The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) LC36 Improvement Notice

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has served Improvement Notices on AWE’s LC36 Organisational Capability arrangements.

While improvements have been made, we recognise there is more work to do on our Licence Condition 36 Organisational Capability arrangements and are committed to making the necessary enhancements.

We have a resourced project team in place to ensure that these arrangements are consistently and effectively managed on an ongoing and sustainable basis. These activities have included the development of the Nuclear Baseline, including structure and resource, which has been shared with the Regulator and is now subject to change control and regular review. We have improved our internal governance associated with existing organisational change arrangements and we are developing new management arrangements to further improve our performance.

We have established a dedicated and enduring team which manages organisational capability and baseline change management, and measure and monitor performance against agreed metrics – which are regularly reviewed and reported at the appropriate level. Implementation of the plan and progress against it is regularly shared with the ONR and there is a strong commitment within the Company to carry this activity forward and to assure the effective governance of organisational capability within AWE.

AWE is also working closely with the ONR on a Structured Improvement Programme (SIP) as part of its overall longer-term business aims. These activities also incorporate improvements in operational performance including safety and compliance. The SIP consists of four related projects focusing on safe operations, process, change and stakeholder interactions and is now at the implementation phase. The ONR has already reported evidence of improvements in a number of areas.

AWE’s leadership remain fully focused on maintaining and delivering safe operations at AWE. The improvements that people in AWE have already been making reflect a desire to continuously improve and set the highest possible standards in conventional and nuclear safety.

Further information is available on the ONR website.