About the role

Practical Action is an international development organisation putting ingenious ideas to work so people in poverty can change their world. For the past four years, Practical Action has been hosting and building the Global Distributors Collective (GDC): a collective of over 200 last mile distribution companies that cumulatively reach millions of the poorest consumers in the world with beneficial products like solar lanterns, water filters and improved cookstoves.

The GDC provides a collective voice for distributors to ensure their priorities are heard; drives research and innovation across the sector; facilitates the exchange of information, insight, and expertise; and provides critical services that leverage economies of scale.

The GDC has recently finalised its 2022-25 strategy and will be focusing on six key areas for the next three years:

• Accelerating innovation, e.g., through our Innovation Challenges
• Building capacity, e.g., through information exchange, formal training for managers and agents, and mentoring programmes
• Helping members access products, suppliers, and services at affordable prices
• Helping members access to finance and become investment-ready
• Undertaking market intelligence and research, e.g., by creating a performance benchmark for the last-mile distribution sector
• Engaging with members and advocating for their interests

As the GDC Project Manager you will play an essential role in the GDC team, focused on overseeing one of the GDC’s flagship projects, a technical assistance facility that supports leading last mile distribution companies to strengthen their businesses and increase their impact. You will be expected to have excellent interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to multitask, work independently and adapt in a fast-paced environment. To succeed as the GDC Project Manager you should be creative, organised and self-motivated with a keen interest in the development sector.

Project Responsibilities

Work with and support the GDC Operations Manager to ensure robust programme management and project delivery. This will include:

• Co-creating programme activities, including managing stakeholder negotiation and leading detailed project design processes, in partnership with the wider GDC team, donor, and consortium partners.
• Leading in creating and updating project plans and timelines to monitor programme progress (using GAANT charts and/or Asana project management platform) and ensuring accurate allocation of project resources for the projects assigned by the GDC Operations Manager.
• Managing high-profile external relationships (e.g., with donors), and liaising closely with key internal and external stakeholders (project teams, consortium members, etc.). This includes coordinating and chairing regular multistakeholder meetings, developing agendas, capturing the inputs and actions from meetings, and following up on actions in a timely manner.
• Managing all knowledge relating to the project, including ensuring project documentation is up-to-date and appropriately stored/tagged in our document libraries.
• Working with the GDC communications team to develop project-related communications, as needed e.g., presentations, stakeholder surveys, marketing materials, etc.
• Tracking project deliverables and leading all day-to-day administrative support across the assigned projects including proactive risk and issue management.
• Supporting the development of practices, templates and tools related to project management across the programme.

Budget Responsibilities

• Responsibility and accountability for certain budgets, up to £0.5m annually. Includes accurate budgeting, monitoring budgets against actual expenditures, approving spend in line with budget, ensuring accurate recording of expenditure and income, ensuring timely and quality financial reporting in line with internal and donor regulations.
• Updating budgets, forecasts, and partner tracking schedules to ensure an accurate oversight of the project expenditure.
• Inputting into the design of any new activities and budgets.
• Raising invoices on the internal system, and consulting with the Practical Action Finance Team as needed.
• Obtaining timesheets and expense claims from outsourced suppliers, reviewing them for their accuracy, and processing them accordingly.

Reporting

• Leading on developing and/or presenting weekly, monthly and/or quarterly update reports for projects, as requested by the donor. This includes obtaining input from the technical assistance teams on e.g., progress against agreed deliverables and KPIs, changes to project schedule/scope, risks and opportunities, etc.

Monitoring Learning, Evaluation and Gender

• Working with the GDC team, donor, and consortium partners to embed MEL activities throughout the project in a way that is consistent with the wider GDC programme; supporting consortium partners to enable participating companies to embed MEL considerations throughout TA projects in a sustainable way.
• Working closely with the GDC gender focal point to ensure that gender analysis and considerations are integrated meaningfully within TA projects, internal processes, and knowledge outputs relating to the projects.
• Keeping an updated log of all monitoring, learning and evaluation requirements for all GDC projects, and coordinating the required MEL activities e.g., monitoring when MEL activities are due, setting surveys and analysing results.