15 Sep 2011
The next in the series of Cogent’s Renaissance Nuclear Skills Reports Assurance - The Defence Nuclear Workforce 2010 – 2025, is now available via the Cogent website. The Defence Nuclear Programme forms a critical 25% of the total UK demand for nuclear skills.
The much anticipated report is the third in a series of four, working with industry and government to help ensure that the demand for nuclear skills in the UK can be met. The key message is that the highly specialist skills in the strategic nuclear defence sector, an industry in the national interest, should be protected and nurtured.
Training in the sector is a vital part of every employee’s professional development, along with a clear employer focus on maintaining skills supply into the key specialisms across the defence nuclear industry. Demand forecasts from the ‘Submarine Enterprise Programme’ group of employers working in collaboration, show a modest decrease in the 15,000 strong workforce over the period to 2025. This is predicated on maintaining a coherent long-term programme; in particular the seamless transition from Astute build to a Vanguard successor.
Any variations from the government’s assumed submarine building profile will not only affect the skills demand for construction, it will also have an indirect impact on areas such as decommissioning and maintenance, especially inspection and re-validation activities, as the existing fleet is pressed into longer service.
Steve Bennett, Cogent’s Head of Research said, “a significant risk to the defence nuclear programme is the loss of submarine building skills arising from a failure to maintain a coherent programme; for example, should a gap develop between Astute and the Vanguard successor, mirroring that at the beginning of the Astute build.
“Awareness skills remain in surplus over the period out to 2025 in the existing profile, however there’s a shortfall in the Practitioner and Expert areas, which requires the recently enhanced Technician and Graduate level nuclear and submarine training schemes to be maintained and special attention to be placed on knowledge transfer from those retiring from the enterprise to the new joiners.”
He added, “the experience of the submarine building programme in the early years of the century suggests that any substantial break in submarine construction will interrupt the skills pipeline. Although demand will initially decrease, later reinstatement of the programme will be limited by a lack of immediately usable skills, increasing the training demand.”
The first Cogent Nuclear Renaissance Report, Power People: The Civil Nuclear Workforce 2009 - 2025 assessed the macro skills picture of the existing civil nuclear estate; the second report, Next Generation: Skills for New Build Nuclear, identified the skills demand for new build; this third Assurance report moves the focus to the defence sector, where many of the nuclear skills overlap.
The new Assurance report provides an important benchmark for a sizable section of the UK demand for nuclear skills - i.e. defence - at a time of potential resurgence for the civil nuclear programme.
Jean Llewellyn OBE, Chief Executive of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear said: "This report is of fundamental importance in clarifying the future skills needs of the nuclear defence sub sector. Following the two prior reports which focussed on the civil nuclear skills requirements, this third report really helps us to look at at the whole of the nuclear skills challenge in UK. The National Skills Academy for Nuclear will continue to work with employers and partners to address the recommendations of all three reports and we are looking forward to the final report later in the year. "
Clive Smith, Cogent’s Director of Nuclear Skills added, “while there are significant differences between the defence and civil sectors, there also remains a high degree of overlap in terms of the nuclear skills required. Here, we seek to provide a benchmark based on government defence nuclear plans developed between 1998 and 2010, and against which new plans may be calibrated. “
Job Contexts
Families of nuclear job roles, known as “Job Contexts”, developed by Cogent for the civil sector, have been used to provide comparability right across the nuclear industry. This is important because of the shared skill pool from which the workforces are drawn.
By extending the Job Contexts developed initially for the civil nuclear sector, it has been possible to make some comparisons between the defence and civil sectors. This is enabling a total UK nuclear picture to be established for the final and fourth report in this Renaissance series - Illuminations.
Steve Bennett added: “the Submarine Enterprise Programme to 2025 will need to develop in the context of a rejuvenated civil sector supporting electricity supply, decommissioning and, crucially, new build. This report provides the intelligence which will allow us to start building a ‘big picture’ on skills demand and supply right across all parts of the nuclear industry and its supply chains.”
The data on which this Assurance report is based were collected from the government and commercial organisations at the heart of delivering on-going submarine operations and planning future projects. The Ministry of Defence was one of the government departments supporting preparation of the report with Director Submarines, Rear Admiral Simon Lister, providing a foreword for the report. While the effects of the policy decisions outlined in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) have yet to become clear, these data form an important baseline from which they can be judged.
Click here to view the report.
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