Location: Werabie, Tercha, Metu, Mizan Tepi, Asebe Teferi, Bahirdar, Karamara, Fitchie, Shashemene, Haramaya, Duramie, Addis Abeba, Wolaita Sodo and other possible project locations, Ethiopia
Organization: UNOPS
Deadline: 20-Apr-2025
Job Description
Background Information – Job-specific
UNOPS HAMCO is recruiting for this position: Civil Engineer (Site Engineer) – Retainer based in Multiple Duty stations: Werabie, Tercha, Metu, Mizan Tepi, Asebe Teferi, Bahirdar, Karamara, Fitchie, Shashemene, Haramaya, Duramie, Addis Abeba, Wolaita Sodo and possible project locations in Ethiopia.
Established in 2009, the Horn of Africa Multi-country Office (HAMCO) currently operates an established Operations Centre in Addis Ababa, overseeing a portfolio of engagements across four countries in the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan, and South Sudan. HAMCO focuses on providing services in Infrastructure, Procurement, Project Management, HR and Transactional Services, and Fund Management, across sectors such as Health, Education, Agriculture, and Resilient Infrastructure, among others.
Our goal is to support countries in need, assist communities, and empower our partners by delivering on our mandate in infrastructure, procurement, and project management throughout the Horn of Africa.
UNOPS HAMCO is seeking an experienced Civil Engineer to supervise the construction of PSA Oxygen Plant houses across multiple locations in Ethiopia. This initiative is part of a broader effort to address the critical healthcare challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has severely impacted Ethiopia’s health system and economy, particularly affecting vulnerable populations.
To strengthen public health preparedness, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and the International Development Association (IDA) have partnered to enhance the country’s capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to COVID-19. A key component of this initiative is establishing oxygen generation plants, which are vital for treating severe COVID-19 cases requiring oxygen support. Beyond meeting immediate healthcare needs, these plants reduce import dependency, ensure consistent oxygen quality, improve emergency preparedness, and support local economic development through job creation and skills transfer.
According to the Procurement and Installation of Oxygen Plants project agreement signed with MOH and funded by the World Bank, UNOPS is tasked with procuring, installing, commissioning, and handing over PSA oxygen generation systems—including manifold systems, medical air compressors, vacuum plants, and backup generators—in 16 hospitals nationwide. The project has two main components:
- Oxygen Plant Systems: This involves designing, producing, and installing oxygen plants and associated medical gas piping systems.
- Oxygen Plant House Construction: Appropriately designed facilities will be built to house the oxygen plant equipment.
The Civil Engineer will focus on supervising the second component—construction of plant houses—ensuring quality implementation in line with project standards and timelines.
Functional Responsibilities
Reporting to the Project Manager, the Civil Engineer is expected to support the implementation of the project activities through the provision of technical expertise and the application of best practices in the project implementation, and more specifically delivery of the following functions:
1. Support to construction management
- Support the day-to-day supervision, progress and management of the planning and coordinating work activities.
- Monitor, communicate and report potential delays and/or cost overruns.
- Monitor the project construction work progress to ensure construction works are completed on time and to quality standards as per the contract and project design documentation.
- Assist in monitoring and measuring the work progress through the agreed Bill of Quantities (BoQ) as per the contract.
- Verify and inform that works are consistent with the project technical specifications and inform promptly of eventual deviations.
- Provide guidance to the contractor and assist in resolving site problems, as necessary.
- Support the assessment of the work activities of contractor/s, measure completed work and make recommendations for progress and interim payments to contractors.
- Prepare relevant risk assessments, method statements, checklists, and permits. etc. as they related to Health, Safety and Social Environment on site.
- Oversee dimensional control and site surveying works, engineering control of the works etc.
- Participating in progress review and project coordination meetings.
2. Support to technical documentation
- Support in the preparation of project/contracts-related documentation such as periodic progress reports, site monitoring reports, stakeholder meeting minutes, engineer’s instructions and variation orders, contractor’s bills review reports, certifications, client hand-over documents and contracts close-out reports.
- Maintain project documentation, including payment registers, variation registers, site safety inspection registers, site diaries, instructions to contractor registers, drawing registers, visitor registers, sample approval registers, concrete test registers, progress photos, etc.
- Assist in developing and implementing the Health, Safety, Social and Environmental Plans according to UNOPS’ rules and regulations.
- Contribute towards preparing the Interim Payment Certificates (IPC) on a monthly basis for each site and prior to the payments to the contractors.
- Prepare quality management templates and support the monitoring of the quality of the works as per the UNOPS Quality Management System.
- Compare all changes to permissible variations and prepare the notes to the file in support of the changes.
- Prepare meeting agendas, minutes, etc., as required.
- Working with other Engineers/Architects to collect and maintain construction data.
3. Reporting
- Provide weekly and monthly reports detailing all project matters including quality, health and safety, environmental and financial, as well as any issues relating to possible delays, cost overruns, variations and any other matter as agreed with the Lead Construction Management Engineer/Deputy Project manager.
- Provide data and information about project work for reporting purposes.
- Monitor closely and report on the design services’ progress against the schedule, including all issues encountered.
- In alignment with the Lead Technical Engineer, collect and document the Project quality register, issue register, risk register and lessons learned log in the time frame stipulated by the Project’s strategic documents.
- When required, working with the procurement team in the evaluation of bids and writing tender reports.
4. Stakeholder and Personnel Management
- Maintain close collaboration with the implementing partners, suppliers and contractors at the site and have regular meetings with them to keep abreast of the progress of the construction activities and provide feedback to the supervisor.
- Support the Technical Lead Engineer in areas that are relevant to site engineer’s job description.
5. Knowledge sharing and management
- Contribute to the project evaluation process; highlight challenges associated with the project and feedback into a continuous improvement cycle.
- Support training initiatives and ensure knowledge transfer to national/contractor personnel including advice on good construction and engineering practices, environmental management practices, and appropriate health and safety standards during construction.
- Contribute towards the capacity building of local contractors subject to Health and Safety and Social Environment by providing training and briefing on specific toolbox talks.
- Contribute to disseminating and sharing best practices and lessons learned for development planning and knowledge building.
- Participate in the relevant Communities of Practice, actively interact with other Engineers and the Engineering community to share case studies, lessons learned and best practices on the Knowledge System
- Provide feedback to Practice Leads on policy, supporting guidance with an aim towards continuous improvement of UNOPS policies.
The effective and successful achievement of results by the Civil Engineer directly impacts the successful delivery of the project on time, budget and quality above the expectations of all stakeholders. This consequently reinforces the visibility and image of UNOPS as an effective service provider in project services and management and strengthens its competitive position as a partner of choice in sustainable development and project services.
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