Services Required: Services for Training of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the agro-food chains on Food Safety and Nutritional Quality

Project Component: SUN Business Network Pakistan

Coverage: National

Duration: May – July 2020

Type of Contract: Consultancy, payment for the level of efforts

1.    Terms of Reference

A.     Introduction

SUN Business Network (SBN) is the private sector focused network of SUN Movement which aims at maximizing business role in addressing the malnutrition in support of the Government of Pakistan’s objectives. SBN aims to address the problem of malnutrition by increasing the availability and affordability of safe and nutritious food in the market through private sector engagements.  Till date, SBN Pakistan is signed up by 36 companies from different sectors with a commitment to support the SUN Movement and combat malnutrition in the country. The objective to establish SBN was to articulate the role of the private sector and facilitate business actions to contribute to improved nutrition. SBN plays a vital role in engaging and capacitating business and convening business with other stakeholders especially the Government to enable the environment for business to increase investment in nutrition-sensitive and specific actions.

Considering the strategic importance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the food chains, SBN Pakistan initiated engagement with SMEs in 2019 and developed various initiatives. Creating awareness among SMEs about nutrition, the nutritional quality of food and capacitating them to improve their process and product quality is one of the key initiatives targeted on SMEs. This initiative will address the problem of lack of awareness among SMEs about how their products can impact nutrition and how they can play an active role to offer food with good nutritional quality. Secondly, the training initiatives will improve the capacity of SMEs in the identified sectors to improve quality by providing them with basic knowledge and tools to improve the process and product quality. Alongside this, SBN engagement and membership will secure commitments from these SMEs on the important areas to improve processes and quality and compliance with local regulations.

SBN, through this intervention, is introducing a capacity building program for targeted SMEs on “Nutrition Awareness and Food Safety and Quality”. The program will identify specific needs of the SMEs to produce and deliver safe and nutritious food and design capacity building training module of different levels which will then be delivered to SMEs by engaging them and enrolling them in different training tracks. The training module will cover basic concepts of nutrition and malnutrition, human nutritional needs at different stages of life, designing nutritious products, food safety and food system topics. The training module will empower the SMEs by improving their knowledge and understanding around nutrition and food safety and assist them in adopting necessary changes to improve their products. This will increase the product quality of Agro-processing SMEs and will lead to an increase in the supply of safe and better-quality food products in the market for consumers.

B.     Objective

The objective of this consultancy is to design and develop a comprehensive Training Module and train SMEs involved in value addition and processing of food in the dairy, fruits and vegetables, poultry, fishery, grain-based products in order to develop their knowledge and capacity to improve food safety, nutrition and quality.

C.      Scope of work

The scope of work and expected outputs/deliverables will be the following:

i.                    Conduct a “training need” analysis and develop capacity enhancement training outline and road map: Determine training need of SMEs in the identified sectors by assessing secondary information and SBN assessment documents and through interviewing SMEs. Propose a training outline and capacity development roadmap for capacity up-gradation of the targeted SMEs.

ii.                   Design and develop a capacity development module on “Nutrition Awareness and Food Safety and Quality” for SMEs in the agro-processing sectors – GAIN has already developed a 1.5 days training module on nutrition awareness of SMEs which covers basic human nutrition, nutrition situation in Pakistan, the relevance of diets with nutritional status, conducting nutritional assessment etc. Building on this, the service provider will develop a comprehensive learning module covering a wide spectrum from food safety awareness level to quality management systems establishment for SMEs and product quality improvement through improving formulations. The learning module(s) should include 1) Training outline and agenda 2) Trainer note, 3) trainee notes/learning materials/handouts 4) group work notes and assignments in soft form.

iii.                 Facilitate rolling out of capacity development program - Deliver the training module to identified SMEs in 2020 in the identified region in collaboration with SUN Business Network. The capacity building program will be a series of engagement with each SME and will include both online and face-to-face trainings on concepts and tools. SBN will arrange training while the partner will deliver the training.

D.     Deliverable/Outputs:

1. Brief inception report after training needs
2. Training Modules
3. Training plan for 4 trainings
4. Training Report of each training

E.     Performance management and measurement:

Performance of the consultant will be evaluated against the below indicators. Inability to meet the performance criteria will lead to dismissal of the contract as per the terms and conditions.

1. Meeting the agreed deadline
2. Quality of content/writeup of each deliverable in terms of completeness, comprehensiveness, conciseness and clarity.
3. Design sense to present information in a visually appealing manner and graphical
4. Pro-activeness to changes and challenges and prepare them
5. Actively engage with contact and knowledge point
6. Independently manage tasks especially discussion with external stakeholders/users of the module

F.      Reporting

Weekly progress against agreed work plan.

G.     Qualifications and Selection Criteria

The evaluation of the service provider will be based on Combined Scoring method – where the qualifications and methodology is given 70% weightage and financial offer (PKR) with be given 30% weightage.

Criteria	Weight (%)	Maximum Score
Demonstrated knowledge and experience of food safety and quality systems improvement for local businesses	10	10
Experience in supporting business in food formulations and research and development in good nutritional quality product development	10	10
Demonstrated experience in training module development and training delivery to SMEs and local businesses. Highly skilled with the use of software tools for module development such as MS Word and PowerPoint	10	10
Network and relationship development with food SMEs at national and/or sub-national level	10	10
Project Approach and methodology, activities and work plan	30	30
Financial proposal in terms of cost efficiency and well-established allocation of cost to different heads	30	30

i.            MANAGEMENT OF THE CONSULTANCY:

The consultant will report to Country Coordinator SBN Pakistan. The consultant will closely work with some SBN member companies and actors in the SBN governance mechanism to complete the assignment.

ii.            Submission:

Kindly send your proposal, company profile and competency statement in English latest by 27^th May 2020 to [email protected] by mentioning the reference code SBN-CON01 in the subject line. 

Please attach documentation from any previous similar assignments with food companies or food system safety and quality.

Technical Proposal Format

[Insert Date]

To:          Head of Operations, GAIN

Dear Madam/Sir,

I, the undersigned, hereby offer to render the following services to SBN/GAIN in conformity with the requirements defined in the Terms of Reference dated [put date here].

A.      Qualifications of the Consultant (Max one page)

The provider must describe and explain how and why the provider is the best option to achieve the objective of the consultancy by demonstrating understand and previous experience.

Provide a team brief and team structure and their CVs/profile who would be working on this assignment.

B.      Proposed Methodology for the required service and outline of the training (Max three pages)

The provider must describe how it will deliver the demands of the assignment against the terms of reference; providing a methodology, detailed description of the essential performance characteristics, reporting conditions and quality assurance mechanisms that will be put in place while demonstrating that the proposed methodology will be appropriate in the given context and conditions.

Apart from the above, provide work schedule and timeliness with the allocation of the level of efforts for the period. This should show a logical link between the timeline and the human resource for this assignment and the allocated time/level of effort.

C.      Overall financial in PKR

Cost adjusted to proposed tasks.

 Financial Proposal Format in PKR (Inclusive of all taxes)

Description	Unit Cost	Total number of engagement day/hours	Number of personnel	Total rate
Human Resources 1
Human Resource 2
Travel
Communication charges
Designing services (if required)
Others (add more rows if required)

Breakdown of above cost for payments

S#.	Deliverable	%age	Price (Lump sum all inclusive)
1	Deliverable 1	30%
2	Deliverable 2	30%
3	Deliverable 3	30%
4	Deliverable 4	10%
Total		100%

This will be the basis for payment tranches.

Additional details required from the contracting party:

Name:

Year of establishment:

Address (Street Number + Street):

Postal Code: 

City: 

Country: 

Phone: 

Website:

Email Address:

Name of Bank: 

Address of Bank (Street Number + Street; Postal Code + City; Country):

Title of Account:

Account Number 

Swift Code 

IBAN 

 

 

 

 

Name and Signature

[Designation] [Date]