support rapid WASH needs assessments, technical assessments, service mapping and market assessments.
- Analyse WASH risks, service gaps, disease transmission risks, gender and protection concerns, accessibility barriers and priority needs of affected populations.
- Support the development of evidence-based emergency WASH response strategies, workplans, response plans and budgets.
- Ensure programme design is aligned with Sphere Standards, the Core Humanitarian Standard, national standards, cluster guidance and relevant public-health requirements.
- Identify opportunities for integrated programming with Health, Nutrition, Protection, Education, Shelter and Cash and Voucher Assistance interventions.
- Provide technical oversight for emergency water supply interventions.
- Provide technical guidance on emergency sanitation.
- Support hygiene-promotion and social and behaviour change activities.
- Provide technical guidance on WASH in health-care facilities, infection prevention and control, outbreak preparedness and response.
- Review and support the development of technical drawings, Bills of Quantities, specifications, scopes of work, technical evaluation criteria and contractor deliverables.
- Ensure infrastructure and service interventions are safe, technically appropriate, accessible, climate-informed and feasible for operation and maintenance.
- Establish or strengthen practical quality-assurance mechanisms.
- Support Country Offices to establish emergency WASH response systems.
- Work closely with Supply Chain and Procurement teams to support procurement planning, technical specifications, supplier engagement, quality checks and delivery follow-up.
- Support field teams to establish appropriate systems for stock management, distribution tracking, water-quality monitoring, facility operation and maintenance, complaints handling and community feedback.
- Provide hands-on support during the initial phase of an emergency response.
- Identify operational bottlenecks, implementation risks and corrective actions.
- Represent Plan International in national and sub-national WASH Cluster meetings, technical working groups, inter-agency coordination platforms and sector coordination mechanisms.
- Ensure timely submission of 3Ws/4Ws, activity updates, technical information and response data to relevant coordination platforms.
- Maintain constructive working relationships with government authorities, UN agencies, NGOs, donors, service providers, local partners and community structures.
- Support coordination with Health, Protection, Education, Shelter and other sectors.
- Contribute to technical discussions, advocacy messages and coordination products.
- Contribute to the development of emergency concept notes, proposals, budgets, logframes, technical narratives and donor reports.
- Ensure WASH proposals are technically sound, realistic, costed appropriately and responsive to assessed needs.
- Support the development of monitoring frameworks, indicators, targets, reporting systems and learning products.
- Review programme reports and provide technical input.
- Contribute to after-action reviews, response evaluations, learning workshops and preparedness planning processes.
- Ensure all emergency WASH interventions address the specific needs, safety concerns and priorities of girls, adolescent girls and young women.
- Promote disability inclusion, age inclusion, menstrual health and hygiene, protection-sensitive design and equitable access to services.
- Ensure meaningful participation of women, girls, boys, men, persons with disabilities and marginalised groups.
- Support the integration of community feedback and complaints mechanisms.
- Uphold Plan International’s safeguarding, child-protection, anti-harassment and code-of-conduct requirements.
Required Experience
- Progressively responsible experience in WASH programming, including solid experience in humanitarian or emergency-response settings.
- Demonstrated experience in emergency WASH assessments, programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
- Proven technical experience in emergency water supply, water treatment, water-quality monitoring, sanitation, hygiene promotion and WASH infrastructure.
- Experience supporting public-health emergency responses, including outbreaks, displacement, conflict, flooding, drought or other humanitarian crises.
- Experience developing technical specifications, Bills of Quantities, scopes of work, procurement documentation and contractor supervision arrangements.
- Experience in donor proposal development, budgeting and reporting.
- Experience representing an organisation with clusters, government authorities, UN agencies, donors, NGOs and other external stakeholders.
- Experience managing, mentoring or strengthening the capacity of WASH staff and local partners.
- Experience working in complex, insecure or resource-constrained environments.
