Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist

The Position:
The Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist is located in the Arab States
Regional Office (ASRO). You report directly to the Head of Country Support and
Monitoring in Supply Chain Management Unit (SCMU) in Copenhagen with a dotted
reporting line to the International Operations Manager in the Regional Office.
You will work closely with the colleagues in SCMU, Technical Division/
Commodity Security Branch, the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, the Humanitarian
Office, and the Country Offices in the region.
You are tasked with supporting the Head of Country Support and Monitoring on
regional efforts to strengthen national forecasting/quantification,
procurement planning, introduction of new products, and strengthening
downstream supply chain management, ensuring "end-to-end" visibility and
effective distribution of UNFPA donated commodities, and identifying,
troubleshooting, and implementing remedial action plans from the Last Mile
Assurance (LMA) process recommendations for the countries in the Region. You
will apply an integrated, coordinated, and systems strengthening approach to
support governments and other implementing partners, which is fundamental to
UNFPA's overall strategy of building a ready, responsive, and resilient supply
chain required for sustained and equitable access to and delivery of Sexual
Reproductive Health (SRH) commodities.
How you can make a difference:
UNFPA occupies a unique position in the Reproductive Health Commodity
ecosystem as a critical player in supply chain management, a leading public
procurer of reproductive health commodities, a trusted partner to national
governments, and one of the few organizations with the scale and partnerships
necessary to build accountability for last mile delivery. Additionally, in
humanitarian settings, UNFPA is responsible for ensuring the availability of
lifesaving sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention
and response commodities to those hardest to reach, and commodities to enable
operational programme implementation in the hardest to operate settings.
The Supply Chain Management Unit, which was established in January ‎2022,
ensures that UNFPA is able to support the delivery of life-saving reproductive
health products and other programme supplies effectively and efficiently to
the end user when and where they are needed. To do so, it provides enabling
services to Regional Offices and Country Offices and ensures coordination,
end-to-end visibility, and accountability on all supply-chain-management
related activities, across all UNFPA Programmes.
Job Purpose:
As Regional Supply Chain Management Specialist, you will support the Head of
Country Support and Monitoring on regional efforts on oversight for sexual and
reproductive health supply chain initiatives in the Region, providing advice
and support to ensure all member states have access to quality assured
contraceptives, essential, lifesaving maternal health commodities, and other
related core reproductive health commodities. You will support the provision
of technical and programmatic guidance to governments, implementing partners
and UNFPA Country Offices to develop and implement supply chain management
strategies applicable in development and humanitarian settings, and to ensure
programme supplies are effectively managed and safeguarded in accordance with
the applicable supply-chain management and procurement policies, procedures,
and related guidelines.
In the broadest definition, this role is multi-sectoral and crosscutting,
engaging in all issues affecting commodity security, health system
strengthening, supply management and quality assurance, as well as promoting
availability, accessibility, and sustainability of SRH commodities. The role
will also contribute to relevant data collection and consolidation processes,
developing guidelines and tools, and ensuring interagency coordination and
maintaining relevant partnerships and facilitating/monitoring compliance with
policies. You will support the provision of relevant advice and capacity
building in the forecasting/quantification as well as development and
validation of national supply plans, procurement plans for countries in the
Region, and guidance on distribution, inventory, and warehouse management, in
line with good storage practices for health products.
You will work in close collaboration with the Technical Division, UNFPA
Supplies Partnership, Supply Chain Management Unit, Humanitarian Office,
Country Offices in the Region, and key Third Party-Procurement clients,
ensuring timeliness, adequacy and relevance and quality of substantive
outputs.
Qualifications and Experience:
Education:
Advanced university degree in Medical Science, Pharmacy, Supply Chain
Management, Business Administration, Logistics or equivalent field is
required. A first level university degree combined with a professional Supply
Chain Management certification such as CIPS at Level ‎5 Advanced Diploma and/or
CILT at any of the Level ‎5 qualification may be accepted in lieu of an
advanced university degree.
Knowledge and Experience:
* A minimum of five years of relevant progressively responsible professional experience, including management experience of managing people and/or health projects at the international level, with ideally at least two years spent in low resource or humanitarian settings.
* Minimum of three years of substantive experience in health commodity quantification, forecasting, supply management, warehousing, distribution, logistics information systems.
* Demonstrated experience and successful track record in public health SCM strategy and network design creation and implementation.
* Experience providing direct and successful country support on public health SCM in development and ideally complex humanitarian operating environments.
* Experience in developing analytical tools for management reporting and performance metrics in supply chain.
* Basic knowledge of the principles and operational aspects of integrated SRH health care in the global development and humanitarian community is an additional asset.
* Demonstrated expertise in family planning method mix, contraceptive technology and humanitarian preparedness and prepositioning.
* Professional written and spoken presentation skills, including for the development of reports, presentations, and the ability to synthesize complex technical documents for both technical and non-technical audiences.
* Strong interpersonal skills and capability to develop and maintain broad diversified partnerships.
* Familiarity with UN agencies procurement and supply chain management policies, and guidelines is an asset.
Languages:
Fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of French and/or Arabic is
an asset.