For over five decades the Sellafield Site has been central to the UK’s nuclear programme. Sellafield Ltd is managed by NMP (Nuclear Management Partners), a consortium of URS, AMEC and AREVA and is focussed on the decommissioning of historical facilities. When the activity of Decommissioning commenced in the late 1980’s the site focus at that time was on commercial reprocessing and waste management. Now through the implementation of an integrated company change programme, emphasis has shifted towards accelerated risk and hazard reduction of degraded legacy plants with nuclear inventory whilst ensuring value for money for the customer, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). This paper will describe the management approach that is being taken and the planning tools that are being applied by the Site owners in delivering an integrated change programme across the Decommissioning Directorate. The paper will explain how the management approach to change uses Peer Assist, Rapid Improvement Events, Organisational Review Self Evaluation, Value Stream Analysis and Accelerated Improvement Events as improvement tools. Use of these has enabled downsizing of the organisation, driven out hundreds of man day efficiencies within the maintenance and asset management areas, improved the management of spares reducing annual costs by £1000’s, improved Commercial practices by fast tracking the preparation of invitations to tender for critical contracts, rolled back radiological control areas and enabled quicker access to the workface at a reduced cost. This paper will explain in detail how the Decommissioning Directorate Programme Office has implemented planning tools such as governance, identification of opportunities, benefit evaluation and prioritisation and sanction of the optimum improvements and how through the use of a balanced scorecard, delivery of the improvements has been measured ensuring that the targets are met. Finally, the paper will discuss how the Performance Improvement Action Plan has proved to be critical for presenting the change plan and its delivery to key stakeholders, Government owners and powerful regulators. Overall, this paper provides an insight into how a massive change programme is being managed within one of the world’s highest regulated industries.

This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.