Key expert 1: Team Leader/Education Policy Expert

EUROPEAN PROFILES S.A. (GR) will participate as leaderin a bidding for the following EuropeAid tender: Support to Education Policy

Services Location: Republic of Serbia

Start date: October 2024

Duration: 36 months

Overall objective

The overall objective (Impact) to which this action contributes is bringing about the broad, long-term change in the political, social, economic and environmental context by assisting the Government of Serbia to implement reforms in the field of education as foreseen in the national strategic documents and international commitments.

Specific objective(s)

The specific objective (Outcome) of this contract is to strengthen institutional and human capacities in the education sector to manage and coordinate a timely, efficient and effective implementation of sector policies (Education reform).

Expertise

Key expert 1: Team Leader/Education Policy Expert (minimum 580 working days)

The Contractor shall designate a team leader who will be fully responsible for conceptualisation, planning and coordination of all activities by non-key experts, as well as full quality control envisaged under this Contract.

The Team Leader/Education Policy Expert will be responsible for the overall co-ordination and implementation of this contract. The Team Leader will ensure discretion and trust in relations with the Contracting Authority and the Beneficiary and will create and ensure team work and synergies between all activities of the project stakeholders. The Team Leader should have excellent knowledge of the field of Education Reform, in particular in accession processes.

The Team Leader will also be responsible for administrative and financial aspects of the contract. They are to ensure sound financial management and has the overall responsibility for timely and qualitative reporting, including on visibility. The Team Leader will provide guidance to non-key experts in performance of their duties, and have a decisive role in ensuring efficient mobilization and use of human resources, smooth daily operation and crisis management.

The expert will also be in charge of coordinating the strengthening of institutional and human resource capacities of key institutions involved in the process of education reform. He/she will be tasked to help create institutional coordination and communication channels necessary for a more effective implementation, monitoring and reporting on education reforms.

The Team Leader should be able to work under pressure and against tight deadlines in quickly changing environment. When required the expert will be expected to perform their duties during weekends and public holidays, as well as travel within Serbia. The team leader should have the following:

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelor's degree - where a university degree has been awarded on completion of three (3) or more years of study in a university or equivalent, or six (6) years of general experience in addition to the requirement defined under the General professional experience;
• Master/Phd in a field relevant for this contract is an advantage;
• Knowledge of one or more of local language(s) (Serbian - Bosnian - Croatian - Montenegrin) will be considered an advantage.

General professional experience

• Minimum ten (10), preferably twelve (12) years of relevant post-graduate professional experience in the field of education;

Specific professional experience

• Minimum two (2), preferably four (4) projects/contracts/assignments in delivering capacity building of civil servants in the field of policy making, implementation, monitoring and/or reporting;
• Relevant post-graduate professional experience in leading teams in the public or private sector and/or donor funded projects in the area of education reform in minimum one (1), preferably three (3) projects/contracts/assignments.

Working days: performance of the contract (and therefore payment) is based solely on working days. The consultant will only be paid for days actually worked on the basis of the daily fee rate contained in the budget breakdown (Annex V). 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.

It is unnecessary to stipulate the holiday provision for experts. This is for the tenderer to decide. See Article 22 of the general conditions.

The annual leave entitlement of the experts employed by a service provider is determined by their employment contract with the service provider and not by the service contract between the contracting authority and the consultant. However, 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. For obvious reasons, a day of annual leave is not considered to be a working day. All this is clearly stated in the general conditions, Articles 21 and 22.

Everything is based on working days to avoid difficulties in identifying working weeks, national holidays, etc. in the partner country of a given contract.

The fee rates for all experts must include all the administrative costs of employing the relevant experts, such as relocation and repatriation expenses [including flights to and from the partner country upon mobilisation and demobilisation], accommodation, expatriation allowances, leave, medical insurance and other employment benefits given to the experts by the consultant. This is why no further mention of an annual leave entitlement must be made in the service contract.

All experts must be independent and free from conflicts of interest in the responsibilities they take on.