SOURCE SOUGHT NOTICE Activity Title: Urban Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (UWASH) Reference Number: 720-663-21-SSN-00005 Date: July 14h, 2021 Response Due Date and Time: July 28th, 2021, 4:00 PM Addis Ababa Time This is a Source Sought Notice issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID/Ethiopia). The purpose of this notice is to gauge interest from small businesses to assist USAID/Ethiopia in achievement of the Urban WASH (UWASH) Activity. Ethiopia is experiencing a high rate of urban population growth. The urban population has increased by 6.2 percent annually since 2011, which is much faster than rural population growth of 2.7 percent. This means that nearly 1 million people are added to the urban population every year. Consequently, Ethiopian cities have been struggling to reach and maintain a basic level of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services for its growing citizenry. As a result, cities are becoming increasingly polluted, affecting quality of life, and jeopardizing economic growth and stability. USAID/Ethiopia will provide technical assistance, advisory services, and construct ancillary infrastructure through the “Urban WASH (UWASH)” activity, henceforth referred to as the “Activity” or “UWASH.” The purpose of this five-year Activity is to support accelerated access to inclusive and resilient (WASH) services in targeted urban and peri-urban areas. This notice is not a Request for Proposals and in no way commits USAID to award a contract . USAID does not intend to award a contract based solely on submissions in response to this Sources Sought Notice, nor does it intend to pay for any costs incurred in response to this Notice. USAID/Ethiopia seeks to determine the capabilities of small businesses under FAR 19.2. Interested small businesses must demonstrate the experience and ability to perform the type of work described in this notice. The capability statement must include relevant examples of both governmental and non- governmental contracts under which the firm has performed, if applicable. SERVICES AND TASKS REQUIRED Below are the services that might be required under this activity. Technical Services UWASH is expected to achieve four objectives: Objective 1: Strengthen GoE planning, budgeting and service delivery oversight; The Activity will take a multipronged approach towards strengthening urban WASH planning and financial sustainability. In addition to professionalizing WASH service providers through capacity development, USAID will strengthen the operationalization of the Government of Ethiopia’s (GoE’s) OneWASH program policies at the woreda, kebele and institutional levels. This will include identifying and addressing gaps and strengthening coordination throughout the planning and management processes. USAID will also support the development of realistic city-wide service delivery plans that are costed, and tied to existing GoE planning and budgetary processes, and effectively utilize domestic funding and work in coordination with complementary urban service providers. A number of planning tools have been piloted in Ethiopia that aim to strengthen the financial viability and resilience of the local WASH sector, e.g. business and investment plans, sanitation improvement plans, and water safety plans. The Activity will seek to align planning tools such as these to reduce the duplication of effort and develop a modular approach to these tools to enable municipal actors to select the most relevant elements for their context and stage of development. Standardization of the data collected would also enable existing data to be used more easily, shared, and compared across towns. Standardization would also support incorporation of these planning processes into national budgets and the budgeting process. Objective 2: Strengthen the operationalization of an independent regulator; The Government is currently exploring how best to establish an independent regulator. The regulator would address three critical functions: 1) performance monitoring, 2) enforcement of extraction and environmental pollution rules, and 3) administering a new regulatory structure that enables private sector engagement. While this is still in the early stage of thinking, it is clear that a number of structural changes, systems and tools are going to need to be developed and deployed to enable the regulator to undertake its role effectively. While the World Bank is supporting the GoE to undertake initial analysis in this area, there is space to influence the GoE on the final regulatory arrangements and support its implementation. The World Bank has been supporting the government to establish a performance monitoring system (IBNET) for a number of years. However, the system has yet to be mainstreamed across service providers in a way that supports management decision making or financial allocations as envisaged. USAID will support efforts to strengthen GoE monitoring and regulation necessary to ensure high quality, reliable WASH services are available city-wide. This will include supporting the development of a legal framework for the creation of a regulatory entity, supporting the functional independence of the regulatory entity, promoting stakeholder participation in the regulatory process, particularly women, and supporting the connection between consumers, associations and regulators. To improve monitoring and regulation at the sub-national level, USAID will work with municipal, woreda and regional officials, and the World Bank, to develop and operationalize systems for ensuring water point functionality and consistent water quality monitoring; ensure that data is of high quality and shared publicly; and develop standard operating procedures to use data to address quality issues and better monitor tariff collection and allocation. In addition, to perform basic functions such as forming contracts with consumers and setting and collecting tariffs, WASH service providers (both private and public sector) must first be granted legitimacy and agency by governance institutions. This Activity will thus advocate for securing and enforcing the provision of WASH service providers’ legal standing and rights under the aegis of an independent regulator. Objective 3: Enable and professionalize public and private WASH service providers; The GoE estimates around US$6.5 billion of investment is required to achieve GTP II WASH targets while current absorption capacity is only around US$0.5 billion per year. Addressing this capacity challenge will require a diverse set of approaches that will need to target both private and public service providers and engage women and youth as an integral part of the solution. Professionalization of service providers is essential to improve their service delivery performance and enable them to become viable enterprises. There have been existing interventions, some still ongoing, focused on building the capacity of service providers. While a number of capacity building initiatives have taken place, to date these have mostly been projectized, with their objectives focused on contributing to achieving short term output and not ensuring the capacity gains are institutionalized and sustained. USAID’s support will add value and contribute to professionalizing service providers by institutional capacity building and developing models for scaling up training activities. Furthermore, evidence has shown that when women are included in leadership roles within WASH projects, more inclusive and sustainable service delivery is achieved. Therefore, emphasis will be placed on ensuring that women are empowered to participate as leaders in the communities, organizations, and institutions that the Activity engages with. Gender equity considerations related to staffing and organizational culture include issues that affect female staff recruitment, retention, training and promotion. This Activity will identify and seek to address gender related inequities across all stakeholder groups including within the human resources practices of the implementing partner as well as the service providers. The Activity will also seek to strengthen the operations, maintenance and cost recovery of local WASH service providers. USAID will explore development of business models, supply chains, and technologies aimed at increasing the quality and availability of services, improving efficiencies, and generating greater cost recovery. Objective 4: Extend WASH services to poor and marginalized communities. While not excluding water or hygiene, the Activity will predominantly focus on citywide inclusive sanitation[1] in the target urban and peri-urban areas. This Activity will play an influential role in ensuring that WASH service delivery systems, policies, and models reach the poor and marginalized segments of the population. The Activity will include demand creation programming to increase consumer awareness and uptake of the products, services and financial assistance, rewarding service provider efficiency and pro-poor service delivery. The Activity will work with WASH service providers and businesses to develop a variety of appropriate payment options and methods to offer consumers, as well as with local finance institutions to expand their lending products to include WASH products and services. However, even with lower-priced products and financing options, there are likely to remain a portion of the population who will struggle to afford products and services. To ensure that the poorest and most marginalized segments of the population, in particular women and girls and people living with disabilities, have access to WASH services, this Activity will explore options for how the GoE could structure targeted subsidies that bridge the gap. Management and Administrative Services General management and administrative support which include, but are not limited to: Overall management and administration of the Contract, including both expatriate and home office support and administrative services. Management of key personnel and additional long-term and short-term personnel. Oversight, quality control, and general technical support. Managing the overall reporting needs of the program. CAPABILITY STATEMENT REQUIREMENTS Interested firms must demonstrate the experience and ability to perform the kind of work described in this notice. Firms must supply capability statements which provide relevant examples of both governmental and non-governmental contracts under which the firm has performed. The items below must be included in the response. Three-page statement describing the firm's capability to execute the tasks in items 1. and 2 above. Three-page statement describing the firm’s experience in relation to the services being required. One-page table (Table A) of this notice (see below) with a list of between three to ten past or current projects demonstrating relevant work experience in items listed under service required. A statement identifying the applicable small business and socioeconomic designation in accordance with FAR 19.3. Consortiums are encouraged to respond as long as the prime contractor is a small business. Source Sought Notice Past Performance – Table - A- Attached. Responses must not exceed seven (7) pages, including the past performance table. Any organization responding to this Source Sought Notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform this work. Written capability statements must be received no later than July 28, 2021 – 4 pm Addis Ababa Time. Submissions must be submitted by email ONLY to
[email protected] with a copy to Tigist Yifru, Contract Specialist at
[email protected]. In the subject line of the email write: Urban WASH - Sources Sought Notice - Small Businesses . Fax and hand carried submissions will not be accepted. Phone inquiries will not be entertained. [End of Notice] [1] The World Bank describes Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) as achieved when, “everybody benefits from adequate sanitation service delivery outcomes; human waste is safely managed along the whole sanitation service chain; effective resource recovery and re-use are considered; a diversity of technical solutions is embraced for adaptive, mixed and incremental approaches; and onsite and sewerage solutions are combined, in either centralized or decentralized systems, to better respond to the realities found in developing country cities.”