We contracted Haniya to conduct a review of Oxfam’s readiness to apply for and manage FCDO commercial contracts. Haniya came highly recommended and rightly so. It was a joy to work with Haniya. She was consistently professional, flexible, clear and thorough, full of insights and able to very quickly get her head around how Oxfam functions delivering a report and final presentation incl. recommendations that is to the point, pertinent to Oxfam and practical. Several Oxfam colleagues, including myself, have also benefitted from Haniya’s great skills as a trainer taking part in FCDO commercial contracts trainings delivered by her. We would definitely want to work with Haniya again and would very much recommend her to other INGOs and institutions exploring or engaging with commercial contracts.

Hannah Meinshausen

Senior UK Partnerships Advisor, Oxfam GB

Thanks for the training… so super helpful! Also, you have great teaching skills, which make 12 hours of training a pleasure!

Constanza Gonzalez Parrao

Senior Evaluation Specialist, 3ie

The FCDO Commercial Contracts 3-day course was an exceptional learning experience. The content was well-structured and relevant to real-world scenarios, providing valuable insights into how to engage with the FCDO and providing insight into the bidding process. The instructor, Haniya, was knowledgeable and engaging, making the sessions highly interactive and enjoyable. I feel equipped with practical skills and confident in applying the knowledge gained. Overall, it was a truly worthwhile investment.

Mohamed Abdelnabi

Programme Manager, Global Impact Consultancy Limited

We enlisted the expertise of Haniya to assess WWF UK’s readiness for FCDO commercial contracts. Working with Haniya was very easy; she was very professional and adaptable to staff availability. The report and final presentation she delivered was extremely useful with actionable insights tailored to our current readiness and organisational ways of working.

I also attended Haniya’s commercial contracts training which was excellent in laying the foundations for successful FCDO commercial contracts readiness and management. We would definitely look to Haniya for any further support on FCDO commercial contracts.

Alan Thomlinson

PSP Manager, WWF UK

I initially met Haniya at a DFID contract training and later on at a FCDO contract training, where I learned a lot from her deep expertise in DFID/FCDO proposals and projects. After that, she supported our organization in understanding the key lessons learned from our lost FCDO/DFID bids and what areas we should take into consideration for future bids. She delivered a live session to our HQ staff on those lessons learned and on FCDO commercial proposals, payment by results, risk mitigation and score maximization. Haniya has also provided exceptional support to us in reviewing and putting together the technical and commercial bid for large FCDO commercial contract. She was always accessible to answer our questions, to provide sound advice and she has helped us think outside the box and deliver a competitive bid. Besides that, I personally enjoyed working with Haniya, as she brings a positive and fresh outlook to our work. I highly recommend Haniya for any organization looking for a knowledgeable and experienced professional in FCDO, as she will not only bring a wealth of expertise to the table, but also a high level of dedication and commitment to ensuring success. I look forward to working with her again.

Juliana Parahyba

Senior Director, Pricing, Pact

We were so grateful to have Haniya supporting our bid and it was by far our best investment, she was an absolute pleasure to deal with, gave solid advice and were very flexible with time. I personally learned so much not only on bid development but also from her professional approach to work, thank you so much.

Really appreciated her strong practical advice on the pricing schedule especially on the daily rates calculation, Also really appreciate the flexibility in making her time available.

Overall appreciated Haniya’s flexibility, responsiveness, and providing strong practical advice that we could have total confidence in. It was particularly reassuring to have Haniya’s advice/support on completing the single procurement document. Her speedy review and specific comments on our three technical proposals really helped to strengthen them at the final stages.

SCIAF (Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) Team

Haniya has provided excellent, expert advice and insight on commercial contracting. This has included an organisational capacity assessment and document reviews. She designed an ad-hoc training for the organisation that resulted in the improvement of internal processes. She is professional, friendly and supportive, and turns queries and tasks around very quickly.

Catherine Seaton

Senior Development Manager, Conciliation Resources

Haniya designed and delivered a fantastic, bespoke three-day course on FCDO commercial contracting for the ACU (Association of Commonwealth Universities). The training was superbly designed, and the materials were excellent. Haniya combines deep expertise and knowledge with a really professional and engaging training style. No one got bored and the feedback from the team was unanimously positive. I thought it was some of the best training I have ever had. It was particularly useful for colleagues in the finance team as it will help them support the business development team in costing bids. I would highly recommend Haniya not just for training but as a consultant to support the bid-writing process. She really is outstanding.

Sharon Memis

Chief Operating Officer, Association of Commonwealth Universities

In addition to the commercial bid for FCDO, Haniya provided overall strategic advice and support on all aspects of the technical bid, from building a competitive team to language that we should use in the technical narrative. She used her extensive network of contacts to help us find excellent partners and even recommended managers for us to hire if (when!) we get the bid. She joined regular calls with our partners over several months to help us prepare for the bid, and provided crucial training to partners to help them understand what was needed from them. The terms of reference for the bid were very confusing and Haniya coached us to ask the right clarifying questions. When the answers were less than illuminating, she helped us interpret and make decisions based on incomplete knowledge.  At the point when we thought we had finally produced an outstanding technical and commercial bid, she went through it with a fine-toothed comb and identified multiple areas where we should strengthen the text or provide more examples. She kept us focused and encouraged us when our spirits were flagging. We are a small organization and we simply could not have accomplished what was, for us, a very daunting and ambitious proposal without Haniya. We are very grateful to her, and would not hesitate to recommend her to anyone else.

We actually won this bid, against very stiff competition.  We would never have managed this if it had not been for Haniya’s wise counsel on how to structure the commercial bid.  We are very grateful.

Mary Ellsberg

Director,  Global Women’s Institute, the George Washington University

Haniya supported us in our first bid for an FCDO commercial contract. As the commercial lead, I relied heavily on Haniya for information, guidance and feedback. Her knowledge was invaluable as was her encouragement and unfailing support. Despite a challenging time difference and the bid development period covering the entire holiday season, Haniya was always available and responded to communications quickly and comprehensively. Her calm demeanour and practical approach was especially appreciated in the final days, when hours were long and stress levels here high.

Haniya possesses exceptional insight into FCDO’s requirements and process. She has an uncanny ability to know where and when more details are needed and the skill of a surgeon when details need to be cut. We could not have submitted our commercial bid without her expertise and contribution.

Marianne Makar

Operations Manager, Global Women’s Institute, the George Washington University

I highly recommend Haniya and she will continue to be our go to resource when preparing bids.  We recognized that we had so much to learn about the commercial bid process for FCDO. After discussing with my colleagues, it was clear we were not prepared for success, so we reached out to Haniya – who was highly recommended – and discussed our needs to prepare the commercial bid as a sub on an upcoming FCDO ToT.

Haniya recommended key modules in her training and capacity building program that would be essential content for success. She recommended and we completed two 4-hour days with Haniya and the modules she used to teach the content were hands-on with practice opportunities (critical to learning this content) using FCDO terminology and examples. The training was tailored to our needs, was practical and professional.  She is clearly an expert and responded to questions with multiple examples – often linking the response to our questions using similar terminology/examples from our US experiences – this helped us to not get hung up in terminology and focus on learning the content for the commercial bid.  I have experienced multiple consultation during my academic career -Haniya’s consultation is in the top 1% of experiences in terms of expertise, relevant content, amount of time, and cost.

Nancy Glass

Professor, Johns Hopkins University

We contracted Haniya to support work on putting together the technical and commercial bid for large DFID commercial contract. This was the first contract where I was the bid coordinator and therefore, naturally, had A LOT of questions. Yet, however consequential or petty the questions were, Haniya never tired of answering them and always got back to me very swiftly in a detailed and helpful manner. She furthermore, also proactively provided sound advice that helped steer our documents to much higher quality outputs. This continues to this day, where even though our contractual relationship has ended, Haniya still often forwards me helpful information that can support our current and future work.

Haniya has an incredible grasp of requirements both on the technical and the commercial side of DFID business cases and contracts. Therefore, regardless of the fact that she was not a subject specialist in the area of the particular bid we worked on together, she was still able to review, provide important inputs to documents, in a very timely and detailed manner. It is important to note that we were working across two continents and time-zones, but this remote relationship was not an issue at all; in fact, Haniya was incredibly flexible and we used multiple modes of communication to connect.

Throughout our work together, I personally particularly valued Haniya’s positive outlook, encouraging as well as flexible approach. She was incredibly supportive to me, which was particularly important in the latter parts of the bid development stage, when stress levels were high. I would without any hesitation both work with Haniya again and recommend her further, which I have in fact done already.

Astrid R.N. Haas

Head of the “Cities that Work” Initiative,  International Growth Centre, London School of Economics

Haniya customized organization-wide trainings for our HQ on DFID Contract Essentials and another specifically for our Bangkok office that were simply outstanding.  She delivered a great deal of information in a relatively short period of time in a dynamic and engaging manner, utilizing our own case studies for hands on exercises to really ensure practicality of the training.

Aleta Williams

Global Director of Business Development & Diversification, FHI 360

Haniya is a joy to work with. She is professional, flexible, friendly and engaging, and has an enormous wealth of commercial contracting experience. She worked with us between 2018 and 2020 to complete a two-stage commercial readiness ‘audit’: the first stage looking specifically at ActionAid UK and the second stage looking at the global ActionAid Federation.

The Audit covered a wide range of areas relating to priming and sub-contracting DFID commercial contracts, including compliance, partnership, bid, negotiation, inception and implementation, and gave us a really clear picture of our organisational readiness across the organisation and what we needed to work on to be completely confident in bidding and managing contracts.

In addition to this, Haniya also delivered several tailored in-house trainings for teams across the organisation, ranging from programme managers and bid managers new to commercial contracting, up to Senior Leadership team members, looking to develop stronger risk management and oversight of contracts. 100% of attendees at the first training course said they would recommend the training to a colleague (10/10 rating).

All of Haniya’s work was thorough, realistic and well-adapted to meet our needs – which as a global federated organisation were not always straightforward! I would wholeheartedly recommend Haniya to any NGO exploring commercial contracting or looking to develop their skills or experience further.

Eve Mosley

Head of Business Development, International Development Policy and Practice, ActionAid UK

Haniya delivered a one-day bespoke training for our UK team as well as colleagues from partner offices in Canada, Norway, South Sudan, Myanmar and Nepal who participated remotely. The training was extremely useful as it provided us with a foundational introduction to the world of commercial contracting, for our team of development practitioners that are mainly used to dealing with grants from institutional donors.

As many of the funders that we work with increasingly use commercial contracting as a modality for delivering ODA priorities, it is important that we build our understanding, capability and readiness to operate in the commercial contracting space. The training Haniya provided was that first key step that we needed to push forward in this space, and we will certainly be calling on her again before too long, for additional support as we try to make significant strides forward.

Howa Avan-Nomayo

Chief Programmes Officer, ADRA-UK

Thank you so much for the great job that you and the team did on the FCDO contract training over the three days . It was very useful and interesting.  Even though it was virtual it certainly did not feel like it. The group work was also a lot of fun.

Nuwan Rupesinghe

Oxfam GB

Haniya supported CARE UK with a change project to strengthen our systems and expertise in commercial contract management. She provided incite, advice, and guidance – and was a joy to work with. We are now bidding confidently and winning significant contracts. Thank you!

Rachel Hewitt

Chief Operating Officer, Care UK

My organization worked with Haniya to develop a DFID Strategy document. Haniya was a pleasure to work with and produced a very high quality product. I would highly recommend working with Haniya and would definitely work with her again.

Jamie Jones

Vice President of Program Development, Relief International

I have worked with Haniya extensively to support INGOs learn about and adapt to commercial contracting. Haniya designed and delivered Bond’s training courses in Commercial Contracting, has spoken at the Bond conference on the subject for the last 3 years now, and also chaired a seminar on commercial contracting, arranging speakers from FCDO, NGOs and the private sector. Haniya is highly professional in her approach and has an in-depth understanding of her subject matter. She was able to create and deliver engaging, informative and practical training sessions which have had resoundingly positive feedback from participants.

In 2016, she scored an average trainer rating of 9.6 out of 10 (compared to 8.9 out of 10 average across all Bond’s courses). Haniya’s DFID/FCDO Contracting Essentials course was the highest evaluated course of 2019 and in 2021 Haniya had a trainer score of 9/10. In the last FCDO Commercial Contracts course Haniya delivered for Bond in 2023 participants scored her 9.9/10.

Sarah Armstrong

Learning and Training Adviser, Bond

Self Help Africa commissioned a cross-departmental training on commercial contracting to help us better understand the intricacies of commercial contracting.  We found Haniya’s tailored training incredibly useful in helping better understanding the terminology, the risks and the pitfalls to look out for as we begin our journey into commercial contracting.   Haniya’s clear depth of knowledge and experience were invaluable and her facilitation approach ensured that we engaged in lively and productive debates as we discussed the implications – and opportunities – of commercial contracting for our organisation.  I would highly recommend Haniya for organisations looking to build their capacity in commercial contracting.

Lios Boyle

Head of Programme Funding, Self Help Africa

I have collaborated with Haniya in different capacities mostly focusing on commercial contracting with DFID and Payment by Results whilst I have been working at Plan International UK. I would highly recommend Haniya for her strategic analysis skills, excellent interpersonal skills as well as her detailed and in-depth understanding of commercial contracting (from a resource mobilisation, contract and risk management but also broader organisational change and systems optimisation perspective).

Marc Faux

Global Programme Manager, South Asia WASH Results Programme, Plan

I found Haniya’s course on DFID commercial contracting to be extremely useful! I learned a great deal and feel ready to advise my colleagues on various issues related to DFID contracting. I really appreciated it, as well as the opportunity to meet others in the field — the opportunity to network was really valuable. I hope my organization will consider sending others to do the course, too – it is well worth the trip from NY!

Anne K. Shinn

Senior Programe Associate, EngenderHealth

I worked with Haniya for number of years. She is a very professional person and dedicated to her work. She managed well the programmes and offices in the Horn of Africa, one of the hottest spots in the world. Very hard worker. Very experienced and quick learner. Very friendly and supportive to all the team. One of the best persons I worked with in the last 20 years.

Makki Abdelnabi M. Hamid

Adviser, King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre

I first met Haniya when she was still working for a Bond member agency and was the driving force behind Bond’s Commercial Contracts Working Group, so it was very natural to turn to her for consultancy support when Concern Worldwide was preparing its first tender for a DFID contract.  In remarkably short order, Haniya gave very detailed feedback on our draft Commercial Tender, all of her points being extremely relevant but also very helpfully expressed so that we could immediately decide on what to change, and how.  Our tender was selected, and through that whole phase up to contract signing, Haniya was consistently helpful both in terms of thinking through how DFID might approach a particular point of detail, but also in supporting us to develop clear overall thinking on how to approach the structuring of the contract.  From that contract onto others pursued by Concern Worldwide Haniya has been a valuable source of expertise and facilitation that we have trusted throughout DFID commercial procurement and contracting stages.

Bob Ruxton

Head of International Support, Concern Worldwide

Haniya’s presentation and training on DFID commercial contracting was an ideal primer. Working in a higher education institute with experience in DFID grants, the nuances of commercial contracting were unfamiliar. However, the information and practical exercises provided by Haniya prepared us for our first foray into this alternative funding mechanism. Highly recommended.

Shanda Doherty

Senior Research Support Officer, The University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science

I’m very happy to recommend Haniya!  She worked at first with a brief for statutory funding for our West Africa Region, and then moved to create a brand new business area for the IRC, bidding on commercial contracts from DFID.  As such, she stood up that entire area from almost-scratch. (We did have a few experiences prior, mainly to learn how not-to).  She hired a team, did all the background research, process mapping, procedures, safeguards, risk analyses, and led on several bids.

As such, she had many deliverables, and always delivered.  Part of this entailed moving forward step-change procedures that were approved by the very highest management layers of IRC globally (not merely IRC UK) so she had to navigate very carefully and was excellent, at that too.  She’s a top end professional, and in addition a very personable character, I seriously cannot think of anything I’d class as a ’weakness’.  And YES, I would very happily hire her again should I ever get the chance!

Henrik Boejen

Director Pre-Award Team, International Rescue Committee UK

We engaged Haniya to strengthen LSTM’s capacity to respond to DFID commercial tenders.  She worked with academic, technical and programme support staff through a series of practical workshops which produced outputs we could apply directly to tenders.   From the start she demonstrated her vast experience and knowledge of DFID strategy, commercial drivers and ways of working, the type of wisdom that can tip the scales in your favour during a competitive exercise.

Haniya also supported us through an unprecedented tender response period where we were working on multiple submissions simultaneously.    She worked tirelessly to provide reviewer comments which were detailed, yet to the point, and always focused with laser precision on keeping our response compliant with DFID and maximizing our score.  She made herself available for queries and provided some much needed reassurance and commiseration during the intense and stressful proposal submission process.

Throughout our engagement Haniya has been the ultimate professional and delivered everything we asked of her (and we asked a lot!) in the agreed timeframe.

Arwen Bate

Research Support Manager,  Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

CRS contracted Haniya on four separate occasions and she consistently met or exceeded our expectations.  Haniya is professional and extremely responsive.  Before, during, and after each assignment she was available for questions, responded quickly to any request, and thoroughly followed up to ensure that we were pleased with the work product.

Our first time working with Haniya she performed an analysis comparing our business practices to those of DFID’s terms and conditions to determine our alignment for pursuing DFID commercial contract funding. Included in this assignment was presenting her findings to a large group of CRS colleagues, many of whom were not familiar with DFID. Haniya’s presentation skills are excellent and she was able to present the information in a way that was easily digestible by all attendees.

Haniya further completed an in-house training on DFID Commercial Contracts, which was again tailored to CRS’ ways of working and incorporated useful examples and tools rooted in the practices that we are already familiar with. Several colleagues who attended the training have continued to comment on how much they learned and how well the training was conducted.

For Haniya’s last two assignments she supported two separate commercial contract bids. Haniya’s experience and knowledge with DFID funding (now FCDO), specifically the costing and commercial aspect, was integral to our success. For one of the bids Haniya wrote the majority of the commercial narrative, and advised on the development of our commercial pro forma and value for money approach.  Having Haniya as part of our proposal team meant that we had access to her breadth of knowledge on the donor and years of experience in developing commercial bids.  We would not hesitate to contract Haniya again for future bids or internal consultation.

Jerica Youngken Itterly

Senior Programme Funding Officer, Catholic Relief Services