Job Description
This is an excellent opportunity to contribute to impactful infrastructure projects in the Horn of Africa, enhancing community resilience and sustainability. The position offers exposure to diverse project environments, cross-cultural collaboration, and professional development opportunities in water engineering, project management, and stakeholder engagement within the UN system.
Reporting to the Senior Project Manager, the Water and Sanitation Engineer operates within a dynamic project environment, focusing on water supply, sanitation, and fire-fighting systems across multiple regions. The role is essential to ensuring the quality, resilience, and sustainability of infrastructure projects, requiring frequent travel to project sites and collaboration with multidisciplinary teams. The Water and Sanitation Engineer will contribute to improved public health, safety, and resilience of communities by providing reliable access to water, sanitation, and emergency fire-fighting services.
The Water and Sanitation Engineer will provide professional water supply, sanitary engineering, and fire-fighting services, including planning, design, quality control, and reviews within the building design scope, ensuring full compliance with national building codes, environmental regulations, and international standards.
1. Site Assessment
- Conduct technical assessment of infrastructure projects as an input for the design interventions.
- Determine the ground condition in relation to water supply, sanitation, and fire-fighting systems in project location.
- Prepare checklists, undertake desk reviews, field surveys, and consultations to gather baseline data
- Identify critical gaps, risks, and opportunities for integrating resilience, sustainability, and compliance with national and international standards.
- Prepare comprehensive assessment reports.
2. Design Works
- Develop comprehensive engineering designs for sanitary systems, water supply systems, including plumbing networks, fixtures, wells, tube wells (borehole), and rainwater recharge wells.
- Design reliable and sustainable water supply systems, including distribution networks, pumping facilities, storage reservoirs, and treatment solutions, ensuring compliance with national standards and climate-resilient practices.
- Prepare hydraulic calculations and flow diagrams.
- Design sanitation systems covering wastewater plumbing, sewer lines, toilet fixtures, septic tanks, soak pits, reed basins, and runoff drainage systems.
- Prepare designs for fire-fighting systems, incorporating plumbing, pumps, power backup connections, alarms, and portable fire extinguishers.
- Produce detailed drawings, specifications, and technical documents, ensuring integration with other engineering disciplines and alignment with disaster risk resilience standards.
- Prepare cost estimates and bills of quantities (BoQ) based on approved district rates and updated market surveys.
- Ensure that all designs, specifications, and supervision activities comply with recognized national and international standards and guidelines, including Ethiopian Standards (ES/EN), Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA), UNOPS Guidelines, WHO Guidelines for Water, Sanitation and Health, ISO standards, and FIDIC conditions of contract, as well as other relevant codes of practice local or international for water supply, sanitation, and fire-fighting systems.
3. Construction Supervision and Quality Control
- Assist in the procurement process, including the review of suppliers, materials, and installation practices for compliance with specifications.
- Support the Infrastructure Unit in overseeing and monitoring contractors’ work plans and progress to ensure timely and effective implementation of works.
- Conduct quality control inspections during construction and the defects liability period for water supply, sanitation, and fire-fighting systems.
- Provide technical troubleshooting and on-site engineering support to address construction challenges.
- Support quantity surveying and field progress measurement, preparing periodic supervision and compliance reports.
4. Leadership, Coordination, and Stakeholder Engagement
- Collaborate with multidisciplinary design teams to ensure coherent integration of sanitary systems with structural, architectural, and electrical components.
- Support the Infrastructure Unit while coordinating with Regional Water Supply and Sanitation officials during inspection and to ensure smooth connection of new systems with city networks.
- Facilitate stakeholder consultations and technical discussions to ensure alignment of project deliverables with community needs and regulatory requirements.
- Guide contractors, consultants, and site teams to ensure professional standards are maintained throughout the project lifecycle.
5. Knowledge Management and Capacity Building
- Develop standard specifications, manuals, and technical guidelines for the selection and use of pipes, fixtures, and appliances.
- Document and disseminate lessons learned, case studies, and best practices in sanitation engineering and fire safety systems.
- Build capacity of local contractors, engineers, and stakeholders through technical training and mentoring.
- Ensure effective knowledge transfer and institutional strengthening to promote sustainability of water supply, sanitation, and fire-fighting systems beyond project implementation.
