EU-WOP Phase II Application - Frequently Asked Questions

1. How many proposals will be awarded?

Of 30 proposals proceeding to Phase II, approximately 23 can be funded with the current budgets. GWOPA is asking all applicants to trim budgets where possible in order to be able to fund a higher number of projects.

2. Phase II asks to elaborate on Phase I responses. Does the word count limit still apply for Phase II?

If there is no word count indicated in the phase II form, please use the space you require.

3. Can we send the supporting documents before the 16 July deadline for review?

Yes, if you send us the documents in advance we will do our best to provide feedback on their completeness/adequacy.

4. Section 1.3 of the Application Form for Phase I identifies the below documents for submission under Phase II. In the Application Form for Phase II, the document list is a bit different.

The documents listed in the Phase II application package are those you must submit.

5. What is the Certificate of registration/Incorporation or Charter?

This is the official document(s) that explains your organization’s tenure, legal status, or functioning in government.

6. In the case that some of the supporting documents (checklist) to be submitted together by the Lead and Beneficiary Partners are in the local language, do they need to be translated into English?

A summary in English suffices at this stage to allow assessment by the legal department.

7. In some cases, the benchmarking report is still not published or the data may not be up-to-date due to the current situation. What document or information should we send?

You are requested to share a benchmarking report or other similar document that presents the most relevant and recent data available on key figures and performance indicators of the operator. If such a document is not produced by the operator, please kindly note it. Please go to question 21.

8. If a proposed partner does not produce an Annual Report, but instead they elaborate similar documents such as Annual Program or Annual Budget, can we send these?

Yes, these documents can be submitted. Please provide the most suitable and recent documentation available.

9. The Logframe Template does not show all the working areas from Phase I – they do not appear in the drop down. What should I do?

In the Logframe template provided, the number of working areas has been reduced by merging areas into fewer, more encompassing ones.

Please select the working area from the dropdown that fits best. If you see that none of the working areas provided covers any of the working areas that you address in your project, please select the category Other.

You will see that for project activities and project outputs, we are asking you to first indicate the working area that each activity and output is related to. Where you have indicated Other, please specify the name of your working area.

10. In which format should I save the Logframe Excel file so the information and formulas are not lost?

To ensure cell automation and not lose formulas, we recommend that the Excel workbook always be saved in the “Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook” format. If this is not helping you, please contact us through this e-mail address: maria.martineznunez@un.org. Please cc’ info@gwopa.org.

11. Is there a limit on the number of outcome and output statements? How many outputs under one outcome can be mentioned? Is there also limitation on number of indicators?

There is no limitation for outcomes, outputs, or activities, but please include only those that are necessary and useful. Note that while the indicators will help to define commitments and monitor progress they should be realistic in terms of the effort required to trace all of those indicators and also in regard to accessibility of information.

12. What is the difference between capacity development related outcomes, and performance outcomes?

The capacity and performance of a water operator do not necessarily always correlate, although a strong capacity is a prerequisite for an organisation to demonstrate strong performance over time. While the performance of a water operator informs about service delivery, capacity informs about the ability of an organisation to start delivering that service and sustain it with time. The lack of clarity on how to characterise and measure capacity motivates the use of performance as a proxy for capacity. We argue against this practice, given that the use of performance as a proxy indicator provides potentially misleading indication of how a WOP perform in delivering CD goals. Many ongoing activities that are not necessarily related to the WOP can be influencing on a certain performance indicators (KPI) and not only the WOP. Plus, frequently there is no progress in KPI in the first years of a WOP while multiple positive changes can be observed at organization level.

We argue that performance and capacity should constitute parallel sources of evidence about the effectiveness of WOPs. Performance outcomes in water operators are standard KPIs used broadly in the water sector. Some examples are NRW, collection ratio, No of staff per 1000 connections, others. GWOPA applies a methodology for tracking capacity outcomes that looks into changes at organizational level. An adapted version of Burke and Litwin´ Organizational performance and change and model is applied (1992) and will be explained when projects start.

Please, note that in the Logframe template you are only requested to incorporate:

– At societal level: impact (E.g. Increase access to water services)

– At organizational level: performance indicators (E.g. NRW reduction)

– At project level: working areas addressed by the project (E.g. Production WA, Distribution WA and Customer relationships and billing WA) , activities implemented in each working area (E.g. Development of a water balance) and outputs to be delivered in each working area (E.g. Updated Water balance produced).

The Logframe is not requesting you to include any indicator of capacity outcome. Once projects are selected for the grant funding, an online training will be organized to train all participants on how to use the WOP planning, monitoring and reporting platform. Part of this training focusses on how to plan and monitor capacity outcomes.

13. Is the area WOP project management / programme support considered a default area of intervention? In that case, are the indicators on performance outcomes the same as the ones of the other areas?

The working area WOP project management/programme support is included by default. No specific performance indicators have to be added. There is no need to associate a working area to performance indicators, given that several working areas might be contributing to one KPI (i.e. NRW will involve many working areas to contribute to, such as Distribution, Commercial, etc.).

For activities and outputs, applicants are required to specify the Working Areas that they are associated with. In the specific case of the Working area “WOP project management/programme support”, please make sure you include activities and outputs related to 1) project/partnership management, 2) contribution to knowledge management programmatic activities, and 3) contribution to Communications programmatic activities.

14. Is there a stipulated maximum value (or % of the Grant) that total procurement must not exceed?

The procurement component, which includes outsourced services, in the budget is less than 25% of total project budget, and no single procurement action exceeds 40,000 USD.

15. The Call for Proposals Package states that Phase II Application Budgets must not vary by more than 10% from the total grant amount requested or the total counterpart contribution. We are now being requested to trim budgets when possible. Can we make this reduction by more than 10%?

Yes, the reduction can be higher than 10%. Please note that where the new instructions differ from those provided in the original documents, the most recent instruction should prevail.

16. As VAT is a non-eligible cost, is it correct that all costs for requested grants in the budget have to be reported without VAT?

No, it means that VAT should not be charged on the overall grant request, as this is a cooperation project. VAT on commercially procured purchases and services within the contract is eligible.

17. Where can I find the UN per diem (Daily Subsistence Allowance or DSA) rates?

Please click in this link to access this information.

18. Can travel costs be added under Contractual Services if we are hiring a travel agency?

Travel should appear on the Travel budget line, even if it is handled by an agency.

19. According to the guidelines and related to the EUKnoW activities we need to foresee: travel costs for lead and beneficiary partners to participate in one intercontinental and one regional trip per year per partner per WOP (appx 3 days each). In the budget forecast for travel costs and per diems since we do not know where the regional and intercontinental meetings will take place and thus we have difficulties to calculate the costs. Shall we budget a lump sum? How much would it be?

Please do your calculation on the basis of likely locations as it is not possible to predict at this point exactly where the events will be organized.

20. The counterpart contribution in staff-time from Additional Partners should be added in the Budget Template under the table of Staff or under the table of Transfers?

Please include Additional Partner staff time contributions under transfers, even for partners that are not receiving transfers.

21. I would like to add some explanatory information about my supporting documents (absence of benchmarking report, the annual report is 2 years old, etc.). Where can I do this?

You may include all such information at the end of the Phase II Application Form provided. Please clearly label: Additional Information.

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CONTACT US
Global Water Operators’ Partnerships’ Alliance (GWOPA)
Urban Basic Services Section, Urban Practices Branch, UN-Habitat
UN Campus Bonn, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1
53113 Bonn, Germany