GIS Specialist- Individual Consultant

Request for Expressions of Interest
Consulting Services – Individual Consultant
Renewable Annual Contract on a Full-Time Basis
Hiring of GIS Specialist (re-advertisement)

Country: Palestine
Assignment Title: Hiring of GIS Specialist
Reference No.: GZ-MDLF-851-CS-INDV

The Palestine Liberation Organization, for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority has sought financing from the World Bank for the Integrated Cities and Urban Development Project (ICUD). The Project Development Objective is to assist participating urban areas to enhance their capacity to plan for sustainable urban growth. Concretely, the project will strengthen the institutional and technical capacity of participating urban areas (Ramallah area, Nablus area, Bethlehem area, Hebron area, and Gaza City) to plan for sustainable urban growth. The project will be jointly implemented by the Municipal Development and Lending Fund (MDLF) that manage procurement, financial management, safeguard, and reporting for the project and the Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) responsible for technical oversight of the project.

The project will work with the participating local government units (LGUs) to establish or strengthen intra-urban area coordination mechanisms to enable the urban areas to conduct urban growth planning. The objective of the capacity development support for urban growth planning is to respond to the needs of growing population and private sector with more sustainably and efficiently planned urban spaces and infrastructure.

The MDLF, as the delegated procurement, financial management, safeguard, and reporting agency of ICUD, intends to use part of the ICUD Grant from the World Bank (WB) fund to hire an individual consultant to serve as “GIS Specialist”.

Objective of this assignment:
In order to develop urban spatial growth plans, the LGUs will require basic Geographic Information System (GIS) data and analytical capacity. MDLF will therefore contract a GIS specialist under these terms to assist the LGUs in filling gaps in data, building local GIS expertise, contributing to spatial analysis of the greater urban areas and GIS-related other tasks in support of this project.

The GIS Specialist will work under the supervision of the project’s Technical Supervisor and closely with the project’s Local Coordinators, the MoLG staff, and the LGUs staff. He or she will be responsible for:
-Working with the project’s team to identify the GIS data and skills needed in order to perform the urban spatial growth analysis and planning required for this project;
-Identifying gaps in the GIS data available for each urban area, both in terms of availability of the necessary layers as well as geographic coverage;
-Filling these data gaps as far as possible through secondary data collection, i.e. from existing data from the LGUs, utility companies, MoLG, and the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics’ GIS unit (including conversion from AutoCAD or other formats, joining tabular data to shapefiles, digitizing features from orthophotos, etc.);
-Identifying data gaps which cannot be filled with secondary data collection and make recommendations for primary data collection, if critically necessary for the purposes of the project;
-Identifying gaps in GIS software and hardware among LGUs, and make recommendations for filling these gaps in a cost-effective manner, with particular focus on potential open-source software options (e.g. Quantum GIS instead of ArcGIS);
-Identifying gaps in basic GIS skills required among planners in the LGUs, and conduct training sessions to fill these gaps, again using open-source software where possible;
-Assessing the capacity of GeoMoLG to host the GIS data gathered from the municipalities, and the output data generated as part of the project (spatial plans), to facilitate sharing of data between LGUs; recommend any upgrades to GeoMoLG required to perform this function (e.g. server capacity, systematic data collection procedures), or alternative platforms for data sharing, if necessary; and
-Conducting any additional tasks related to GIS within the scope of this project.
The consultant must be available for frequent travel to the participating urban areas.

The Municipal Development and Lending Fund (MDLF) invites eligible qualified individuals to apply indicating their qualifications, experience, and appropriate skills to perform the services. The main qualifications of the consultants are as the following:

-A Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university in geospatial sciences, urban planning, geography, environment, engineering, development studies, or another relevant field to the project. A master’s degree in a relevant field is highly desirable.
-Minimum of 4 years of experience in the use of GIS for urban planning and analysis.
-Experience in designing and maintaining spatial databases.
-Experience in complex spatial analysis and data modeling.
-Understanding of GIS software including ESRI ArcGIS and open source options.
-Ability to produce professional quality cartographic products.
-Knowledge of information technology (IT) infrastructure necessary for GIS.
-Experience in developing and leading basic GIS trainings.
-Knowledge of Adobe Design Software (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.) will be an added asset.

The attention of interested consultants is drawn to paragraph 1.9 of the World Bank’s: Selection and Employment of Consultants under IBRD Loans and IDA Credits and Grants by World Bank Borrowers published by the World Bank in January 2011, revised in July 2014 (“Consultant Guidelines”), setting forth the World Bank’s policy on conflict of interest.

Individual Consultants shall be selected through comparison of qualifications of those who have expressed interest in this position.

The duration of the assignment is one year on a full-time basis, extendable to the full length of the project (4 years). The expected start date for the position is February 13, 2017

Individual Consultants may obtain further information at the address below from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM from Sunday to Thursday.

Expressions of interests (including CVs) must be delivered to the address or e-mail below by January 14, 2017.
This is a re-advertisement, those who previously applied do not need to apply again.
Address is: Al-Amal Tower, Mecca Street, Al-balou', Al-Bireh
Tel: 022426610
Fax: 022426617
Palestinian Authority

E-mail:  [email protected]

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