Job Description

About UPP The Urban Practitioners\xe2\x80\x99 Programme (UPP) is an education and capacity building programme for urban practitioners spanning disciplines and levels in public, private, academic and civil society sectors. IIHS believes that a city\xe2\x80\x99s transformation rests largely on the collective endeavours of practitioners who confront challenges through an informed, reflexive and creative manner.
The UPP offers institutions and practitioners new frameworks of knowledge, backed by a cohesive package of skills. Our portfolio spans sectors, disciplines and scales of practice and seeks to intervene at three levels:

• Strategic perspectives and orientation of the practitioner to urban challenges;
• Knowledge frameworks employed to appraise such challenges;
• Execution skills to tackle them effectively and sustainably.

IIHS seeks a logistics planning associate to provide administrative support for all logistics requirements for UPP projects. The role primarily involves coordination with the project management team to understand event requirements and work on the related logistics.
The incumbent will work both independently and as a member of a team and must have the ability to interact effectively and professionally with various teams at IIHS, co-workers, vendors, and external partners.
This is a contractual position for an initial term of 11 months, renewable on mutual consent.
Activities and Tasks The logistics planning associate would be required to handle a wide variety of assignments and the responsibilities would include, but not limited to, the following:

• Being part of end-to-end event and logistics planning for each individual requirement;
• Taking ownership for identifying the specific needs and requirements of each assignment;

• Creating and maintaining a database of hotels, venue partners, travel agents and transport operators in major tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities in coordination with the IIHS central travel desk;
• Interacting and coordinating independently with external guests and vendor service partners to ensure seamless logistics support during an event;
• Ensuring timely budget forecast for events and taking ownership of coordination with the Finance, Admin Procurement and Travel Teams for timely payments;
• Maintaining proper documentation of spends and allocations for each individual event and helping the project management office in filing their accounts for this category of transactions;
• Performing miscellaneous jobs as assigned from time to time;
• Participating and supporting in other activities of the Urban Practitioners\xe2\x80\x99 Programme at IIHS as necessary;
• Providing support to other IIHS activities including academics, research, training, practice, operations and others;
• Participating in all activities of Institution-Building at IIHS; carrying out tasks as assigned by IIHS; and traveling on IIHS work within or outside the country as and when needed.

Structure and Reporting The logistics planning associate will be an External Consultant coordinating with the Manager \xe2\x80\x93 UPP at IIHS and will be required to collaborate effectively with the UPP and Finance teams.
Person Specification The ideal candidate should have:

• A Bachelor\xe2\x80\x99s or Master\xe2\x80\x99s degree in any discipline with at least 3 years of relevant experience;
• Experience in travel management or guest management;
• Proficiency in English and Tamil (verbal and written); Hindi is desirable;
• Ability to maintain the confidentiality of records and information;
• Strong attention to detail, and rigor of approach in any task taken up;
• Organising and coordinating skills;
• Multi-tasking ability and resourcefulness;
• The flexibility and willingness to stretch beyond office hours as and when needed by the role;
• Technology: Data entry skills; working knowledge of basic software (MS Office, Google Forms and Spreadsheets).

This is a contractual engagement for an initial term of 11 months, renewable on mutual consent. This offer is on an exclusive basis, which implies that other professional assignments (whether compensated or not) that bear a potential conflict of interest with IIHS cannot be undertaken.
The search will remain open until the position is filled.
Location This position is based in Chennai and may entail travel to other locations in Tamil Nadu and the rest of India.
Review and Assessment The role and performance of the incumbent shall be subject to normal review and assessment systems at IIHS.
Diversity Policy IIHS is an equal opportunity employer that encourages women, people with disabilities and those from economically and socially excluded communities with the requisite skills and qualifications to apply for positions.