Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Specialist

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Specialist

Daru Island, Papua New Guinea

(Hybrid)

Job Description

Commencement: Late September/Early October 2026 Short-term role up to February 2027, with possibility of further work Hybrid: Port Moresby / Western Province, Papua New Guinea / Some remote work Open to all applicants

About the Program

A stable, prosperous, peaceful and resilient Papua New Guinea is critical to Australia’s interests. Australia is PNG’s largest development partner and a key partner on economic and security issues.

The Australia–Papua New Guinea Subnational Program (APSP) includes an enabling Facility and four program activities: Western Province Partnership, Kokoda Initiative Partnership, Subnational Governance Implementation Plan, and Bougainville Partnership. Each activity has its own outcomes, theory of change, operating approach, and monitoring and evaluation system.

The APSP Facility provides shared services to support delivery across all activities, including HR, finance and administration, safety and security, procurement and infrastructure, grants, fleet and transport, ICT, legal/contracts, GEDSI and safeguarding, communications, and MEL.

Abt Associates manages APSP under a single contract through to 2030. The centralised model drives value for money through back-office efficiencies, keeps key policy priorities (gender, disability, subnational governance and climate change) consistent across activities, and supports learning and adaptation between programs

About the Opportunity

The Western Province Partnership (WPP) is a component of the APSP. WPP supports Australia and Western Province to foster stronger ties and better coordination to improve human and economic development, enabling infrastructure and regional security. The WPP is also nested under the Australia-PNG Western Province Strategy (2022-2030).

The WPP works toward the realisation of the following end of program outcomes (EOPO) by 2030:

• Women and men participating in program activities have diversified livelihoods from agriculture and fisheries.
• Targeted communities collaborate to strengthen welfare, production, and resilience.
• Women contribute to decision-making and take on leadership roles in targeted provincial, district, and community structures.
• Policy and practice at provincial and district levels are directed towards delivery of minimum priority services.

WPP is delivered through the following program components:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
• Community grants
• Economic Initiatives Program
• Gender Empowerment and Advocacy Program
• Ranger program
• Provincial capacity development
• Disability support services

Abt’s Papua New Guinea headquarters are in Port Moresby; however, WPP operates primarily from Daru, with a small satellite facility and office in Morehead. The program delivers across a broad geographic area, supporting activities in multiple remote locations across Western Province, mostly in South Fly District. Western Province is a challenging operating environment, with complex logistics driven by distance, limited transport infrastructure and weather-related access constraints

Key responsibilities

Reporting to the SGIP Team Leader, and working closely with the WPP Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader, the Specialist will:

• Review relevant WPP WASH documentation, including current activity plans, evaluation findings, management responses, workplans, monitoring data, implementation lessons, and any available government WASH plans or strategies.

• Prepare a concise consultation plan, including key questions, stakeholder groups, consultation methods, timeline and expected outputs.

• Facilitate consultations through workshops, interviews or other appropriate formats with DFAT/Australian High Commission sector teams, the managing contractor, implementing partners, and relevant Government of Papua New Guinea and Western Province counterparts.

• Capture stakeholder views on WASH priorities, delivery constraints, sustainability requirements, governance arrangements, climate resilience, GEDSI, safeguarding, logistics, procurement considerations and value for money.

• Analyse lessons from current and recent WASH implementation, including the suitability of objectives, outcome areas, statements of requirement, implementation arrangements, deliverables, governance arrangements, risk settings, grant management approaches and selection criteria.

• Identify the core service areas that should be covered under the 2027–2030 WASH grant opportunity, including water supply, sanitation and hygiene behaviour change, operations and maintenance, WASH governance, disaster preparedness, monitoring, learning and adaptive management.

• Advise on how the grant opportunity should address sustainability of water services, including community ownership, maintenance systems, spare parts, financing, government roles and subnational service delivery arrangements.

• Advise on how the grant opportunity should address climate and disaster resilience, including drought, flooding, water security, emergency response arrangements and protection of water sources.

• In consultation with the APSP GEDSI Lead, advise on how GEDSI, safeguarding and Do No Harm requirements should be integrated into the grant opportunity, including meaningful participation of women and people with disabilities in WASH planning and decision-making.

• Translate consultation findings into a clear scope of works and statement of requirements that can be tested through an open tender process.

• In consultation with the Abt Grants Team, define expected provider capabilities, including technical WASH expertise, remote delivery capacity, community engagement, government engagement, safeguards, GEDSI integration, monitoring and reporting, financial management and ability to work through subnational systems.

• Identify delivery assumptions, dependencies, constraints and risks that should be reflected in the grant opportunity guidelines and related procurement documents.

• Provide advice on appropriate grant deliverables, including inception requirements, workplans, budgets, risk management, safeguarding, environmental and social safeguards, MERL, reporting and participation in WPP review and reflection processes.

• Work with WPP, APSP procurement and contracts staff, grants staff and DFAT as required to refine the scope and ensure it is suitable for an open grant opportunity.

• Prepare concise written outputs, including consultation notes, a findings summary, an annotated outline of the grant opportunity guidelines, and draft technical content for inclusion in the grant opportunity.

• Key deliverables

The expected outputs of this assignment are:

• Document review note summarising key lessons and recommended content for the WASH grant opportunity and supporting procurement documents.

• Consultation plan, including proposed stakeholders, consultation questions, method, schedule and outputs.

• Summary of key findings from stakeholder consultations, including priority issues, design implications and areas requiring decision by WPP, APSP or DFAT.

• Annotated outline for the WASH grant opportunity guidelines, showing the proposed structure and key content for each section.

• Draft technical content for the 2027–2030 WASH grant opportunity, including objectives, scope of works, statement of requirements, core service areas, implementation arrangements, deliverables, assumptions, risks, safeguards, GEDSI, MERL and expected provider capabilities.

• Final set of clear, practical and testable service requirements for inclusion in the open grant opportunity documentation.

• About You

• For applications to be considered, a response to the key selection criteria below must be provided.

Qualifications

• Relevant tertiary qualifications in development, social science, economics, public health management, civil or environmental engineering or related fields (or clear demonstration of equivalent experience through applied learning)

• Knowledge

• Excellent theoretical understanding of WASH institutional issues particularly in Papua New Guinea or in the Pacific region.

• Familiarity with political economy and gender analysis and an ability to translate this into clear practical approaches to the sharing of lessons to inform policy and practice

• Ability to work effectively with internal stakeholders to collect, clarify, collate and share data.

• Understanding of the GoPNG WASH Policy and PNG subnational levels of government

• An un