Monitoring and Evaluation of Earthquake Hosing Reconstruction Project (EHRP) (Contract ID: EHRP/NRA/S/QCBS-32/2075-76)

Project Description

On April 25, 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck central Nepal. That earthquake and its sequence of aftershocks caused more than 8,700 deaths and 25,000 injuries. A Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), completed on 15 June 2015, found that total damages and losses resulting from the earthquake sequence amounted to approximately $7 billion, and reconstruction needs amounted to approximately $6.7 billion. The Government of Nepal has established the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) with overall goal to complete the reconstruction works in a sustainable, resilient and planned manner.
NRA has received development credit to implement the Earthquake Housing Reconstruction Project (EHRP), from the International Development Association/World Bank (IDA/WB). A Part of this financial assistance is to be used for consultancy services for Monitoring and Evaluation.
The objective of the consultancy services is to support NRA in strengthening its monitoring and evaluation systems and practices and generate evidence based feedback for program planning and policy formulation not limiting to:

• Provide critical data from the field as input to supplement the NRA, CLP1U- Building and GMALI’s own monitoring systems;
• Provide independent feedback of project implementation providing information to NRA on adherence to due process of inspections by the government for compliance with approved construction standards for multi hazard resistant reconstruction;
• Make recommendations to NRA on improvement or modifications to inspection guidelines and seismic resistant standards due to geographic, logistical or other challenging context;
• Identify the gaps in the implementation of housing reconstruction programme in the district level;
• Identify the bottlenecks and delays in the housing reconstruction process and fund flow mechanism;
• Collect the feedback from stakeholders, civil society and beneficiaries to improvement in the housing reconstruction programme;
• Support EHRP requirements for specific scrutiny and focus on operations in hard to reach areas;
• Timely identify crucial deviations in project implementation from various operations manuals and support the program in achieving compliance with key project rules;
• Timely identify and analyze factors responsible for such deviations and recommend corrective action to EHRP management;
• Develop a strategy for process monitoring that will include a system for knowledge-sharing at the grassroots implementation levels and mainstreaming of best practices.
The consultant further carried out Review and Verification of Data in NRA-MIS of IDA Beneficiary; The specific objective of the assignment is to:
• Review the data-sets available in EHRP-MIS in terms of quality, consistency;
• Verify the data-sets against the set rules of compliance monitoring in EHRP-MIS; and
• Consultant’s recommendation for the advance settlement.

Assignment Description

The consulting firm is primarily responsible for the independent monitoring and evaluation of the inspection process in selected local bodies of the 11 districts (Social and Engineering Data Collection of 14,356 randomly selected Households out of which 14,210 were Survey Samples and 146 Revisit Samples) • Develop and agree with the PMU on the M&E mechanisms/systems including the tools, methodology, framework and plan etc. to be used. The mechanism should adequately cover all indicators in the EHRP results framework and be gender disaggregated for communities in the project districts. The monitoring function should help NRA and through them CLPIU-Building and CLPIU-GMALI verify the accuracy of EHRP’s own data collection and monitoring information systems, and provide recommendation for improvement in these areas to be detailed in M & E reporting. • Deploy the system to link directly to the EHRP MIS, developing a bridging application. • Conduct capacity building trainings/programs to the concerned government agencies. • Finalize the program of spot checks with PMU/NRA under the general guidelines for verification of compliance and release of tranches based on compliance certification • Identify two risks: (i) Hazard Risks; and (ii) compliance risks. Hazard risks to include all types of natural hazards. The compliance risks to include risks of noncompliance because of accessibility, material availability, technical assistance, acceptance of guidelines by beneficiaries, adequacy of guidelines etc. • Identify deviations by beneficiaries in terms of minor and major deviations and suggest remedial measures as well suitable to the area. • Actively coordinate with CLPIUs/DLPIUs, develop visit plans in coordination with the district and local bodies level engineers. • Establish a central office in Kathmandu with necessary logistics and appropriate number of field offices for monitoring and evaluation purpose in consultation with the PMU. • Review and Verification of Data in NRA-MIS of IDA Beneficiary: • Verify 170,000 beneficiaries’ data from EHRP MIS out of 354,300 beneficiaries’ houses; • PA Verification under GMALI Activity; • Visual Inspection & Verification of the Building Activity; • Progress reporting of the assignment on monthly; • Prepare Digital Verification Report (IDA-compliance) acceptable to the IDA/World Bank for settlement of the advance to Government of Nepal; and • Prepare a Project Completion Report at the end of the assignment