Engineers publish nuclear best practice guides

8th March 2012

Engineering alliance Engineering the Future (EtF) has published a series of best practice guides for the nuclear new build supply chain and related industries. These guides aim to help industry successfully deliver a new fleet of nuclear power stations by providing accessible information about best practice behaviours to all those involved.

The guides follow an initial report, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Office for Nuclear Development, which identified five common lessons from past and current projects that could be applied to the new-build programme to help ensure timely and efficient delivery.

Working group chair Quentin Leiper said: “The UK market is typified by long supply chains and a high degree of sub-contracting, so creating an awareness and understanding of the unique nature of nuclear construction is crucial to minimising project risks. We hope these guides will ultimately help generate behaviours within the UK industry and supply chains that are conducive to successful project delivery.'

The new guides focused on three areas of nuclear construction – welding, concrete and safety culture, with specific recommendations for each. They were developed in consultation with industry and representatives from government, regulators, utilities, the supply chain and industry bodies (see notes for full details).

Leiper added: “These guides are not intended to be standards, codes of practice or contract conditions; they simply capture the experience that exists across industry into one easily accessible document for others to learn from. Going forward it is vital that a mechanism is put into place to ensure we continue to learn from new projects, capturing lessons and sharing them widely.”

The full reports are downloadable at www.ice.org.uk/topics/energy/Policy/Nuclear-best-practice

Engineering the Future (EtF) is a broad alliance of the engineering institutions and bodies which represent the UK’s 450,000 professional engineers of which IChemE is part.