Subject: IHD's newest functional title: Technical Project Officer
From: Margarita Fernandez <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2015 22:39:50 +0000

Dear Colleagues,

I’m happy to inform you that we have made a change to the functional title of IHD’s Technical Coordinators in an effort to better reflect their role and contribution to the projects they support and to the division as a whole.

After joint review and discussion of several options the Technical Coordinator community agreed with Division management to replace their Technical Coordinator title with Technical Project Officer.  We feel that this choice best represents the role that Technical Coordinators currently carry out, it best reflects the most significant proportion of the inputs they provide, and; finally it fits the role which the majority of IHD projects require.

The title is meant to reflect a function and it does not replace our colleagues’ Abt title (ex: Associate or Sr. Associate). It is not accompanied by any prefixes, or suffixes.

Below are some guidelines we have discussed and shared with IHD’s Technical Project Officers which are meant to provide some clarity regarding the use of the title.

Recommended Guidelines

Applicability:  Please use the Technical Project Officer title when referring to former Technical Coordinators who work on bilateral projects effective immediately and as soon as practicable. Those who are part of a centrally funded project (such as HFG, AIRS or SHOPS) do not have to use this title if there is a different title in use to describe their role within that centrally funded project.

Use of TPO Title:

Use of the Technical Project Officer (TPO) title is optional both in the address section of emails and in business cards. If the employee opts to use the TPO title, it should be used in conjunction with their Abt title (ex: Senior Analyst/Technical Project Officer).

Use of the TPO title in proposals is required. Exceptions can be made where there is a business reason not to use it as evaluated by the proposal Technical Lead, and in consultation with the proposal Quality Mentor as needed (ex:  if the proposal team has selected a TPO and the proposal budget can only support one, a second TPO can be included in the proposal as a member of the STTA pool of experts available to support the field and HO team, using a more specialized title such as BCC Specialist).

Use of the TPO title for recruiting purposes is optional.  While Abt will continue to use the Abt title as the primary title in a job description/posting, the functional title of TPO can accompany the Abt title, (ex: Associate/Technical Project Officer) as a way to distinguish the functional role the candidate would hold within the division.

If you wish to reach out to the Technical Project Officer community as a whole, please note that the name of the listserv for this community has changed to:  All_IHD_Technical_Project_Officers and it is available for immediate use.

Feel free to forward this announcement to your colleagues as appropriate. If you have any questions regarding this change please don’t hesitate to contact Diana, Mark, Thierry or myself.

Regards,

Margarita

Margarita P. Fernandez

Deputy Division Manager |Vice President |International Health Division | Abt Associates Inc

O: 301.347.5314 | C: 301.222.3925