Equipment Maintenance Consultant - USP Ghana

U.S. Pharmacopeia Convention (USP)  seeks to engage the services of an Equipment Maintenance Consultant in Ghana.

The U.S. Pharmacopeia Convention (USP) is a scientific nonprofit organization that sets standards for the identity, strength, quality, and purity of medicines, food ingredients, and dietary supplements manufactured, distributed, and consumed worldwide.

USP’s drug standards are enforceable in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration, and these standards are used in more than 140 countries.

USP is an independent nonprofit organization with nearly 200 years of experience developing quality standards for medicines.

Through its global public health programs, USP strengthens medicines quality assurance systems, increases the supply of quality-assured medicines, and develops the capacity to detect and remove poor-quality medicines from the market.

By sharing scientific expertise and providing technical support and leadership, USP helps local regulators improve and sustain local health systems and enables manufacturers to supply quality-assured essential medicines for years to come.

Through these efforts, USP can help detect and identify poor quality health products in disease areas such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases, as well as helping safeguard the maternal, newborn, and child health sectors.

In 2019, USP was awarded the Promoting the Quality of Medicines Plus (PQM+), a USAID-funded global program designed to sustainably strengthen medical product quality assurance systems in low-and-middle-income countries.

PQM+ is currently in its third year of implementation in West and Central Africa and is seeking a West Africa based consultant to provide hands-on equipment maintenance training and technical assistance to the metrology unit of the National Quality Control Laboratories (NQCL) in the existing PQM+ buy-ins in the region Benin, Burkina Faso, DRC, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, and Senegal.

S/he will work under the guidance of the Senior program manager for West Africa and in coordination with technical staff at USP headquarters in Rockville, MD. The anticipated period of performance for this consultancy will begin in November 2021 and run through September 2024.

Scope of of the Equipment Maintenance Consultant Work:

• Provide hands-on equipment preventive maintenance training, including but not limited, analytical instrument qualification and validation as per the requirement of ISO/IEC 17025 and WHO Good Practices for Pharmaceutical Quality Control Laboratories (GPPQCL).
• Assist the PQM+ technical director to develop analytical instrument preventive maintenance protocols and procedures (SOPs) to be used and applied in national quality control laboratories (NQCLs).
• Work with equipment repair specialist and another national biomedical engineering group to develop a list of recommended spare parts and source for these spare parts.
• Provide maintenance and repair services for selected malfunctioning analytical equipment that are outside the warranty or are open systems.
• Conduct qualification of analytical equipment.
• Assist PQM+ experts deliver training on analytical instruments operation, installation and performance qualification.
• Write trips and technical training reports for technical activities conducted in the field.
• Other assignments requested by the senior program manager/technical director.

Equipment Maintenance Consultant Deliverables:

• Trip and technical reports.

Minimum Requirements

• Equipment Maintenance Consultant Education
• Bachelors degree in Science, Engineering, Laboratory technology or another scientific field relevant to instrument calibration.
• Bachelor of science with 10 years experience in the relevant field or masters degree with 5 years equivalent experience.
• Professional experience working on analytical equipment maintenance for medicines Quality Control laboratory in lower and middle-income countries.

Equipment Maintenance Consultant Experience:

• Exposure to working with pharmaceutical and/or clinical laboratory analytical instrumentation and equipment.
• Experience in global health programming and knowledge of USAID rules and regulations preferred.
• At least 10 years.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Ability to work independently and to effectively liaise with relevant parties, including government and non-government stakeholders.
• Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills with attention to detail.
• Must be proficient in English and French and possess excellent verbal, written and presentation skills.
• Firm knowledge of the operations of medicines regulatory authorities and national quality control laboratories.
• High level of integrity and commitment to quality.
• Ability to write lucid technical and management reports in English, preferred.
• Ability to travel.

Equipment Maintenance Consultant Period of Performance

• The anticipated period of performance for this consultancy will begin in November 2021 and run through September 2024.
• This position is for West Africa based candidates. The selected candidate may reside in any West African nation and is not bound to Ghana based candidates. No relocation assistance will be provided.