- Role: Technical Advisor
- Venture: Whave Solutions
- Location: Kampala, Uganda, and 6 district offices
About Whave Solutions
Whave Solutions is a non-profit social enterprise registered in 2012 in Uganda. Whave has 50 staff, all Ugandans except two British staff living in Uganda long-term. The founder, Adam Harvey, has lived in Uganda since 2012. Whave’s purpose is to assist Uganda to achieve equitable national development and SDG goals, in particular the goal of universal access to safely managed water in rural areas. Whave works closely with rural communities, and with local and central governments, both as a pioneer and performance-benchmarking rural water utility, and as an advisory body building local government capacity to regulate rural water service provision. Whave is demonstrating preventive maintenance structures which promise to be financially self-sustainable within the Uganda economy, proving practical application in hundreds of communities already and providing an example internationally, currently with staff teams in 6 districts and expanding.
About You
Whave is building professional capacity in rural Africa amongst company and service provider staff, local technicians and government officers. This requires assistance from experienced professionals such as managers, engineers and administrators, who have good understanding and ability to adapt their work and mentoring approach to local circumstances and conditions.
Responsibilities
As a Technical Advisor for Whave, your responsibilities will include:
- Provide technical support to Whave staff on a wide variety of WASH technologies, including grid and solar ground water pumping, small-scale irrigation, water quality, based on research and experience as well as on your training
- Support Whave district managers and WASH officers in managing community contracts and payment collection
- Represent Whave professionally at district meetings, workshops and conferences.
- Prepare technical papers for co-authorship with Whave staff of suitable standard for web-site publication, focused on cost-effcient rural water services
- Work with local suppliers to ensure the procurement of high quality hardware to maximize the functionality of rural water sources.
- Mentoring of Whave District Managers in respect of technical aspects of workplan implementation, reporting, analysis of parameters effecting progress, and professional development
- Supporting head office staff in respect of applications for subsidies, technical aspects of budget planning and tracking, I.T, and professional development
- Research into potential improvements to technical aspects of Whave performance, for example sensor technology and new financial or communication tools useful for cost-effective services in rural areas, and applying or testing these as requested
- Assisting with technical aspects of government partnership tasks and sourcing of appropriate subsidies
- Work closely with local technicians to deliver robust solutions for rural water supply challenges and minimize annual hardware expenditure through life cycle analysis
- Facilitate the effective collection of pump maintenance data and use Whave’s hardware replacement tracking system to reduce life-cycle cost
- Conduct training sessions on effective collection of maintenance data and the management of hardware stock, support managers in supervisory role
Sound exciting? Here’s who we are looking for.
Skills & Qualifications
- Excellent interpersonal and team-working skills
- Professional experience at senior level in small organizations
- Excellent work record and references
- Degree-level education
- Ability to solve problems in both a practical and academic manner
- Relevant experience
- Good organizational skills, able to prioritize a complex workload and to work independently when needed
- Open-minded and adaptable, empathic and diplomatic
