Overview
The Senior Project Coordinator leads the day-to-day coordination and technical delivery of the ECHO-funded ECHO Asia Regional Disaster Preparedness and Early Warning Action programme in Lao PDR. The role ensures timely, high-quality implementation of activities, coordinates contributions to regional learning, and maintains readiness for emergency response.
Key Responsibilities
- Coordinate the planning and timely delivery of Result 1 and Result 2 activities.
- Develop and maintain detailed activity work plans, implementation schedules and procurement plans.
- Ensure activities remain on track against agreed timelines, quality benchmarks and milestones.
- Organise and facilitate technical consultations, harmonisation workshops, simulations and after-action reviews.
- Support the integration of impact-based triggers, warning messages, SOPs and contingency plans.
- Coordinate the co-development and roll-out of impact-based early warning protocols, SOPs and decision-support tools.
- Oversee community and school risk and hazard mapping, participatory planning, drills and the development of preparedness plans and SOPs.
- Ensure technical outputs reflect Save the Children’s Child-Centered Early Warning Systems (CCEWS) approach and are inclusive of children and persons with disabilities.
- Support inclusive last-mile dissemination of early warning.
- Serve as the primary day-to-day liaison with DMH, the Lao Red Cross, Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare and sub-national disaster management committees.
- Coordinate joint planning and review with partners.
- Support partner capacity strengthening.
- Line-manage and provide technical guidance to the Project District Officers and MEAL Officer.
- Promote a collaborative, safe and accountable team culture.
- Manage the in-country project budget, monitoring expenditure against plan.
- Lead regular budget-versus-actual (BVA) analysis.
- Develop and maintain budget forecasts, cash-flow projections and procurement/spending plans.
- Ensure value for money, accurate cost coding and timely, compliant use of funds.
- Oversee activity- and partner-level financial monitoring.
- Lead and coordinate the country’s Result 3 contributions.
- Ensure operational evidence from Results 1 and 2 feeds into regional learning.
- Support national follow-up to regional engagement.
- Promote the uptake of regional best practice into national DRM frameworks.
- Maintain readiness to activate the project’s Crisis Modifier.
- Lead rapid assessment and prepare Crisis Modifier activation requests.
- Coordinate timely, principled emergency response.
- Document each activation and feed learning into SOP and trigger refinement.
- Work with the MEAL Officer to ensure quality data collection, indicator tracking and functioning feedback and complaints mechanisms.
- Contribute to high-quality narrative reporting and documentation of results and learning.
- Ensure adherence to Save the Children and DG ECHO compliance, safeguarding and anti-fraud standards.
Required Experience
Minimum 5 years of project coordination or implementation experience in disaster risk reduction, early warning, climate resilience or humanitarian programming. Demonstrated experience coordinating with the government sectors, other development agencies and field teams and multi-site implementation. Experience working with government DRM authorities, hydro-meteorological agencies and/or the Red Cross movement. Strong understanding of community-based disaster risk management and/or early warning systems. Demonstrated commitment to safeguarding, disability inclusion and gender equality. Ability in leading a team of field staff in a changing and dynamic work environment. Experience with DG ECHO or other institutional donor-funded projects. Familiarity with impact-based forecasting, anticipatory action or SOP development.
Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in DRM, Development, or Social Sciences required; Master’s degree preferred.
