Humanitarian Lessons Learning Advisor - CHASE OT

Location: DFID, London
Type of contract: Permanent
Salary: Approximately £46,500
Application deadline: 28 October 2012

Our Business
The Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Operations Team, contracted by Crown Agents but working within and alongside the Department for International Development (DFID) is an established and highly respected team supporting the UK Government in Global Humanitarian Disaster Resilience, Preparedness and Response. We have recently begun a new contract which will offer a number of new and exciting opportunities. Our team will grow as a result.
We are now looking for a Lessons Learning Adviser to support DFID's humanitarian policy, and to support existing and emerging CHASE and DFID lessons learning initiatives through commissioning, managing, leading and participating in reviews of operations, ensuring the results of these are integrated into policy and practice.
Roles and responsibilities include:

• Identify, design and advise on humanitarian lessons learning methods, materials and tools to be used by DFID, and ensure evidence is better used in humanitarian policy and practice;
• Identify and extract key research evidence and help with the production of accessible evidence products including case studies on priority issues (such as anticipation, resilience, leadership and accountability) capturing best practice for a range of audiences in humanitarian action.
• Give advice to DFID CHASE on using research information, and guide them to different sources of research evidence, including humanitarian evaluation.
• Develop and share improved tools for evidence based processes, working closely with research colleagues overseas and developing country organisations.
• Manage lessons learning processes such as after action reviews, and ensure there are proper systems in place for changing policy and practice against these.
• Contribute to the design of systems for monitoring partner performance, and provide general advice on monitoring as needed.
• Deploy to humanitarian emergencies to support the establishment of systems for capturing lessons and monitoring performance, outcomes and impact.

Essential Qualifications, skills and experience

• Educated to Masters level or the equivalent level of academic and professional experience in a subject area clearly related to humanitarian work.
• Knowledge and experience gained working extensively on or in developing countries and/or in fragile and conflict affected environments.
• Demonstrable knowledge and experience of humanitarian theory, practice and architecture, humanitarian risk assessment and planning and managing humanitarian responses.
• Demonstrable knowledge of the development effectiveness agenda, the international development system, and institutional and organisational knowledge.
• Exceptional research and analysis skills, and proven ability to produce high quality, evidence-based, quantitative and qualitative reports.
• Significant proven experience of carrying out evaluations including impact assessments.
• Experience of managing lessons learning processes within organizations and with external networks/partners.
• Experience of developing and using tools for evidence based processes.
• Demonstrable success in internal advocacy and consultancy.

Application process
Please send your CV and covering letter outlining how you meet the requirements for this role to sanjni-shah@dfid.gov.uk by 28 Oct 2012. Please include in the subject line: Lessons Learning Adviser.