Program Manager I - SWASH at Catholic Relief Services (CRS)

Job Summary:

The SWASH Manager will lead the planning, coordination, and implementation of integrated shelter, water supply, sanitation, and hygiene promotion interventions under the RAPID program. The role will provide technical and management oversight to ensure timely, inclusive, compliant, and high-quality delivery of services for targeted communities. S/he will guide SWASH and Hygiene Promotion teams on infrastructure designs, BoQs, technical specifications, contract management, quality standards, assessments, reporting, and operational tools, while coordinating internally across sectors and externally with partners, government stakeholders, and communities.

Roles and Key Responsibilities:

Technical Leadership and Program Quality

• Lead the planning, design, implementation, monitoring, and quality assurance of integrated shelter, water supply, sanitation, and hygiene promotion activities, ensuring alignment with project objectives, CRS standards, donor requirements, national standards, and Sphere Standards.
• Provide technical guidance on infrastructure designs, BoQs, specifications, contract documents, quality checklists, assessments, reporting tools, and operational frameworks, ensuring SWASH interventions are technically sound, feasible, inclusive, protection-sensitive, sustainable, and responsive to community needs.
• Ensure hygiene promotion activities effectively complement infrastructure interventions, including hygiene education, sanitation promotion, handwashing, and safe food and water practices.

Project Planning, Implementation, and Monitoring

• Oversee implementation by project teams, partners, vendors, and contractors to ensure timely delivery, quality control, compliance with approved plans, and prompt corrective action where risks, delays, or quality concerns arise.
• Coordinate with Procurement, Logistics, Finance, MEAL, and program teams to ensure timely procurement, contract management, vendor and contractor assessments, resource utilization, project documentation, and effective tracking of workplans, deliverables, budgets, risks, approvals, and implementation progress.

Community Engagement, Protection, and Accountability

• Ensure communities, community leaders, and targeted beneficiaries are meaningfully engaged throughout beneficiary selection, planning, implementation, monitoring, and feedback processes, with beneficiaries selected based on approved criteria.
• Ensure shelter and WASH works are implemented on undisputed land with safe, dignified, and unhindered access to services, while promoting inclusive and protection-sensitive programming for men, women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups.

Partnership and Capacity Strengthening

• Manage partner relationships, negotiations, communication, learning, and joint problem-solving across all phases of project implementation.
• Identify program and management capacity strengthening needs among project staff and partners, coordinate relevant support, and contribute technical inputs to workplans, proposals, budgets, project extensions, and new business development opportunities as required.

MEAL, Reporting, and Learning

• Work with MEAL teams to support timely assessments, monitoring systems, learning, beneficiary feedback, and use of CRS tools to improve project quality, impact, and adaptation.
• Ensure timely, accurate, and high-quality donor reports, indicator tracking tables, evaluation reports, project updates, and other required documentation, while advising senior management on implementation issues, risks, local developments, opportunities, and corrective actions needed to achieve project objectives.

Budgeting, Financial Planning and Compliance  

• Ensure compliance with donor regulations, CRS policies, procurement procedures, contract management requirements, partner reporting obligations, safeguarding expectations, and accountability standards.
• Review partner financial reports and coordinate with Finance and resource management teams to ensure timely submission, budget monitoring, expenditure analysis, and proper utilization of grant and project resources.

Representation, Coordination, and Communication  

• Represent CRS in relevant WASH, Shelter, CCCM, government, partner, UN, NGO, and inter-agency coordination forums, and coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to strengthen complementarity, resolve implementation issues, and support timely delivery.
• Supervise, mentor, and support SWASH and Hygiene Promotion Senior Project Officers and other project staff, ensuring effective performance planning, feedback, coaching, and adherence to CRS performance management requirements.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills with ability to make sound judgment.
• Strong relationship management skills and the ability to work effectively with culturally diverse groups.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with ability to write reports
• Proactive, results-oriented, and service-oriented

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated knowledge of best practices for shelter, water supply, sanitation, and hygiene in emergency and recovery programming, including safe drinking water, practical sanitation solutions, behavior change through hygiene promotion, and shelter solutions.
• Previous experience developing proposals for external donor funding. 
• Familiarity with current standards and guidelines for shelter, water supply, sanitation, and hygiene in humanitarian emergency response, in particular Sphere Standards.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in water and Sanitation Engineering, Civil Engineering, Hydrology, Hydrogeology, Environmental Engineering, Public Health, or a related field required. Master’s degree is strongly preferred. 
• At least five years of relevant experience in management role for shelter and WASH programming, with preferably three to four years working in the field contributing to or managing shelter and WASH projects.