DOE OSTI2017
In the UK, nuclear skills and qualifications have been the subject of several studies in higher levels of Government, including one by UK Cabinet Office. The newly formed UK Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG) has been tasked with addressing the current skills and people gaps for the UK nuclear industry. The NSSG is working with several key organisations in the UK: The National Skills Academy for Nuclear, (NSAN), which covers skills interventions, training and workforce development and experience, and the newly forming National College for Nuclear (NCfN) which will become a nuclear qualifications awarding body, regulating educational qualifications and curriculum in the nuclear sector. The NSSG has published its own UK Nuclear Skills Strategy in December 2016, aligned to the UK Cabinet Office study. It is the intent that, in the near future, nuclear qualifications and experience will be directly transferable across different organisations and nuclear sites in the UK, enabling the maintenance of high standards of behaviours and improved mobility throughout the sector. The UK needs to maintain and grow a diverse workforce and nuclear Suitably Qualified and Experienced Personnel (SQEP) people. The 2015 UK Nuclear Labour Market Intelligence (LMI) report, produced by Cogent for the Nuclear Energy Skills Alliance (NESA), concluded that the total nuclear workforce demand for the UK Nuclear Civil and Defence sector needed to grow by 33,000 people in the next five years, which includes replacement and expansion demand. This involved all disciplines and grades, with for example, higher level skilled workers needing to increase by 2200 FTEs every year. The main discipline pinch points were in, for example, Mechanical; Electrical; Project Management; Safety Case Specialists; Commissioning Engineers. Of the overall workforce, around 10% is over 60 years old and around 38% is over 50 years old. Jacobs in the UK is widely involved in many aspects of skills and competence development, with active involvement in local and national training programmes, and driving new methodologies to accelerate our staff's journey to nuclear competence. As well as looking at the immediate future, there is a risk in the UK that, over the 120-year plus clean-up mission, there won't be enough people with the right skills. Jacobs is developing sustainable solutions to this in our skills and development strategy for the nuclear sector. Jacobs has developed a variety of approaches to help us maintain and grow our diverse workforce and nuclear 'SQEP' people. This includes: - Identifying and developing our employees' technical and personal skills and capabilities, particularly the requirements of our millennials in both technical and social aspects of their working lives. - Identifying and planning for our future skills needs to meet our projected business requirements. - Our programme to transfer skilled employees from other sectors into the nuclear industry. - Our extensive school student placement scheme, aligned to the UK's 'Industrial Cadet' scheme, which has helped to bring school-aged students into Jacobs on workplace experience. - Our collaboration with our customers to develop UK national level Trailblazer Apprentice programmes. - Our involvement at a UK national level in the work of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear (NSAN), the Nuclear Energy Skills Alliance (NESA) High Level Skills Committee and the newly forming UK National College for Nuclear (NCfN). - Our work to ensure diversity is valued in our workplace, for example in our involvement in 'Women in Nuclear'. (authors)
96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗