Project Rational

Project Rational:

On September 30, 2015, Helen Keller International (HKI) was awarded a five-year cooperative agreement by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to lead the development food security activity, (DFSA) Sustainable Agriculture and Production Linked to Improved Nutrition Status, Resilience and Gender Equity (SAPLING). The overall aim of SAPLING is to improve gender equitable food security, nutrition and resilience of vulnerable people living in select upazilas of the Bandarban District of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). This goal will be achieved by applying an integrated community development approach to interventions designed to increase household (HH) food availability and access, enhance Maternal Child Health and Nutrition (MCHN), and improve resilience to shocks and stresses among families who are under constant threat of natural and human-induced disasters.

SAPLING is being implemented through a consortium approach. Under the SAPLING project, HKI, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Caritas/Bangladesh and five local NGOs are working in partnership with individuals, communities and the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) to increase food and nutrition security for poor and vulnerable HHs in all unions within the upazilas of Thanchi, Ruma, Lama, Rowangchari, and BandarbanSadar.

As the prime, HKI is responsible for representation in addition to overall strategic vision, management, compliance and quality control. HKI is also the technical lead on livelihoods and MCHN. Caritas Bangladesh (CB) is responsible for SAPLING’s upazila-level and union-level office administration and technical-line management of three local partners for field-level implementation of activities in the upazilas of Bandarban Sadar, Ruma and Lama. Other local partners are responsible for field-level activities in upazilas of Rowangchari and Thanchi. CRS is the consortium’s lead on provision of technical assistance in disaster risk management (DRM), Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), and Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC). CRS is also responsible for SAPLING’s local capacity building component.

Background Information:

A 2013 HKI food security assessment estimated stunting among children in the CHT to be 37%, of which 25% was moderate and 12% severe.[i] Prevalence of underweight among children under age five was estimated to be 10%, and prevalence of wasting was approximately 30%. There are myriad and complex causes of food insecurity in the CHT including the region’s geographic and political isolation, historic marginalization of the region, land tenure, poverty, environmental degradation, and gender inequality. In addition to these causes, WASH issues such as water shortages and poor hygiene and sanitation practices are significant contributing factors to the region’s food insecurity.

While safer water from tap or tube wells is used almost exclusively in the rest of Bangladesh, over 30% of households assessed by HKI in rural areas of the CHT said they were still using surface water and only eight percent reported using tube well, piped, or public tap water. [ii] Water scarcity is a major concern in the CHT, with 31% of households in Bandarban district traveling over 2.5 kilometers to collect water, compared to 9% nationally[iii]; access to water drops greatly during the dry season. As the area is mountainous and digging wells or boreholes is difficult in the rocky ground, people are dependent on rainfall, surface water such as lakes or waterfalls, and/or spring water. Focus group participants said they retrieved water from rivers and streams, canals, ring wells, and upland waterfalls through gravity flow systems (GFS) using a pipeline network in a few areas. They are using local knowledge to develop and manage the GFSs, but they need improvement considering environmental consequences and water safety, including testing. Water levels recede during the dry season and streams disappear due to deforestation that forces communities to collect water from distant sources, which sometimes takes over an hour. This study will identify water sources, exploring their adequacy, impact due to seasonality and water quality.

Sanitation facilities used by the extreme poor in areas assessed by HKI were much worse than those in the CHT as a whole. Only three percent of households assessed reported using sanitary facilities and 47% reported using no facility at all, with an additional six percent using a hanging toilet. The prevalence rate of rural households that practice open defecation in the CHT is twice that of other rural areas of the country. Half of the focus group participants in an initial context assessment said they used pit latrines, although these were not always clean. Most individual households did not have a latrine and open defecation was said to be common. Study will collect information on past projects, especially the solutions tried out in Bandarban, which will include barriers and enablers related to community led total sanitation (CLTS). The study will then inform SAPLING’s CLTS activities, which it had originally proposed to pilot.

Regarding hygiene, the 2013 HKI study indicated that only nine percent of caregivers in the CHT practiced appropriate hand-washing behavior; 39% reported safe disposal of a child’s solid waste, with 24% of those reporting safe disposal with sanitary toilets.

SAPLING is in the process of conducting formative research that will provide greater insight in terms of WASH behaviors, practices, attitudes and beliefs within the different ethnic communities residing in the five upazilas in which SAPLING is operating. Through this research and analysis, SAPLING will start identifying best practices and barriers to improvement of the general WASH status. The WASH technical advisor was involved in designing the questionnaire and training the enumerators. One of the expected outcomes of the formative research is to identify most appropriate information education and communication (IEC) materials. With regards to WASH status improvement, WASH-related behavioral topics and practices are being fully integrated into the Integrated Enhanced Homestead Food Production (IEFHFP) groups’ curriculum which serves as a platform for comprehensive behavioral changes required to achieve SAPLING’s overall goal, and MCHN sessions.

Objective:

In light of the above, SAPLING is seeking the service of a consultant to conduct a comprehensive assessment covering water (available water resources, water infrastructure and management challenges) sanitation (most appropriate technical solutions for the geological conditions of Bandarban, barriers to sanitation improvement, etc.

Safe drinking water: Identify solutions for water surface and ground water source protection and develop an implementation strategy for water user committee (WUC) creation and trainings including technical operation and maintenance of water supply systems, life cycle cost (LCC). LCC includes cost recovery (operational, construction, maintenance, capital cost) and appropriate water user fee collection processes.

Sanitation technology and systems: Identify 10 most appropriate and acceptable HH sanitation solutions fitting the specific context and identify entrepreneurs and/or a local private company to be trained in production and implementation of such technology and systems. Multiple technical solutions from various price ranges must be promoted to fit different social and environmental contexts.

Key Activities:

Potential key activities to reach the above detailed objectives are as follow:

Preliminary activities:

• Review national and regional policy and legal frameworks and guidance regarding water supply, hygiene and sanitation approaches for CHT.
• Review past and current WASH programs and services (both NGO and governmental) and related studies, assessments, and evaluations in the CHT region, to identify available resources, best practices, lessons learned, and available tools and guidance.
• Review key project documentation and hold discussions with relevant SAPLING staff.

Safe drinking water:

• Conduct an inventory assessment (from tool creation to data analysis) of existing water sources in the project areas including but not limited to location, type of water sources, technical details (geological information, water quality, depth, seasonality, etc.), ownership status, operational status, management body, and water safety plan.
• Identify reasons why existing infrastructures are not functional (key informant interviews, focus group discussions) and solutions to increase sustainability of water source management including operational and maintenance gaps as well as financial issues.
• Prioritize water supply infrastructure that considers the cost/benefit, local capacity for governance and maintenance, gender-sensitivity (i.e., reducing distances for women, elderly, disabled and children), potential environmental impact, and availability and sustainability of resources for construction, operation, testing, etc.

Sanitation technology and systems:

• Review of past project’s including CLTS successes, barriers and challenges in providing and promoting use of safe sanitation facilities.
• Community level and/or household level assessment designed to identify barriers that prevented or limited successes of past sanitation projects in the specific CHT context.
• Consultation with sanitation traders, entrepreneurs and consumers from CHT to better understand barriers and enablers to improved sanitation practices and the kinds of sanitation products that could enable community members in using improved facilities.
• Select 10 most culturally appropriate sanitation technical solutions, provide technical designs and bill of quantities for selected designs. Water source protection, gender, age, disability and economical aspects should be considered in selecting the most appropriate solutions.
• Identify potential desludging solutions and consider composting.

Deliverables:

The final report must be written in English. It should include the most relevant findings from the literature review and past projects, the assessments’ results and conclusions (tools and datasets to be included as annexes), and the strategies for water and sanitation improvement agreed upon by the consortium as detailed below:

• Detailed implementation strategy for prioritized water source rehabilitation (including technical description and scope of work for rehabilitation and/or construction) and water user committee creation and/or trainings including technical operation and maintenance of water supply systems, cost recovery (operational, construction, maintenance, capital cost), most appropriate fair water-user fee collection process.
• Sanitation strategy including most appropriate technical solutions (including drawings, bill of quantities and scope of work), capacity building for masons and or entrepreneurs to local construction of hardware, linkage with market for distribution of construction materials, promotion to community members of these identified solutions, and construction modalities.

Key Milestones and Schedule:

CRS Roles/Responsibilities:

• Provision of device for data collection if necessary
• Provision of in-country WASH technical staff to act as a local resource and assist in technical support to the consultant
• Review of study design/tools and draft reports

Key Relationship:

The consultant will work in close relationship with the CRS appointed SAPLING WASH technical advisor (TA) and report to CRS’ SAPLING program manager.

SAPLING’s WASH technical staff and field officers will assist hired enumerators for data collection if/when necessary. The consultant will be responsible for training data collectors on data collection tools and managing data collections activities.

Place of Performance:

The consultant will be based out of the Bandarban District office with field trips to the upazilas targeted by the project.

Consultant Profile:

The consultant or consultancy firm, a national from Bangladesh, should have at least [5] years of experience with in a relevant field of activity with specific experience / education on hydrology, water resource engineering, geology and / or sanitation in rural location of Bangladesh and on behavior change projects.

The consultant must be fluent in English.

Disclaimer Clause: This ToR is not an exhaustive list of the tasks which will support the WASH project.

SECTION B: OTHER NECESSARY DETAILS

Budget and Mode of Payment:

• Consultant/firm is advised to submit –detail budget for the whole consultancy service including field activities and validation workshop. Proposed total budget will be treated the quoted price for entire service and deliverables. The agreed price will be paid in USD directly from CRS Headquarter.
• The payment will be made according to the schedule as follows:

• Payment under the consultancy assignment would be subject to having consensus on the materials /report and final deliverables by both parties,
• The Consultant/firm shall be solely responsible for his/her or team members’ insurance (health, travel etc.).
• Compliance to local laws on taxes/VAT is the sole responsibility of the Consultant.
• SAPLING (CRS) will support organizing meeting at community level and arranging local transport (at SAPLING working area i.e. Bandarban and other 4 Upazilas); consultant/firm is advised to include cost related to distance travel (i.e. Dhaka to Bandarban and Bandarban to Dhaka and training venue)
• Cost related to training (for participants and consultant) including food, accommodation at the venue will be managed by SAPLING (CRS) if any

Preparation of the Proposal and person specification

The bidder shall bear all cost associated with preparation and submission of the proposal. The bidder shall submit technical and financial proposal in a single envelope with signature. The technical and financial proposals should be marked properly and should include the name and detail contact address of the bidder.

• Consultant/firm can submit - of the proposal through email and/or soft copy is allowed but a hard copy with signature must have to send within 3 days of the last date of submission.

Validation of the Proposal

All cost should be quoted in BDT and will remain valid up to Sixty Days (60) from the day of proposal submission.

Withdrawal/Cancelation of the SoW

CRS does normally check some of indicators to select the appropriate vendor i.e. understanding of assignment, appropriateness of the proposed Methodology, Relevant experience of organization, composition of resources person/Team, Time frame and of course financial Proposal. CRS preserves right to cancel/terminate/halt this hiring process without showing any justification to the bidder.

Outline of the Technical Proposal

The proposal should not contain any publicity documents/brochure of the bidder. It is expected that the proposal should maintain the following format:

Topic Page Limit

The detail CV of the Team Leader along with expert (one or more) should be included in the annexure of the technical proposal. It is desirable that the proposal should contain the above mentioned sections only. Bidder can submit the relevant experience documents i.e. brochure, list of previous assignments as an Annex (not in the body of technical proposal). Any experience that relates the experience of similar consultancy MUST be included into the CV of Expert/s.

1. Financial Proposal Submission Format: (Financial Offer: Summary of Cost)

Services/Assignment Name: CHT specific comprehensive WASH strategy development

RFP Ref: ------, Date: ------2017

Name of the Consultant/s: ______

Summary of Cost:

B. Cost of Facilitation-Considerable Points

The bidder may include/exclude any necessary heads from the above mentioned format.

 All the pages of the financial proposal should be signed by the respective person of the bidder organization. In case of submission through email, consultant/firm has to make sure that the document is signed and scanned to send.

 All costs should be inclusive of VAT and TAX.

 The payment terms would be as per mutually agreed T&C laid out in the contract

Competencies Required (please include in your CV):

• Previous experience of working with USAID funded food security program (Title II project)
• Excellent technical knowledge and proven working experience on disaster management
• Established working relationship with relevant stakeholder in WASH Sector
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience on conducting similar nature of assignment
• Relevant academic background of the consultants
• Excellent analytical, interpersonal, communication and reporting skills
• Fluent in English and Bengali

Confidentiality: