81289758-Enhancing Water Resource Management (WAMA) - Consultancy Services in Supervision of WWTPs and Capacity Development - Lebanon

Description

Lebanon faces major challenges in its efforts to improve wastewater management. Although the Lebanese Government is seeking to add to or complete unfinished systems and put them into operation, the requisite legal, financial, institutional, and organisational framework for sustainable wastewater management is currently not in place. Financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the "Enhancing Water Resource Management" (WAMA) project"s objective is therefore that: "The foundation has been laid for improving the legal, financial, institutional, and organisational framework for wastewater management". The project has a three year duration from April 2022 until March 2025 and an overall budget of 6 Mio. EUR. The Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW) is the project"s political partner. The four regional water establishments" financial and technical resources are inadequate to carry out wastewater management, as they suffer unreliable public power supply (and prohibitively expensive private alternatives), insufficient and underqualified personnel, and tariffs (both fees and collection rates) that do not meet a fraction of operating costs. They thus have been hesitant to take over the operation of wastewater systems which are currently partly operated by the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) or Municipalities. The project"s components have been defined as follows: - Piloting energy-efficient sludge management in one selected wastewater treatment plant - Improve the conditions for increasing technical and financial capacities of one water establishment - Improve conditions of the four water establishments to assume responsibility for wastewater collection and treatment - Increase Lebanese participation in outreach activities Lot 1: Supporting Partners (SPs), consisting primarily of donors, lenders, and implementing agencies, have responded to the impending collapse of the wastewater sector as outlined in two key documents, which were coordinated with and endorsed by the Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW). The first of these documents is the "Roadmap to Recovery of the Water Sector in Lebanon", which has a 5-year planning horizon and aims to bridge between emergency measures needed to maintain services and longer-term reform. The second document is UNICEF"s "Wastewater Treatment 2 years Support Concept Model" for supporting wastewater management by water establishments (WEs) during the handover from the CDR to the four regional WE. Preparations are underway across several Supporting Partners to contribute to the response, e.g. financing the rehabilitation, operation, and maintenance of selected wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) for two years as well as contracting Supervisory Consulting Firms to take part of the supervision and monitoring of the private operators (POs). UNICEF plans to additionally second an Electro-Mechanical Engineer to each water establishment, as well as incentivize select WE engineers who will shadow them and the "seconded" Process Engineers provided by the Technical Assistance Contractor (TAC) (see below). Through this tender, the Technical Assistance Contractor (TAC), i.e. the winning bidder, will be providing four process engineers for specified monitoring and supervision activities of the private operators contracted by SPs. Each of the four process engineers will be based at one of the four regional water establishment for a preliminary period of 22 months and will collaborate with all relevant stakeholders such as internal and seconded WE personnel, Municipalities, the Ministry of Energy and Water, Supporting Partners, Supervisory Consulting Firm (SCF) and the contracted private operators. The TAC will hold the contracts of all Process Engineers and additional experts solicited to support their mission and the delivery of three work packages with their respective milestones across all 4 WEs: Work Package 1: Supervise Operations of Up to 30 WWTPs The TAC will provide technical expertise and direction in the water establishments monitoring and supervision of the private operators of the wastewater treatment plants in their daily and routine operation and maintenance works, through the Process Engineers, and against contractual performance indicators. Work Package 2: Develop Resident Capacity on WWTP Processes and Supervision The TAC will ensure WE staff are able to supervise WWTP operations and POs within the framework of performance-based contracts and assume their mandate by the end of the contract period. Training/coaching is expected from POs, SCFs, and SPs, and the TAC must ensure supply and demand for skill development are well matched and provide supplementary training/coaching to raise WEs" capacity to the level required. Work package 3: Revise Performance-Based WWTP Private Operator Contracts The TAC will use evidence/data generated throughout the implementation period to critically evaluate the success of Performance-Based Contracts and suggest modifications to future contracts. They will further analyse the true cost of operation, maintenance, and associated services in detail to inform future tariffing scenarios.