Link to the study - European Parliament - Europa

Policy Department D: Budgetary Affairs
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URS, AREVA and AMEC. But still the performance did not meet the planned level (NAO 2012). In total,
only 3 of 14 projects are on or ahead of schedule (House of Commons 2013).
The Sellafield Plan 2011 is, according to House of Commons Office, more credible than the 2007 plan,
but it is not clear yet whether it is 'sufficiently robust' (House of Commons 2013). Still, since the 2007
plan was rejected by NDA as 'undeliverable' (NAO 2012), improvements in the project management
are visible. The new Parent Body Organisation Nuclear Management Partners firstly carried out an
assessment of all processes across Sellafield against industry best practice in order to identify areas
where changes in the management are needed (NDA 2011b). The 2011 plan identifies the key plants
and projects (NDA 2011b), but uncertainties in the Sellafield plan remain. NDA revised the plan, but
had no robust benchmarks to make judgments on proposed levels of performance in order to
accelerate the process (NAO 2012). The NDA could also not determine whether critical paths for
completing programmes and projects were correctly identified, as the Sellafield plan did not clearly
show dependencies between them (HM Treasury 2013). The NDA is trying to create a benchmarking
tool to be rolled out in Sellafield (NAO 2012).
The Sellafield plan is supported by other documents like e.g. the NDA strategy papers and Business
Plans (see Figure 18). The NDA needs to update its decommissioning strategy every five years. In 2010
a public consultation about the new draft strategy was undertaken. According to the Energy Act
2004, the strategy has to be approved by the Secretary of State jointly with the Scottish Ministers. The
first such strategy was produced in 2006 and revised in 2011 (NDA 2011c). The NDA Business plan sets
out the near term objectives for a three year period.
Figure 18: Relationship between several important documents
Source: (NDA 2011a)
According to the National Audit Office NDA and Sellafield Ltd suffer gaps in information and
weakness in communication between each other. NDA did not collect enough robust and timely
information on projects from Sellafield Ltd until 2011. Because of this they were unable to intervene
in time (NAO 2012). The National Audit Office recommended an accurate and timely reporting and
monitoring to be able to identify emerging issues early on NAO 2012.
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