Consulting firm to support capacity building of road transport sector focal agencies in Nepal and Bangladesh

A. About Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC)

ADPC is an autonomous international organization with a vision to reduce disaster and climate risk impacts on communities and countries in Asia and the Pacific by working with governments, development partners, international organizations, NGOs, civil society, private sector, media, and other key stakeholders. Established in 1986 as a technical capacity building center, ADPC has grown and diversified its expertise across social and physical sciences to support sustainable solutions for risk reduction across a broad range of specialist areas. With over 100 staff from 19 different nationalities and a wide range of professional expertise from atmospheric scientists to social scientists with experiences from all levels of engagement typically required for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Resilience (CR) in an effective manner. ADPC is a competent regional resource center and has seven thematic departments: ADPC Academy, Risk Governance, Climate Resilience, Urban Resilience, Health Risk Management, Preparedness for Response and Recovery, Geospatial Information. These are supported by Finance, Human Resources and Administration, and Strategic Planning departments. In addition to the departments, ADPC works on three cross-cutting themes: Gender and Diversity, Poverty and Livelihoods, and Regional and Transboundary Cooperation through permanent working committees.

For details, please refer to ADPC website at http://www.adpc.net/.

B. Climate Adaptation and Resilience for South Asia Project

Disasters take a huge toll on the development agenda of SAR countries. Between 2000 and 2017, disasters in South Asia incurred estimated damages of US$ 149.27 billion. Public expenditure is under stress by the repeated need to reallocate capital budgets away from long term development planning and towards reconstruction activities in post-disaster environments. For example, since 2005, Pakistan has suffered losses on the order of US$ 16 billion due to natural disasters. In Bangladesh, 2007 Cyclone Sidr resulted in damages and losses of US$1.7 billion, or 2.6 per cent of GDP.

To increase resilience and achieve climate commitments, there is a need for a transformational shift towards policies and institutions that enable climate resilient investments. Investing in more resilient infrastructure is both profitable and urgent as disruptions are extremely costly for governments, households and private sector and large ongoing investments in infrastructure assets will have long-lasting repercussions as poor maintenance and natural disasters result in a vulnerable stock.

With the financial support from the World Bank Group, ADPC will be implementing a five year’ project, titled “Climate Adaptation and Resilience Project for South Asia” (CARE)- of USD 39 mil. The project aims to create an enabling environment for climate resilience policies and investments across South Asia. This objective will be achieved through enhanced regional cooperation and knowledge exchange for climate resilience and adaptation mainstreaming of resilience and adaptation in national policies, plans, and investments across four sectors – climate smart agriculture, integrated water resources management, resilient transport infrastructure and policy, planning, and finance.

The Climate Adaptation and Resilience for South Asia (CARE) for South Asia project is a five-year (2020-2025), regional project supported by the World Bank, and implemented by Asia Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) and Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES). The project is supporting the region in building resilience to climate change by improving the availability of regional data and knowledge, developing guidelines, tools and capacities, and promoting climate-resilient decisions, policies and investments across key sectors. Key stakeholders include governments and technical agencies at the regional and national levels. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to an enabling environment for climate resilience policies and investments in agriculture, transport, water, policy, planning, and finance sectors in South Asia. Accordingly, the following expected outcomes is targeted:

• Improved access to regional climate information and analytics for climate-informed decision-making,
• National-level planning and decision-making tools are better climate risk-informed in selected sectors,
• Regional climate resilience guidelines for selected sectors incorporated into national standards,
• Sectoral investment supported to include climate risks and resilient design in selected sectors,
• Institutional capacities within sectors strengthened to undertake climate-informed policies and planning.

Component 2, of Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CARE) for South Asia' being implemented by ADPC, aims to “Enhance policies, standards, and capacities for climate-resilient development”, through:

• Advisory services for policy and investment interventions.
• Promoting climate-resilient design and standards.
• Implementation support to climate-risk management solutions.
• Innovation for climate adaptation and resilience.

C. Purpose of this assignment

Adverse impacts of hydro-meteorological hazards, climatic stressors, and other impacts of climate change impose significant challenges for designing and maintaining resilient road infrastructures. Enhancing resilience of road transport infrastructure against climatic hazards and stressors to which they are exposed increases the absorptive and adaptive capacity of under-stress road infrastructure assets. Additionally, risk-informed investment and decision-making also promote restorative and anticipatory capacities. Within the scope of this, developing Strategic Action Plan addressing risk prevention, preparedness, reduction, transfer and better response-recovery capacity including adaptation and build-back-better context will provide a long term pathway to enhance the resilience of road infrastructure to climatic hazards and stressors. Enhancing the institutional capacities and human resources to formulate, implement, adapt and readjust the strategies will enable the institutions to sustainable achieve their climate resilience goals.

As such, road transport systems should be planned and designed to withstand the adverse aggregated impacts of internal or external stressors on their physical structure. Introducing risk-informed design approaches in terms of fundamental changes in the design policies and principles complement the change in parametric values of design standards. Hence, the task of enhancing design standards —from the climate adaptation standpoint— requires risk-informed and climate resilient re-considerations enriched by climate input and climate change information.

In order to support the national road agencies in the South Asia Region (SAR), under the mandate of CARE for the South Asia project, a series of documents as climate resilient road infrastructure guidelines are being developed and mainstreamed through the national road agencies in SAR. To support the implementation, mainstreaming and institutionalization of these guidelines, requirement of comprehensive training has been identified by the Capacity Needs Assessment (CNA) undertake by the project (2021 in Nepal and 2022 in Bangladesh) with the national road agencies and other relevant stakeholders.

In Bangladesh, CNA has assessed that climate resilient infrastructure initiatives are promoted through specific project activities on a case-by-case basis without a systematic policy/strategy in place for implementing and institutionalizing this. Further the CNA identifies that there is limited institutional capacity and knowledge in incorporating climate projections and hazard-risk information into the planning process and engineering design in a manner that is optimized for climate resilience. The CNA also identifies that there is an absence of framework and mechanism to assess the current state of resilience and further benchmarking for rural road transport infrastructure for monitoring. CNA in Bangladesh had identified core areas of capacity gaps and has recommended a broader training scope under transport sector with priorities in:

1. Climate informed policy and action plans
2. Climate hazard, vulnerability, risks and criticality assessment of road transport infrastructure
3. Climate change mainstreaming in project planning and implementation
4. Climate responsive road and bridge design standard
5. Climate Resilience indicators and benchmarking framework for rural roads transport infrastructures

Similarly, in Nepal, CNA conducted in 2021 has concluded that even though there exists key policies and frameworks that address resilience agenda in road transport infrastructure, there is a lack of operational guideline component that specifically relate to climate change impact and its management at road infrastructure level (in all stages – planning, design, construction, O&M). Similarly, the guidelines which facilitate mainstreaming climate change in road infrastructure (SRN, provincial and Local Roads) are limited. Institutionally, there is a lack of dedicated climate change units with a set mandate of mainstreaming of climate resilience into decision making in the road agencies at the federal (DoR, DoLI), provincial (provincial TIDs) and local levels (municipalities). Due to the lack of such unit(s), there is a lack of institutional capacity and human resources with broader climate resilience knowledge and capacities. CAN in Nepal further recommends the needs of institutional and human capacity building in broader topics related to:

1. Climate hazard, vulnerability, risks and criticality assessment of road transport infrastructure
2. Landslide hazard-risk assessment and prevention measures for road infrastructure including locally adaptable NbS solution for landslide mitigation
3. Climate responsive road and bridge design standard
4. Climate change mainstreaming in project planning and implementation including climate coding/budgeting for programmatic action

Therefore, systematic institutional capacity buildings need to be conducted to render these guidelines and recommendations useful thereby supporting the road agencies to mainstream the climate resilience recommendations by the project.

As a part of institutional capacity development, the project has planned to review existing project design documents and recommend climate resilience interventions; and prepare a Strategic Action Plan for Climate Resilient Rural Roads in Bangladesh and Local Roads in Nepal, prioritized respectively by Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) in Bangladesh and Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI) in Nepal. The project also aims to develop a scale-up plan for adaptive bio-engineering/NbS slope stabilization and protection measures in Nepal.

Section II. Objective and Scope of the Services:

A. Objective

The main objective of the assignment is to support institutional capacity development of national road agencies for resilient transport through series of capacity building trainings for implementing climate resilient guidelines; review of existing project design documents and recommendations for climate resilient measures; drafting of Strategic Action Plan for climate resilience of Rural Roads in Bangladesh and Local Roads in Nepal; and prepare a scale-up plan for adaptive bio-engineering/NbS slope stabilization and protection measures in Nepal. The specific objectives are:

1. Develop and deliver various capacity building trainings related to climate resilient policy, strategy and plans; climate resilient design standards, guidelines and tools for roads and bridges.
2. Undertake technical review of design documents including design input, design process/methods and design output of ongoing road and bridge projects for climate resilience and technical recommendations for the identified gaps with and aim to apply and showcase “climate-smart” design considerations and international best practices to revise existing design.
3. Develop/draft Strategic Action Plan for Climate Resilience of Rural Roads in Bangladesh and Local Roads in Nepal to support programming and implementation of climate-resilient activities in short, medium and long term.
4. Develop climate risk-informed scale up plan for adaptive bio-engineering/NbS for roadside slope stabilization and protection measures in Nepal to support adaptation and upscaling of the recommended practices and design.

These four objectives are complementary to each other for overall capacity building of road transport sector agencies (under the scope of CAR-SA project). The training component seeks to enhance the technical capacities of road sector agencies in terms of knowledge of climate change and its impacts in road sector, mainstreaming climate change in planning and decision-making process in road infrastructure development, principles and design considerations for climate smart engineering designs of roads and bridges. This knowledge will support informed participation of these road sector agencies in reviewing the existing/ongoing projects and integrating climate resilience design considerations to update/upgrade the ongoing projects. Further the capacity building activities will capacitate the road sector agencies to engage in SAP development phase, including envisioning of resilient goal and formulation of resilient strategies and action plan.

B. Scope of Work

The Scope of Works for above objectives are:

B1. Capacity Building Trainings

1. Develop training modules with curriculum, contents and materials related to broader topics as under I discussion with ADPC team and stakeholder organization(s).

• Module 1 Climate Resilient Design Standards, guidelines, tools for Roads & Bridges
• Module 2 Climate Resilient policy, strategy, plans –Mainstreaming CC in RTI Decision Making through SAP and ToT on Using Climate Change Models in RTI Decision-Making and Planning
• Module 3 Climate Resilient Design Standards, Guidelines, and Tools for Roads & Bridges – Regional

1. Facilitate organizations of the trainings in Nepal, Bangladesh and regional (in SEA or SA – to be decided) in coordination with ADPC team and stakeholder organization(s).
2. Conduct pre and post training evaluations of participants and the training programs, assess effectiveness/issues in the contents, organization, logistics etc.
3. Prepare training completion report along with recommendations for such future trainings, recommendations for institutionalization of the training modules in the relevant agencies/units and/or Center of Excellence (CoEs) and participants short profiles.

Target Participants

Relevant officials/technical persons from various departments (planning, design, maintenance etc.) of Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), Department of Roads (DoR), Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI) and other line ministries, departments, academia, private sector and international organizations.

Training Organization

ADPC in coordination with focal agencies and other relevant organizations will co-organize the training events. The Consulting firm will support in developing the training module curriculums, contents, materials and will conduct the training sessions including lectures, hand-on tutorials, field visits, group works etc. ADPC will manage the training and participants’ logistics, venue and training certification process. The Consulting firm shall bear the logistics of its personnel/consultants

Reporting

The Consulting Firms shall draft/prepare and submit training curriculum, contents, materials and training reports to ADPC Bangkok. ADPC will share the documents with focal agencies for their review and concurrence.

B2. Project Technical Review and Recommendations

1. Undertake scoping for the review of 3 roads & 3 bridges in Bangladesh (recommended by LGED) and 4 roads & 2 bridges in Nepal (recommended by DoR & DoLI) in consultations with these country focal agencies and relevant stakeholders. (Scoping Report)
2. Undertake project review and stocktake of data available for the design process, existing supporting analyses, and information through consultative meetings with experts/organizations involved in the initial design, desk study. (Technical note on the reviewed project)
3. Undertake climate related hazards, site specific exposure and potential impacts to the project considering the design life of the assets, including whole asset life engineering loads, nanoengineering stressors, climatic factors, their variability, and hydro meteorological hazards. (Technical note on Design Hazard and Risk to the reviewed projects)
4. Develop design toolbox and design inputs through site visit, condition survey of the job site, profiling observed and projected stressors, determining outstanding threats, and design context, jobsite limitations and constraints, consultation meetings and interviews with design team, (Note on documented field assessments/lessons learned)
5. Draft project review report(s) compiling above technical notes – Report#1: Road and Bridge Design Project Reviews)
6. Gap analysis of the reviewed existing design from the climate and hazard resilience standpoint toward providing actionable, tenable, and detailed technical recommendations for revision of design, including appropriate technical, feasibility, and economic justifications. (Report#2: Draft Design Revision Recommendation Report)
7. Organize a one-day validation workshop to present the gaps and recommendations and incorporate the recommendations in the draft report (Report 3: Final Design Revision Recommendation Report)

Target Users/Audience

Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) in Bangladesh, Department of Roads (DoR) and Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI) in Nepal.

Coordination and Reporting

ADPC’s country teams will coordinate with the relevant focal agencies both in Bangladesh and Nepal to facilitate the Consulting Firm. ADPC’s regional team in Bangkok will provide technical guidance, backstopping and other administrative support related to the execution of this consulting service. The Consulting firm will report the deliverables to ADPC Bangkok Office. ADPC will facilitate sharing of the deliverables to the focal agencies and other stakeholders for peer review

B3. Draft Strategic Action Plan (SAP) Climate Resilience of Rural Roads in Bangladesh and Local Roads in Nepal

1. Develop a framework for the review of existing documents defining the eligibility and evaluation criteria to be used for the review of policy documents and the articulation of new propositions. Validate the framework in consultations with relevant stakeholders, especially the focal agencies (LGED in Bangladesh and DoLI in Nepal).
2. Review existing laws, policies, strategies, guidelines, and other documents pertaining to transport, climate change, and national policy and international mandates and best practices along with climate finance opportunities (all sources) that are relevant to the assignment
3. Conduct stakeholder(s) assessment and mapping in relation to the Development of Strategic Action Plan (SAP) related to the Rural Roads in Bangladesh and Local Roads in Nepal.
4. Develop the scope and the contents of SAPs in consultations with LGED in Bangladesh, DoLI in Nepal along with ADPC and other relevant stakeholders identified in both the countries.
5. Facilitate four upazila level consultative workshops in Bangladesh in coordination with LGED and ADPC (covering upazilas affected by floods/flash floods, coastal floods, drought, landslides including salinity intrusions) to identify core problems, drivers, impacts, institutional gaps and strategies for climate resilient rural road infrastructure.
6. Facilitate two provincial level consultative workshops each in Madhesh and Bagmati provinces in Nepal (also including local governments) in coordination with DoLI and ADPC to identify core problems, drivers, impacts, institutional gaps and strategies for climate resilient local road infrastructure.
7. Facilitate a workshop at the national level in coordination with the focal agencies and ADPC to present the outputs of the upazila/provincial level consultative workshops and organize a participatory action planning sessions to define vision, objectives, goal and targets, strategies and their priority actions with focal agencies and relevant stakeholders.
8. Recommend strategic activities, expected outcomes, timeframe, responsible and supporting agencies, risk factor and mitigations to implement these.
9. Develop/recommend Financing Mechanism(s) for implementing the SAP.
10. Develop a Result Framework to track, monitor, evaluate and adapt/adjust the SAP activities.
11. Present the Draft SAP along with financing mechanism and results framework to the focal agencies and stakeholders in workshop(s) organized by ADPC.
12. Finalize the SAP for Climate Resilience of Rural Roads in Bangladesh incorporating the comments and recommendations from the stakeholders’ workshop.
13. Finalize the SAP for Climate Resilience of Local Roads in Nepal, incorporating the comments and recommendations from the stakeholders’ workshop.

Target Users/Audience

Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) in Bangladesh and Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI) in Nepal.

Coordination and Reporting 

ADPC’s country teams will coordinate with the relevant focal agencies both in Bangladesh and Nepal to facilitate the Consulting Firm. ADPC’s regional team in Bangkok will provide technical guidance, backstopping and other administrative support related to the execution of this consulting service. The Consulting firm will report the deliverables to ADPC Bangkok Office. ADPC will facilitate organization of upazila/provincial and national level workshops in respective countries. ADPC will facilitate sharing of the deliverables to the focal agencies and other stakeholders for peer review

B4. Develop Climate risk-informed scale up plan for adaptive bio-engineering/NbS

1. Identify the gaps in policy, standards and current practices in the use of NbS/Bioengineering in the roadside slope protection through meeting(s) and workshop with road sector agencies and other relevant organizations (IUCN, country EbA programs) organized by ADPC.
2. Identify institutional capacities and gaps in designing, financing, and implementing small to large scale NbS interventions (site specific to landscape levels) through meeting(s) and workshop.
3. Develop case study examples (site specific to landscape levels) representing the context of various landslides/slope failures in different region(s) of the country for designing and implementing NbS for road slope protections. Assess the tasks required for NbS applications for example each case.
4. Develop an action plan including monitoring and evaluation frameworks to assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts of NbS interventions.
5. Present the draft Scale-Up Plan through ADPC organized workshops, conference or webinars.
6. Finalize the Scale-Up Plan document incorporating appropriate suggestions received from the workshop.

Target Users/Audience

 Department of Roads (DoR) in Nepal, Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI), Provincial Transport Infrastructure Directorate (TIDs) and Local Municipalities in Nepal

Coordination and Reporting

ADPC’s country teams will coordinate with the relevant focal agencies both in Bangladesh and Nepal to facilitate the Consulting Firm. ADPC’s regional team in Bangkok will provide technical guidance, backstopping and other administrative support related to the execution of this consulting service. The Consulting firm will report the deliverables to ADPC Bangkok Office. ADPC will facilitate sharing of the deliverables to the focal agencies and other stakeholders for peer review

C. Support to be provided by ADPC

ADPC will facilitate the coordination of the works with relevant focal agencies in Bangladesh and Nepal. ADPC will also coordinate to organize meetings, workshops and trainings with focal agencies and other stakeholders. ADPC will provide logistics support and coordination to organize stipulated workshops and trainings for aforementioned activities. Additional workshops, trainings, meetings, if required shall be discussed and organized in coordination.

Section III. Deliverables

The consulting firm will be required to submit the following deliverables (D) based on the defined Scope of Works (B) in Section II and as a result of the implementation of activities as outlined in this terms of reference.

Section IV. Selection, and Others:

A. Selection Criteria

Successful EOI:

The Consulting Firm should have proven experience of working on upgrading/updating road infrastructure design standards for national/regional agencies preferably in South Asia, but experiences from other regions are also appreciated to ensure the successful delivery. Similarly, working experience with National and federal government agencies, as well as major donors such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UN, or international agencies in the South Asian region is a plus. In general, in-depth and up-to-date knowledge of design, construct, maintenance and other asset management tasks during the lifecycle of road and bridge infrastructures is a must. Among others, firms will be evaluated according to the following:

1. Field of Work and Experiences
2. Extensive experiences in all the phases of road transport development projects-scoping, planning, engineering design, construction, testing, and quality control, maintenance and recycling in LDC/LMIC countries
3. Experiences in mainstreaming the climate change context in all the phases of road transport development
4. Experiences and understanding of the climate change and road transport context in South Asian countries (Nepal and Bangladesh)
5. Experience in design, development and conducting of technical trainings on road transport/other infrastructure sectors, mainstreaming and dissemination of project results
6. Experience working with relevant government road sector entities, sub-national/local entities in LDC/LMIC countries.
7. Experience working with development partners in LDC/LMIC countries.
8. Technical Expertise
9. Specific expertise and experience in climate change adaptation in road transport sector - development of strategies, adaptation plans, resilience roadmaps, action plans etc.
10. Specific expertise and experience in designing and implementing climate smart/climate sensitive engineering designs for road transport system/assets including construction practices, O&M.
11. Specific expertise and experience in designing and implementing bio-engineering, EbA, NbS for landslide slope protection, watershed management, floods water management etc.
12. Specific expertise and experience in developing and delivering technical training on climate change and adaptation for road/other infrastructure sectors.
13. Quality-Control/ Quality-Assurance, Socio-Environment Safeguard
14. QA/QC mechanism in place to ensure adherence to technical specifications, accuracy, consistency and reliability of outputs.
15. Compliance to applicable Environment and Social Safeguard standards.
16. Reporting, document and data management
17. Mechanism/process of peer-reviews of outputs documents
18. Mechanisms for handling sensitive documents/outputs
19. Mechanisms for handling sensitive/copyright data and materials

The Consultant should have the following key technical expertise/human resources to complete activities and tasks and deliver quality outputs on time. However, these are indicative and the Consultant is encouraged to propose additional input along with non-key personnel as appropriate and a bill of quantity required to complete the assignment within the schedule.

B. Selection Method

• The Consulting Firm (or a joint venture/ a consortium) will be selected in accordance with ADPC’s procurement process and in compliance with the World Bank Procurement Regulations. Consulting Firm will be selected on Consultant’s Qualification-based Selection (CQS) method.

C. Reporting Relationships

• The Consulting Firm (or a joint venture/ a consortium) will report to the Project Director, CARE for South Asia Project, Bangkok (Thailand) and work in close coordination with Director, Geo Spatial Information Department, ADPC.

D. Contract Duration

• The contract duration will be for Twelve (12) months. It is important to note that the Consulting Firm will be expected to produce report deliverables, in eight phases of the assignment.