Key expert 2: Quality Assurance and Technical Coordination Expert

EUROPEAN PROFILES S.A. (GR) is looking for experts for the implementation of the following EuropeAid Contract: Agricultural, forestry, horticultural, aquacultural and apicultural services. Second phase of the EU assistance for Uzbekistan AgriFood Development Strategy 2020-2030

 

Services Location: Uzbekistan

Start date: 1 October 2026

Duration: 48 months

Sector: Agriculture & Rural Development

 

Overall objective

The Overall Objective (Impact) of this action is to contribute to the development of a sustainable market-oriented and inclusive agri-food system that will increase farm income, expand livelihood opportunities and enhance food security for smallholder farmers, women and the most vulnerable groups in Uzbekistan.

 

Specific objective(s)

The Outcomes of this contract are as follows:

• Improved implementation framework of the agri-food development strategy enabling inclusive development of a fair, healthy and climate smart agri-food system:
• Improved sustainable livelihood opportunities, decent jobs and access to markets for the most vulnerable (smallholders, MSMEs, youth, women, disabled, migrants)

Key experts

Key experts have a crucial role in implementing the contract. These terms of reference contain the minimum requirements for the key experts.

Although minimum requirements for the experts are not selection criteria but award criteria meant to evaluate the technical quality of the offer, the compliance with these requirements is assessed on a YES/NO basis. If an expert does not meet the minimum requirements, the expert must be rejected on the basis of non-compliance. This means that the entire tender is rejected and shall not be evaluated further.

During the evaluation, higher scores will be awarded to the Expert's Profile that demonstrates, in addition to the minimum requirements, strengths in relation to the objectives, expected outputs, and scope of work. The award criteria may include additional desirable qualifications, skills and professional experience. These additional desirable criteria, will provide guidance on the elements that will be considered a strength and will receive higher scores.

The Key Expert's profile (Annex IV) shall be submitted by the tenderer for the following key experts:

 

Key expert 2: Quality Assurance and Technical Coordination Expert

Key Expert 2 will be responsible for ensuring that all outputs produced under this contract studies, assessments, training programmes and advisory notes are technically sound and respond accurately to the stated terms of reference. Quality control is understood not merely as procedural document review, but as active engagement with the clients government stakeholders to verify that assignments address genuine institutional needs and that outputs are actionable by the intended government counterparts. It requires the capacity to critically assess technical documents spanning a wide range of agricultural policy topics and to make well-informed judgements about their analytical soundness and fitness for purpose as instruments of public policy.

Key Expert 2 will work closely with the Team Leader on the design of specific terms of reference for individual assignments, on the selection and validation of non-key experts, and on the ex post assessment of all technical deliverables. He/she will also contribute substantively to the annual work planning process.

The indicative time input is 120 working days per year (480 days over the full 48-month implementation period). Up to 10% of the expert's time may be delivered remotely (home-based), provided that the quality assurance function which requires direct engagement with government counterparts is not compromised. The large majority of working time must be spent in Uzbekistan.

 

Qualifications and skills

Minimum requirements:

• Education): Master's degree in agriculture, agri-economics, rural development, natural resource management, public policy or a directly related discipline; or a Bachelor's degree plus four years of relevant professional experience.
• Language: Proficient knowledge of English (written and oral), minimum C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference..

Additional desirable qualifications:

• Language: Working knowledge of Russian.

General professional experience

Minimum requirements:

• At least 5 years of professional experience in agricultural policy, rural development or agri-food sector governance, demonstrating broad thematic exposure across areas relevant to this contract.

Specific professional experience

Minimum requirements:

• Demonstrated capacity to produce or critically assess high-quality analytical outputs policy studies, sector assessments, regulatory analyses or training curricula across any agricultural policy domain.

Additional desirable qualifications:

• Experience in policy research, academia or senior advisory roles is considered particularly relevant.
• Direct experience within a public administration in an agricultural policy function.

Guidance on expert time inputs:

• Working days: performance of the contract (and therefore payment) is based solely on working days. The contractor will only be paid for days actually worked on the basis of the daily fee rate contained in the budget breakdown (Annex V). The time input for experts must be expressed in Full Time Equivalent (FTE). Tenderers must annex the Estimated number of working days worksheet contained in the spread sheet for Annex V to their organisation and methodology (Annex III) to demonstrate the correspondence between the proposed methodology and the expert inputs.
• The annual leave entitlement of the experts employed by a contractor is determined by their employment contract with the contractor and not by the service contract between the contracting authority and the contractor. However, the annual leave entitlement of experts must not exceed 60 calendar days per year. Moreover, the contracting authority can decide when experts take their annual leave since this is subject to approval by the project manager, who will assess any such request according to the needs of the project while the contract is in progress. A day of annual leave is not considered to be a working day. See Articles 21 and 22 of the general conditions.
• The fee rates for all experts must include: the remuneration paid to the experts, all the administrative costs of employing the relevant experts, such as equipment, relocation and repatriation expenses (including flights to and from the place of performance upon mobilisation and demobilisation as well as leave), accommodation, expatriation allowances, leave, medical insurance and other employment benefits given to the experts by the contractor. It shall also include any security arrangement except when this is exceptionally included under the incidental expenditure. Furthermore, the fees shall also include the margin, overheads, profit and support facilities.
• The delivery mode of the expert's assignment is either on the place of performance or home based (see PRAG 2.5.5). The delivery mode, and the locations where the expert will undertake missions and the working days needed for each mission are indicated in section 5.1 of the terms of reference.

Please fill in accordingly the Europeaid CV form according to your experience and the project’s specific requirements

Application deadline: Tuesday, June 30, 2026