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).