Technical infrastructure translation reviewer (retainer, engineer/infrastructure practitioners with native-level French and/or Spanish), Multiple positions

UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners’ peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development.

UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources.

Working with us

UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines.

Diversity

With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce — a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners’ needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates.

Work life harmonization

UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands.

Within UNOPS, Implementation Practices and Standards (IPS) is responsible for the UNOPS delivery practices. IPS provides thought leadership, standards and oversight as support to the successful delivery of programmes and projects within UNOPS service lines (infrastructure, procurement, project management, human resources and financial management services). IPS is comprised of the Infrastructure and Project Management Group and the Procurement Group which aims to reduce organizational risks, improve project performance, and promote excellence across UNOPS projects through the Standards Management Framework; and provides organisational oversight on the application of standards. These Groups also support the positioning of UNOPS in the UN system and development sector in Infrastructure, Project Management and Procurement. IPSO also includes the Office of IPS (IPSO), that includes work streams on organizational excellence, knowledge management and the review of bid protests. As well as the Portfolio support unit, that aims at supporting the organisational readiness of UNOPS and provides support services to the Implementation Practices and Standards function.

Background information - Portfolio Support

Portfolio Support (PS) is a business unit within the IPS function which aims at (a) supporting aspects of the organisational readiness of UNOPS, and (b) managing IPS operations.

Organizational Readiness

UNOPS Organizational readiness is focused primarily on its mandate in infrastructure, project management and procurement. It aims to cover the ad-hoc resource needs of the Regional Portfolios to implement the corporate strategy and address the needs of donors.

The PS team supports the UNOPS Regional Portfolios by supplementing their existing resources on demand. This support includes administering the Corporate retainer pool and developing/co-managing other agreements and partnerships.

Support to IPS operations

PS provides timely support to IPS on operational aspects and takes a coordination function in the areas of human resources (HR), general administration, communication, finance and procurement by working in close relationship with other Headquarter (HQ) units, notably the Shared Services Center (SSC). PS also manages the Project of the Year Award (POTYA). 

The Infrastructure and Project Management Group (IPMG) and the Procurement Group (PG) lead UNOPS positioning and the establishment of policies and standards in their respective fields in the organization. The groups publish guidelines, policies, standards and templates that are used widely by UNOPS personnel in different locations. The standards are also complemented by various learning materials, including online courses and internal certifications. Last but not the least, as part of UNOPS positioning, these groups produce external publications and thought leadership pieces that may be co-written with UNOPS partners, including academic institutions.

All these materials are produced in English, and UNOPS endeavors to translate as many as possible into UNOPS working languages (French and Spanish) and others such as Arabic or Portuguese.  

For all publications that relate to the built environment, UNOPS is seeking for native-speaker infrastructure technical specialists (engineer(s), architect(s) or other specialized infrastructure professional(s)) with experience in the relevant discipline(s) and with experience revising translations to review the translated material - across all sectors (buildings/vertical infrastructure, utilities, transportation, etc.) and relevant infrastructure disciplines (e.g., civil engineering, including structural, geotechnical, construction, water resources and environmental engineering, construction management or supervision, architecture and urban planning). The incumbents must keep abreast of the technical terminology and industry standards in their native language and be able to provide expert feedback on all UNOPS technical infrastructure translations.  

This is a home-based retainer contract. The specific tasks and deliverables for each retainer assignment may vary and will be detailed in the terms of reference developed for each assignment. 

All retainer assignments will be handled via the UNOPS online retainer management tool by Portfolio Support (PS), including the request for the retainer’s services and the provision of feedback for each assignment.

All UNOPS personnel are required to share a common understanding of UNOPS’ and the UN’s mandate, policies and activities. To this end, UNOPS Personnel must complete a set of mandatory courses. As a UNOPS ICA retainer, you are required to complete selected mandatory courses. At present, there are three (3) online courses that are mandatory to be completed upon signature of your contract and prior to commencing any retainer assignment, related to (a) Ethics and standards of conduct at UNOPS, (b) the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and (c) Security awareness [only if going on official mission, which should not be the case under this contract]. These courses are available for free on UNOPS learning platform and shall be completed within the first three months following the contract signature, at no cost for UNOPS. UNOPS reserves the right to request a refresher of the mandatory courses is taken or newly promulgated mandatory courses are completed at no cost for UNOPS.  

The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.

The first assignment under this retainer contract pertains to the review of the translation of an internal publication on Quality Infrastructure that is being translated by UNOPS translators. This document is 12 pages long and includes 3,400 words (approximately in English). We expect that revising the translated versions would be at a pace of 500 words/hour (and that this particular assignment would take approximately 7 hours, excluding the familiarisation time with UNOPS guidance). 

Functional Responsibilities

• Become fully familiar with the IPS glossary and other translation guidance material issued by UNOPS and IPS and provide suggestions for continual improvement of the glossary and guidance materials

• Revise translated technical papers for accuracy of the translation of technical terms from English into French or Spanish. The expected pace is 500 words/hours (based on the English word count).

• Provide suggestions/comments on how to improve translations from English into French or Spanish based on industry standards

• Answer any questions from IPS or translators regarding technical terms, including defining the terms

Monitoring and Progress Controls

• Setting standards, personal and development objectives in Performance Evaluation Review;

• Ongoing assessment of task completion, which meets quality expectations;

• Successfully meeting deadlines based on workplan; and

• Completing progress reports as requested.

• Master's or equivalent in civil engineering, architecture, or a related field;

• A first-level University degree or Bachelor's or equivalent in a related field of study with 2 additional years of relevant work experience may be accepted in lieu of Master’s Degree requirement;

• A technical/professional diploma, in a relevant discipline, in combination with 2 years of experience may be accepted in lieu of a first-level University degree.

• Professional certification/licensure/registration in civil engineering (CEng, PE, P.Eng, or equivalent) is considered an asset.

• 2 years of experience in an infrastructure-focused role with French or Spanish as their work language (in combination with a Bachelor's degree) is required; 4 years of experience in an infrastructure-focused role (in combination with a technical/professional diploma) is required; preferably in civil engineering, architecture or similar discipline. 

• Experience working with revision, proofreading or copy-editing is desirable.

• Experience/knowledge of Google Suite, particularly Google Docs, is desirable.

• Native-level in Spanish or French is required with excellent French or Spanish copy-editing skills.

• Fluency in English is required.

Applications without a cover letter may be disregarded by UNOPS. In your cover letter, please identify the work experience in an infrastructure-focused role where you used either French and/or Spanish as your work language. 

Additional information

• A retainer Individual Contractor Agreement (ICA) is issued for a period of time during which the services of the individual contractor may be required intermittently.

• A retainer ICA will specify a unit price (e.g. amount per day actually worked). For budgetary purposes, a monetary limit will be specified at the time the ICA is awarded and issued.

• UNOPS shall have no obligation to obtain any minimum quantity of Services from the Individual Contractor during the duration of the retainer ICA.

• Payment will be made only after completion of work (if any).

• A retainer ICA does not accord any exclusivity to the Individual Contractor with respect to the Services listed in the job description. UNOPS shall have no limitation on its right to obtain Services of the same kind from any other source at any time.

• UNOPS Individual Contractors must comply with the standards of conduct required of a UN civil servant, when carrying out their official UNOPS responsibilities and also all other times. This includes the standards of conduct set forth in the UN Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 9 October 2003 entitled “Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse” (ST/SGB/2003/13) and the UN Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 18 June 2002 entitled "Regulations Governing the Status, Basic Rights and Duties of Officials other than Secretariat Officials, and Experts on Mission" (ST/SGB/2002/9) as they may be amended from time to time.

• UNOPS Individual Contractors must comply with all applicable UNOPS policies and instructions. This includes the obligation to declare any outside activity that could result in an actual or perceived conflict with the interests of the UN; as well as to refrain from using information gained through the UNOPS Individual Contractor Agreement contract for the Individual Contractor’s own purposes or to help a third party (unless the information is already in the public domain), in particular but not only in relation to procurement of works, goods and services.

• UNOPS Individual Contractors must abide by UN safety and security policies, instructions, directives, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.

• The standard terms and conditions of the UNOPS ICA as of the present date can be found at https://content.unops.org/HR-Documents/ICA_contract/Annex-A-ENGLISH.pdf