The company has launched a large-scale, franchise-like network of ultra low-cost, for-profit private primary schools in Kenya, and will expand across Africa. The schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month. Local school managers are able to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.
This ensures that the school is not dependent on the vagaries of donor funding, but will rather continue to serve the communities as long as parents value the educational service we provide. To ensure the delivery of high quality education, Bridge International writes its own curriculum using Direct Instruction methodology. They also train and support their own teachers.
Bridge have already launched the first 12 schools in their network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.
Deputy Director of Construction Management
About this position
We have and are continuing to develop one of the most cost-effective approaches to constructing school buildings in the world. We currently construct school classrooms for less than KSh 140,000 per classroom fully loaded (including all labour and site management, furniture, transport, and the amortized cost of the latrines, School Manager’s office, and fence).
These results are achieved by using experienced fundi’s as site managers, who are supported by a central management team and a highly specified process and specifications.
Because of the speed of our scaling, we construct many schools simultaneously. For example, the company is currently building 15 new schools, and expanding 5 existing schools. That means we have to manage 20 simultaneous construction sites. Within a couple of years the number of simultaneous construction sites will increase to well over 50.
We are looking for a full time Deputy Director of Construction Management who underneath our Head of Construction will provide critical leadership to manage these simultaneous construction projects being led by fundis and day labourers.
In order to accomplish this, the Deputy Director will need to help refine and improve upon our systems for managing and tracking every aspect of these projects, as well as the training and oversight of the site managers/fundis.
We are looking for someone who is good with the details and not afraid of spending long hours in the field (in the slums) to make sure the job is accomplished.
Responsibilities:
- Improve upon and develop new manuals, specifications, tracking tools, & training program to allow local construction managers to successfully replicate school design
- Refine and implement a sophisticated budgeting and payment tracking system to ensure that schools are being built under budget and on time.
- Refine and put in place audit systems to ensure that construction is being done correctly and financial controls are in place to ensure transparency
- Identifying, training and managing site managers who are the actual implementers at each site
- Managing central construction team to help implement the design, process, and auditing.
- Constantly working to reduce cost and improve quality of school construction
About You
- You have minimum 10 years experience in senior project management or construction management role, especially one where you were managing many sites/projects simultaneously.
- You have experience with very process-oriented project management
- You have experience in construction management, ideally in situations where budgets are incredibly constrained
- You are very comfortable and willing to work in slums
- You have experience with managing distributed teams of people
- You have experience managing inventory at multiple sites and ensuring there are systems to prevent loss
- You are experienced in developing budgeting/accounting system to ensure easy auditing of the financial transactions
- You are an experienced user of MS Project, ArchiCAD/AutoCAD and MS Excel
- A background or experience in detailed ultra-low cost engineering design a plus
- You are very comfortable with using and analyzing data, budgets, and information to make better decisions
- 'Love to get my hands dirty' is your middle name. While you have been a manager, you have also demonstrated your willingness to jump into the very nitty-gritty details and get done what is needed to get done.
- You function well in a fast-paced, informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high