MINUTES OF THIRD MEETING OF THE

COGENT SSC NUCLEAR ADVISORY COUNCIL

AT FIRGROVE HOTEL, WARRINGTON

Tuesday 20 September 2005

Present were twenty four members of the Council, their representatives and guests. Dr John Mills chaired the meeting.

1. Introductions and Chief Executive

After introductions, the Chairman introduced Joanna Woolf, the new Chief Executive of Cogent who gave the Council a short overview after her first month at Cogent. As an engineer from the oil industry with BP and chemical industry, latterly with Albion Chemicals, Joanna Woolf described herself as performance oriented. She had set a 100 day plan of action and outlined four key objectives which would apply provisionally across the Cogent sector of five industries. In the Nuclear industry, the National Nuclear Skills Academy had emerged as an early priority, providing a means to manage the development of training provision for the industry. Industry attractiveness was an issue across the whole sector. The strategy for nuclear would be developed during October and John Holton, Strategy Development Director, was engaging with the nuclear industry issues.

Cogent was now working to complete the Sector Skills Agreement development process which must take account of all the issues and the necessary activities in each industry.

Joanna Woolf’s Presentation

2. Minutes of the Meeting of 9 March 2005 and actions arising

The minutes were approved. A paper on the actions arising was accepted.

Mr Keith Parker of NIA was asked to comment on the New Build prospect.

Mr Parker said that Government was very cautious about the issue and still preferred to talk of Keeping the Option Open - NIA (and its members) was encouraged by recent media and commentator attention but was not pressing Government hard on the issue at this time.

3. Nuclear Labour Market Intelligence report 2005

Carol Sinclair, Senior Researcher at Cogent, gave a presentation on the survey and findings of the LMI study which had been conducted in 2005. The Council’s attention was drawn in particular to the conclusions of the draft report. Copies of the draft report were available at the meeting.

For NDA, Dr Ian Hudson Head of Technology and Skills, gave a presentation on their strategy for skills. He said that NDA will review the demands of their programme in the whole national, regional, nuclear and industrial context to assess the prospect. He introduced Reeves Consulting, as contractor to the NDA, who will assist in developing an understanding of the picture of long term skills supply to the NDA programme. Cogent had agreed to work with Reeves on matters of common interest and share the LMI results.

Following the presentations, there was a discussion with the main points being the following :

-   Gender is an issue in the industry because there are or have been barriers to radiation working on some sites. Views were expressed that flexible working arrangements would encourage women into the industry - on some sites there are good proportions of women in several categories.

-   Finding a common language for the industry is a key issue so that all employers can benefit from transferability of people.

-   Radiation Monitors have a rather high age profile : whilst they are often not classified as skilled, the training required is specific and can be delivered fairly quickly. Progression is possible within the role and there are career routes. The NAC advised that there is no particular shortage of Monitors for the SLC operators although the offsite based contractors may have difficulty finding or training Monitors themselves.

-   Project Managers are said to be in short supply, however this is partly because the definition of a Project Manager has changed significantly in the recent past (with NDA methodology).

-   The New Build programme demand for skills has not yet been studied - knowledge is a key issue here as well.

-   Knowledge is also an important aspect of many roles in the industry - eg the AWE programme. Although the number of specialist engineers and scientists with essential key knowledge is fairly small, this aspect of the workforce also needs to be managed, as well as skills, in development and training programmes.

The Chairman summarised, saying that the Council seemed pleased with the Cogent report so far but that the industry, in particular the NDA programme, needs a forward look.

4. National Occupational Standards in the Nuclear industry

Peter Crowther of Cogent’s Products and Services group, gave a presentation on the work done by Cogent with the industry during 2005.

Safety Case Production : the NOS were in final draft and would be issued soon for use by the industry. Cogent believes that the NOS would give the industry a useful tool for assessment and development of Safety Case specialists which are clearly in short supply in the industry. NVQs would not be developed at this stage.

Radiation Protection: the industry is committed to developing the assessment criteria which will provide the basis for NVQs for this function, to replace the previous NVQs which expired but have been extended to June 2006.

Decommissioning : the NOS would be developed into an NVQ level 3 in Nuclear Decommissioning Operations and a level 2 in Nuclear Decommissioning.

A project to assess the need for a Foundation Degree in the sector was in planning for 2006. Cogent had participated in a discussion with FE colleges who were already working to produce and apply a Foundation Degree in Nuclear Decommissioning. Foundation Degrees are intended by Government to provide career progression for process workers, craftsmen and technicians and will replace HNC and HND in future in England and Wales.

In discussion, there was a variety of reaction to this proposal. Many felt that craftsmen would prefer to follow vocational training routes. For instance, one employer was considering offering SEMTA NVQs in Engineering Management and Leadership. On the whole, the Council felt that Foundation Degrees were being pushed by the FE community and that the demand was not there from the industry.

Cogent agreed to consider further and review the situation before proceeding.                                                                                 Action: Cogent

5. National Nuclear Skills Academy

John Holton, Strategy Development Director at Cogent gave a presentation to the Council on the NNSA project. The essential features of the NNSA to be successful are employer commitment, national cover and sustainability of the business. An Expression of Interest had been made to the DfES at the beginning of September for National Skills Academy status and successful bids would be announced at end October.

In discussion,

-   the idea of passports for the industry was supported. This would allow previous recorded training or assessment to be credited by employers so that retraining will not always be needed, eg for site induction.

-    The North West focus of the NNSA gave some cause for concern to those parts of the industry in the South.

-    Cogent confirmed its expectation that the project will proceed even if not successful in the DfES competition in 2005.

-    There was a discussion about the validity of Project Management qualifications - one member had APM membership which was not accepted. The NNSA might develop or import a Project Management qualification. It was suggested that the work of NERSP should be considered and also of the oil & gas industry which was rather mature in this area.

6. EnergyForesight

Mr Clive Smith as consultant with the EnergyForesight project, gave a short presentation on their work to provide material for the new applied science curriculum in schools for GCSE. There was a shortfall of funding for the implementation of this scheme, which had been very successful at pilot stage in raising interest in science at A level. The project was asking the industry to contribute £1.5M in addition to support from RDAs and the NDA.

7. Sector Skills Agreement for Nuclear

John Holton of Cogent gave an update on the SSA. The LMI report would satisfy the need for demand data and Cogent would now look at the training provision for the industry before analysing what gaps exist. Then Cogent will seek confirmation from the employers of those gaps

eg Is Project Management the major issue? whether the need is for Foundation Degrees or for NVQs? A forum will be needed for those discussions.

Cogent will then move on to develop two or three projects on these topics.

The sequence would be:

-    November: to meet employers and discuss conclusions: national and with regional aspects, possibly segmented

-    SSA report delivered in Q1 2006.

This was a crucial process for Cogent, out of which will develop the process and projects for the industry in future.

Mr Keith Parker of NIA offered their participation in the process. It was agreed that Tier 2 & 3 contractors should be explicitly involved.

Reconciling the Cogent commitments on strategy development, Joanna Woolf said that the nuclear strategy development from LMI and other sources would be drafted in October for employers to review and confirmed later when the SSA is completed. The problems and issues in the industry were now understood rather better and it was time to move to test the conclusions.

8. AOB

-   Dr John Mills announced that he would step down as Chairman at year end, ahead of retirement. He asked the Secretary to explain the succession situation. The Secretary said that he felt there were alternatives open to the Council:

-   To elect a new Chairman in an open process or

-   To go back to the Electoral result of 2004 and ask the next popular candidate to take the role of Chairman.

Members agreed to ask Mr David Bonser, a Director of BNFL, to take the role of Chairman in 2006 on the strength of his place in the previous election.                                                                                           Action: The Secretary

J R Haddon

Secretary to the NAC