Team Coaching Helps LLWR Collaboration Save Years – and Millions.

LLW Repository Ltd (LLWR) provide a range of waste management services to the UK nuclear sector including neighbours Sellafield and the wider nuclear estate.

Commencing in 2013, the legacy Plutonium Contaminated Materials (PCM) programme was tasked with decommissioning five ‘magazines’ – concrete bunker-like structures which were originally constructed during World War II to store munitions when the site was used as a Royal Ordnance factory.

Plutonium Contaminated Materials (PCM) from operations at the Sellafield site were later stored in the magazines before purpose-built and safer storage facilities were commissioned at Sellafield.

The £100million programme to decommission the five magazines on the LLWR Site was launched in 2013 and originally expected to take 10 years, but the programme was completed with four years ahead of schedule and with a saving to the taxpayer of over £20million.

Lead contractor NSG Environmental Ltd (NSG) headed-up a wider team that included Nuvia, PC Richardson, Atkins, Hertel and Studsvik along with internal LLWR personnel.

However, the programme didn’t get off to the best start as Gareth Wilson, NSG Project Manager, acknowledges: “The full-time relationship got off to a rocky start and initial progress was slow.”

When a new advanced programme schedule was introduced with a target of saving four years and potentially millions from the original budget, team performance was also going to have to step up a gear.