RFP: Hiring of a Consultant (Individual or Organization) on Institutions and Governance for Resilient Infrastructure Workstream to support the development of the Second Biennial Report on Global Infrastructure Resilience

Background

The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is a multi-stakeholder global partnership of national governments, UN agencies and programmes, multilateral development banks and financing mechanisms, the private sector, and academic and knowledge institutions that aims to promote the resilience of new and existing infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks in support of sustainable development. The vision, mission, goal, and objectives of CDRI are explicitly linked to the post-2015 development agendas. CDRI promotes its Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (DRI) mandate through knowledge exchange and bolstering technical capacities among member countries and partners through the following key Strategic Priorities:

• Advocacy and Partnerships
• Research, Knowledge Management, and Capacity Building
• Program Support and Technical Assistance

In line with the Strategic Priorities around Research, Knowledge Management, and Capacity Building, CDRI launched its inaugural Biennial Report, titled "Global Infrastructure Resilience: Capturing the Resilience Dividend" in October 2023. The Biennial Report serves as CDRI's principal vehicle for engaging and focusing the attention of global leaders, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in addressing the critical and multifaceted challenges posed by disaster and climate-resilient infrastructure.

The First CDRI Biennial Report

The first edition of the Biennial Report is a significant milestone in CDRI's ongoing effort to advance disaster and climate-resilient infrastructure globally. The Report addresses the unique challenges LMICs face. It outlines pathways for global resilience improvement, leveraging data from the first-ever fully probabilistic global risk assessment of infrastructure assets, known as the Global Infrastructure Risk Model & Resilience Index (GIRI). GIRI assesses the risk and resilience across nine major critical infrastructure assets covering seven hazards at a global level to arrive at financial metrics to prompt countries to formulate policies, plans, and strategies that incorporate resilience. Further, through rigorous data, evidence, and outputs, the Report underscores the idea of the "resilience dividend" that can support countries in transforming the perception of resilience from a cost to an opportunity, fostering financial incentives for resilience investments that benefit governments, investors, and communities alike.

The First Report outlines four critical dimensions for enhancing infrastructure resilience and capturing the resilience dividend, starting with improving infrastructure governance that involves enhanced planning, design standards, codes, regulations, compliance with Operations and Maintenance, and sharing of best practices to ensure the reliability and quality of infrastructure. The second dimension is investing in resilience by tapping private institutional capital (US$ 106 trillion worldwide) and innovative financial mechanisms. The report also highlights the need for knowledge sharing and capacity building on infrastructure resilience. Lastly, it explores the innovative use of nature-based infrastructure solutions to integrate natural systems in infrastructure design and operation strategies. The Biennial Report and its Executive Summary are now available for download at cdri.world/gir. The GIRI data platform, which facilitates visualization, interpretation, and analysis of data from the GIRI model, is accessible at cdri.world/giri.

The Second Biennial Report

CDRI now plans to publish the second edition of the Biennial Report by November 2025 (hereafter referred to as "the Report"). The Report will build on the comprehensive risk assessment methodology with global applicability developed for the first report. The Report aims to answer some of the questions raised during the preparation and dissemination of the first Report, expanding its remit and strengthening the connections between the risk analysis and the financial, institutional, and technological dimensions of resilient infrastructure.

The Report is organized along two main pillars. The first pillar is based on a series of modeling and analytical pieces that deepen, downscale, and project the results of the first Biennial Report into the future. The second pillar advances the work of the first Biennial Report from the "What is the resilience dividend" to the "How to capture the resilience dividend."

Pillar 1: Deepening, Downscaling, Projecting: The Report expands the work of the first report along three lines of work:

• Deepening the understanding of resilient infrastructure by (i) incorporating additional risks and updating the model with new databases; (ii) undertaking specific assessments of economic and poverty impacts due to infrastructure services failures caused by disasters; and (iii) completing global surveys to understand better the underlying factors of insufficient resilience and the impacts on businesses and the economy.
• Downscaling the global analysis undertaken for the first Biennial Report to the country and sub-national level to provide higher-quality risk assessments using better data and understanding of local conditions through national partners. At the same time, these analyses will review options, costs, and benefits of resilience and adaptation measures to reduce the impacts of disasters on infrastructure assets, systems, and services.
• Projecting the modeling exercise to incorporate future expected trends, including investment trajectories to achieve the infrastructure-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets, the projected growth of urban centers, and related areas of analysis.

Pillar 2: How to Capture the Resilience Dividend

The first Biennial Report provided a robust analysis of the magnitude of the "resilience dividend" at the global and national levels. The first report also took the first steps in analyzing ways in which more resilient and climate-adapted infrastructure can be built and maintained, including nature-based solutions and financial mechanisms. The Second Biennial Report will be built on the foundation of the first report. It intends to move from the question of "What is the magnitude of the potential resilience dividend?" to "How can this resilience dividend be captured?" Under this Pillar, the Report will review: (i) financial instruments for resilience and adaptation; (ii) institutional, governance, and capacity frameworks; and (iii) frontier tools, including new technologies and nature-based solutions, among others. Thus, the Biennial Report will be prepared with six workstreams:

• GIRI modeling
• Finance
• Institutions and Governance
• New technologies
• Nature-based solutions
• Surveys

These workstreams will develop their outputs in a coordinated manner, and each will provide a background report and a chapter for the integrated Biennial Report.

Common Analytical Framework Across Biennial Report Chapters

To ensure consistency across the background technical reports and the Biennial Report chapters derived from them, a common analytical framework has been developed, building on the approach used in the first Biennial Report.

The operational disturbance of infrastructure assets due to disasters and the subsequent recovery can be described in three states or phases as shown in Figure 1: a degraded state, a recovery state, and a post-recovery state. The resilience of an infrastructure asset is not only related to its capacity to absorb shocks caused by disasters, but also the capacity of institutions to respond to the disaster and to recover from it. These three capacities: (i) to absorb; (ii) to respond to; and (iii) to recover from a disaster will be core to all chapters in the Biennial Report.

Figure 1 - Three Core Capacities of Infrastructure Resilience

As countries strengthen their capacities to absorb, respond, and recover from disasters, they are able to capture the "resilience dividend," shown in the shaded area of Figure 2.

Figure 2 - The Resilience Dividend

The Biennial Report will frame the analysis of the finance, institutional/governance/capacity, technology, and nature-based solutions chapters in ways that directly help strengthen the capacities to absorb, respond to, and recover from disasters.

Definition of Governance for Resilient Infrastructure and Analytical Basis for the Institutions and Governance Workstream

For the purpose of the Report, the basic definition of governance for resilient infrastructure is based on the OECD work, namely the processes, tools and norms of interaction, decision-making and monitoring used by governmental organizations and their counterparts with respect to making infrastructure services resilient. It thus relates to the interaction between government institutions internally, as well as their interaction with the private sector, users and citizens. It covers the entire lifecycle of the asset, and, as described in the previous section, the full resilience cycle and its three capacities (to absorb, respond to, and recover from disasters).

The work of the Institutions and Governance workstream for the Second Biennial Report will build on the prior CDRI work on this topic, including reports such as:

• CDRI (2021) Governance of Infrastructure for Resilience - A White Paper
• CDRI (2021) Infrastructure Standards: Building Blocks for a Resilient Future - a Technical Note
• UNDRR and CDRI (2023), Global Methodology for Infrastructure Resilience Review

Furthermore, in order to ensure that this workstream, its analysis and recommendations, are connected with, and build upon other key global initiatives on infrastructure governance, the work will adapt the following indicators, frameworks, and assessment tools to resilience in infrastructure:

• OECD infrastructure governance workstream, including its publications OECD (2017), Getting Infrastructure Right: A framework for better governance; OECD (2023) Mapping institutional arrangements for infrastructure governance in OECD countries; and OECD (2023) OECD Infrastructure Governance Indicators.
• World Bank Infrastructure Governance Assessment Framework (2020)
• IMF (2021) Strengthening Infrastructure Governance for Climate-Responsive Public Investment, with special emphasis on its climate resilience and adaptation work

Institutions and Governance to Enhance the Capacity of Infrastructure Assets to Absorb, Respond to, and Recover from Disasters

The main objective of this consultancy is to present the current state and trends of institutions and governance to enhance the capacity of infrastructure assets to absorb, respond, and recover from disasters (as discussed in Section 4). This analysis will review the diverse ways in which countries set up:

• Policies, regulations, codes, and standards for resilient infrastructure, including enforcement, updating, and linkages to international commitments
• Capacity and resourcing to discharge the government's responsibilities on building, retrofitting, maintaining, repairing, and rebuilding resilient infrastructure
• Inter-governmental relations (across different infrastructure sector agencies; across different levels of government from national to local; across regulators and implementing agencies and other stakeholders; across finance, planning, and sectoral agencies; across different government branches, in particular the legislative and executive branches of government, among others)
• Relations with societal stakeholders (such as infrastructure owners and operators, other infrastructure-related businesses, infrastructure users, communities, civil society, infrastructure and development banks, financial institutions, etc.)
• Relations between disaster risk management agencies, institutions in charge of climate change adaptation, and infrastructure institutions. This is particularly important as countries strengthen their capacity to respond to and recover from disasters

During the consultation process for the Biennial Report's concept note, the following questions were raised as important to be answered by the Institutions and Governance workstream when analyzing the capacities to absorb, respond, and recover:

Capacity to Absorb

• How can standards and codes be updated and enforced at the national and local level in a most efficient and effective manner?
• How is resilience effectively translated and supervised by regulators in PPP arrangements?

Capacity to Respond and Recover

• How can infrastructure-related institutions strengthen their capacity to respond and recover?
• How do infrastructure agencies work with disaster response agencies to strengthen the response and recovery after disasters?
• How can institutions engage with society stakeholders to strengthen the resilience of infrastructure users during and after disasters?

In addition, during the consultation process, the following questions were raised, and they serve as additional inputs for the Institutions and Governance workstream:

Key question

Regulations, codes, standards, consistency and coherence

Are the "rules of the game" clear and enforceable?

Institutions, mandates, organizational structure

Are institutions designed to fulfill the "rules of the game"

Planning, strategies, road maps, investment and implementation plans

Do government agencies (from planning to execution agencies) develop and implement the tools for enhanced resilient infrastructure?

The whole of government arrangements, including the relations: (i) between agencies; (ii) national and sub-national governments; (iii) regulators and implementing agencies; and (iv) infrastructure ministries/ agencies and DRM agencies

Are different parts of the government able to work together to provide resilient infrastructure services?

Institutional relations between governments and other stakeholders, including (i) contractors and consultants; (ii) operators; (iii) insurance industry; (iv) infrastructure users; (v) civil society organizations

Are different parts of the government able to engage and mobilize the whole of society for resilient infrastructure services?

Capacities, skills, and human resources of government agencies to fulfill their mandates 

Do government institutions have the resources to fulfill their responsibilities?

Capacities, skills, and human resources of other stakeholders to support resilient infrastructure services

Is society as a whole able to support resilient infrastructure services?

Transparency, enforcement of regulations and standards, anti-corruption

Do government agencies fulfill their mandates in accordance with the rule of law?

Monitoring, learning, and improvement

Do government agencies have the mechanisms to improve the institutions and governance of resilient infrastructure after disasters?

All workstreams, including Institutions and Governance, will extend their analysis to go beyond the resilience of individual infrastructure assets and consider the network/system of connected infrastructure sectors (electricity, transport, etc.), the services they provide, and the users of these services. For further details, see the World Bank's Lifelines Report. Specifically, the analysis will go beyond individual infrastructure assets (bridge, port), and review how institutional and governance arrangements can help infrastructure agencies leverage the network's resilience (road network or electricity network).

Going a step further, the Institutions and Governance workstream will look at ways in which infrastructure government agencies can support users in working around the failure of infrastructure services.

Coordination with Other Workstreams of Biennial Report

The Biennial Report workstreams will develop their activities in close coordination with other workstreams. This will lead to Report chapters that are interlinked and coordinated. Specifically, the Institutions and Governance background report and chapter will need to prepare coordinated analyses on the following two topics that are led by other workstreams:

• Risk modeling: What are the capacities and resourcing for the use of risk assessment in strengthening the resilience of infrastructure assets and services? How is risk assessment incorporated in codes and standards? How is risk assessment used by infrastructure government institutions in its engagement with other society stakeholders?
• Finance: What are the experiences and recommendations on institutional arrangements to define financing needs, instruments, and flows to strengthen the resilience of infrastructure assets and services? What are examples of effective institutional relations between ministries of finance and infrastructure agencies to provide funds for the construction, retrofitting, maintenance, repair and reconstruction of resilient infrastructure?
• New technologies: What should be the readiness and capacity of institutions engaged in infrastructure (from regulators to financiers, implementors, and operators) to understand, absorb, procure, maintain, and update new technologies that enhance infrastructure resilience? What should be capacities and governance arrangements to deliver on the above issues? What should be the institutional and governance relations between the public and private sectors, community groups, and civil society with respect to new technologies that support resilient infrastructure?
• Nature-based solutions: What institutional arrangements have proven to be effective in developing standards and codes for NBS? How do land agencies and infrastructure agencies work in NBS implementation? What are effective institutional mechanisms for infrastructure agencies to engage with communities in the implementation of NBS?
• Surveys: The Institutions and Governance workstream should provide inputs to the Survey questionnaire to understand ways in which institutions and governance factors drive the resilience of infrastructure assets, services, and users.

The "How To" Develop, Strengthen, and Evolve Institutions and Governance Arrangements to Capture the "Resilience Dividend"

As with other workstreams, the Institutions and Governance workstream of the Biennial Report should provide the following elements in their report to answer the "how to" develop, strengthen, and evolve institutions and governance arrangements to capture the "resilience dividend":

• Tools to: (i) identify the level of development of the institutions and governance in a country, and (ii) conduct a gap analysis
• Global examples and good practices of institutions and governance to progressively capture the resilience dividend
• Frameworks and roadmaps to progressively improve the institutions and governance for resilient infrastructure

Objectives of the assignment

CDRI aims to onboard a Consultant (Individual or Organization) for the Institutions and Governance Workstream, who, while working under the supervision of the Coordinating Lead Author of the Report, and in close coordination with the Report Project Management Unit (PMU) at CDRI, will be responsible for the institutions and governance aspects of the Report.

Specifically, the main objectives of this assignment are:

• To provide technical expertise, advice, authorship, and overarching support on the theme of Institutions and Governance for resilient infrastructure for the Report.
• To prepare a detailed background report and a summary chapter catering to "Institutions and Governance for Resilient Infrastructure" for the Report, as part of Pillar 2. This chapter will focus on institutions and governance arrangements to strengthen the capacity of infrastructure assets, systems, and users to absorb, respond, and recover from disasters. The background report and summary chapter need to focus on "how to" capture the resilient infrastructure dividend from the institutional and governance perspective and provide practical "roadmaps" for countries to take steps to capture such dividends. The background report should cover the items listed in Sections 5 to 9 of these Terms of Reference.
• To coordinate with the authors of the Biennial Report (GIRI, finance, technology, nature-based solutions, and surveys) in a manner that ensures consistent messages across workstreams.
• The consultant is expected to ensure timely delivery of all services for a smooth launch of the Report in November 2025 and support the dissemination efforts until December 2025.

Timeline for delivery

The consultant will deliver on all outlined tasks from the date of commencement of the contract until January 2026.

Scope of work

The Consultant will have the following responsibilities while working under the guidance of the Coordinating Lead Author on the second edition of the Biennial Report and in close coordination with the Report's PMU at CDRI Secretariat:

1. Provide technical expertise in the areas of Institutions and Governance for Resilient Infrastructure for all Report activities.
2. Undertake a thorough and exhaustive literature review to bring the latest practices, policies, and innovations in institutions and governance for resilient infrastructure.
3. Author a background report and a summary chapter for the Report focusing on institutions and governance for resilient infrastructure and in alignment with the thematic focus and other chapters of the Report. This will entail the preparation of an annotated outline for review by CDRI.
4. Collaboratively work with the Coalition member countries to identify good practices and country examples on effective institutions and governance arrangements for enhancing the resilience of infrastructure assets, networks, services, and users.
5. Participate in meetings at designated intervals with the Coordinating Lead Author, PMU, and other consultants engaged in the report (both in person and remotely, with in-person meetings expected to take (3 to 4) working days over the period of the assignment (plus travel time).
6. Participate actively in dissemination and outreach activities for the Report.
7. Prepare and deliver on the following:
   1. An inception report
   2. An annotated outline of the background report
   3. Intermediate reports with: (i) the proposed approach to country cases and good practices, (iii) a framework for the roadmap to strengthen institutions and governance arrangements for infrastructure resilience, and (iv) other small inputs as agreed with the Lead Author and Senior Advisor.
   4. Draft and final versions of a background report on the "Institutions and Governance for Resilient Infrastructure" track.
   5. Draft and final versions of the Summary chapter on "Institutions and Governance for Resilient Infrastructure".

Duration

The consultancy is expected to last until January 2026, with specific milestones and deadlines to be agreed upon at the outset of the engagement, in line with Section 12 above, to ensure the timely launch of the Report.

Reporting

The consultant will work in close coordination with the Coordinating Lead Author for the Report and report to the Director of Research, Knowledge Management, and Capacity Building, and the Lead Specialist for the Biennial Report at CDRI. Regular updates on progress, challenges, and findings are expected.

Qualifications

• A minimum of 15 years of experience in sectors associated with institutions and governance in the areas of engineering, disaster management, disaster resilience, environment, resilient infrastructure, and related fields.
• A minimum of a master's degree in these disciplines; a PhD is preferred.
• Proven experience in institutions and governance for resilient infrastructure.
• Proven experience in developing global reports and strategic, technical documents related to infrastructure and governance aspects of disaster resilience, infrastructure resilience, sustainable infrastructure, and related fields.
• Excellent writing and communication skills in English.
• A proven track record of working with international organizations or in multicultural settings.

Note: In the case of organizations, the qualification criteria specified above will apply to the designated Lead Author or Project Manager for the assignment.

Submission

Please share proposals in two separate PDF files:

1. Technical Proposal (Open PDF file) catering to the following:
2. Curriculum Vitae: Outlining relevant academic and professional experience and expertise that demonstrates alignment to the key objectives, scope of work, key competencies, and the overarching thematic focus of Financing for Resilient Infrastructure.
3. Technical Approach & Workplan: A detailed description of the proposed approach and workplan for the outlined deliverables, based on the respective key objectives and scope of work.
4. Timeline: An estimated timeline for outlined deliverables, based on the respective key objectives and scope of work.
5. Financial Proposal (Password-Protected PDF File): A detailed cost estimate for the proposed work based on consultancy rates per day and the number of man-days to be entailed for this work. This proposal must cover all aspects mentioned in the scope of work. All payments shall be subject to tax deduction at source per the tax laws of India.

Note:The Financial Proposal PDF should be password protected. The password for FINANCIAL PROPOSAL MUST NOT BE SHARED ALONG WITH PROPOSAL. The password for the financial proposal will be requested separately.

Evaluation

1. The consultant will be selected following a Quality Cum Cost Basis (QCBS) of selection.
2. Proposals shall be evaluated as follows: Evaluation Criteria for Technical Bids 100 points:

Standards of quality

Information and data created according to the Scope of Work should follow internationally accepted standards and practices.

Other Terms & Conditions

• The proposals should be valid for 90 days after the final submission date.
• CDRI reserves the right to cancel this Request for proposal before or after the receipt of proposals or after opening the proposal and call for fresh proposals. CDRI also has the right to reject any proposal without assigning any reason.
• Proposals incomplete in any respect will not be considered.

The agencies are requested to submit their proposal through email to [email protected] by 23:59 hrs (IST) on 27 February 2025. Responses received after the stipulated time or not in accordance will be summarily rejected.

Please ensure that your proposal is sent ONLY to ABOVE MENTIONED email ID before the closing date & time. Proposals sent/copied to any other email ID (other than above) OR received after the bid closing date & time (mentioned above) will not be entertained.

OECD (2015), Towards a Framework for the Governance of Infrastructure and OECD (2020) Recommendation on the Governance of Infrastructure.

CDRI (2021) Governance of Infrastructure for Resilience

Hallegatte, Stephane; Rentschler, Jun; Rozenberg, Julie (2019) Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity. Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31805