Key Expert 1: Team Leader, minimum of 740 working days

EUROPEAN PROFILES S.A. (GR) is looking for experts for the implementation of the following EuropeAid Contract: "Improvement of Legislation, Control and Awareness in Food Safety, Animal Health and Welfare and Phytosanitary in Ukraine (ILCA III)"

Services Location: Ukraine
Start date: October 01, 2025
Duration: 40 months

Overall objective
The overall objective (Impact) to which this action contributes is:
Increased MAPF and SSUFSCP capacities in designing and implementing key reforms and legislation based on the EU acquis in the fields of food safety, animal health and welfare, and phytosanitary.

Specific objective
The specific objective (Outcome) of this contract is as follows:
The functionality of Ukraine's food safety, animal health and welfare, and phytosanitary services, and the associated state control system are enhanced in a gradual alignment with relevant EU requirements and other international standards, ensuring health guarantees on animals and plants throughout the country and implementing a comprehensive state prophylactic programme against infectious diseases and zoonosis.

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 1: Team leader, minimum of 740 working days
Qualifications and skills
1.1 At least a Master's Degree (or equivalent) in food safety or sciences, or veterinary medicine or science, phytosanitary, or directly related discipline, or bachelor in the same field plus four years of relevant professional experience, or, in the absence of a relevant University degree, eight years of relevant professional experience.
1.2 Advanced English language skills of at least level C1 (understanding, speaking, writing) required.
Language skills in Ukrainian or Russian of at least B2 (understanding, speaking, writing) will be considered an asset.

General professional experience
1.3 At least 10 years⁹ of professional experience relating to food safety, implementation of veterinary activities, legislation or projects, or relating to activities in the phytosanitary or plant health sector.
Such professional experience working as an employee at central government level or as an expert in a project in support to central competent authorities (central government ministry, department, agency or authority in the area mentioned above) will be considered an asset.

Specific professional experience
1.4 Proven management experience as Team Leader (or equivalent) in at least 2 technical assistance or consultancy projects, each assignment of minimum 12 months duration;
1.5 At least 3 years¹⁰ of professional experience in an EU candidate country (i.e. at the time of the experience) in support to the approximation or implementation of EU acquis in the SPS sectors¹¹ (re. chapter 12) mentioned in criterion 1.3;
1.6 Relevant recent experience (i.e. within the past ten (10) years) in an EU member state or in an EU candidate country (i.e. at the time of the experience) in support to the development or implementation of SPS¹¹ policy or related public administration reform will be considered an asset.

 

Guidance on expert time inputs:
1) 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.
2) 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.

3) 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.

4) 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.

 

⁶ Note that gender balance refers not only to numerical parity, but also to the level of employment and remuneration, roles and functions.

⁹ Experience above 15 years will not represent an advantage.

¹⁰ Experience above 8 years will not represent an advantage.
¹¹ Wherever SPS is mentioned in these criteria, these sectors correspond exclusively to those covered by chapter 12 of the accession process to the EU: i.e. food and feed safety, animal health and welfare, phytosanitary and plant health.

¹² These fields cover all aspects contained in chapters 11, 12 and 13 of the accession process to the EU. 13 Experience above 10 years will not represent an advantage.
¹⁴ Experience above 5 years will not represent an advantage.

Applications and updated CV should be submitted to recruitment_dev@europeanprofiles.gr in reference to EC-ENEST/IEV/2025/EA-RP/0001.

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