Last updated 11:23, Friday, 28 November 2008

Churchman Bob Pedde puts people right at the top of his list of values, after all Sellafield’s new top boss has 12,000 people under his command.

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Contract: The signing of the document to usher in a new management team at Sellafield with Bob Pedde signing watched by, from left, Richard Waite, Tom Zarges and Stephen Henwood at the Visitor Centre, Sellafield on Monday

At the same time he is acutely aware of the responsibilities the site’s new parent body organisation, Nuclear Management Partners, has for many thousands more in the community and has already put its money where its mouth is.

The 61-year-old American this week took on one of the biggest and most challenging jobs in British industry – managing director of Sellafield.

It is a different ball game as the site moves from public to private sector in what could prove to be a £22 billion NDA contract over the next 17 years but his shared vision is for Sellafield, the nuclear industry and west Cumbria to prosper together and create something special.

Nuclear Management Partners, flying American, French and British flags, are charged with delivering world-class results in running Sellafield safer and more efficiently than ever before at the same time delivering value for money for the taxpayer.

Clean up and decommissioning is the name of the new game but Bob Pedde maintains that the better the site works then the more chance there is of winning new commercial orders and creating new opportunities to help sustain employment against a background of predicted job losses as clean up accelerates over the next decade.

Pedde, who formerly ran Sellafield’s USA nuclear equivalent, Savannah River, where there were unavoidable redundancies, expects a bright future for Sellafield and the area it support. But he added: “If we don’t do clean up the site, if we don’t make it safer and more efficient than Sellafield will not have a future, it will be a closure site.”

But the family man, who intends to live as close to Sellafield as he can, quickly added: “For now, there’s lots for everybody to do, more work on the plate that we can possibly do with the resources we have.”

Safety and people are paramount.

“Our most important value is safety. If it can’t be done safely we just won’t do it...and one of our foundations is the way we take care of our people. I feel strongly about developing people and I am excited about the opportunities for skills development at Sellafield.

“I am very impressed with the people here already and looking forward to working with them.

“We believe there is great opportunity but there’s also issues that need to be addressed, principally the legacy material, some huge technical issues. That obviously fits our parent company profile well, experience, knowledge, skills.”

Is the wind of change about to blow through Sellafield?

“There will be changes, I think everybody acknowledges that, I hope they are prepared for it. The key is that we’ve a lot of ideas about what to do.”

Will there be a different style of management to what the workforce have been used to?

“Each manager and team has a different style, so yes. Will it be easy to adjust to? We hope so. Will it be focused on the missions we all agree to? The answer is again yes.

We will continue to focus very heavily on safety. It’s the only way we’ll do work, so we will strengthen and build on the site’s good track record. Some things will be the same and some things different.”

To make money will you not have to save more money?

“We are looking for efficiencies, obviously. But the business or the direction we are in is really being able to establish efficiency so we can do more work. There’s lots for everybody to do.

“It’s a matter of doing what’s on the plate smartly, effectively, efficiently, then allowing the extra time individuals would have to be able to move that work forward.

“We will continue the focus on safety and the basic programmes around safety.

“We are very strong on behavioural safety programmes and utilising human performance, in fact 10 or 12 years ago we actually benchmarked Sellafield for the development of several of our programmes, we are anxious to bring that full circle and the lessons learned.”

How happy are you to see the end of the pay dispute and industrial action?

“We are very pleased. We want to start out with a very positive relationship with the unions. We want to build a partnering relationship with them. That would have been very much more difficult if the pay dispute was on-going.

“It obviously sets a much easier stage for us coming in and the ability to open up that partnering before we get to the next negotiations.”

Do you need to repair some bad feeling left over from the dispute?

“I hope we will enjoy that same positive relationship with the unions, we will work very hard to do that, once we have agreed where we want to go we have to determine what’s the best way to get there. We will do that with the unions, we need their input, we can’t be successful without the full support of the workforce.”

Will you be meeting them?

“We already have. We have been graciously allowed to have meetings over the last couple of months just to introduce ourselves. Our leadership team will be very visible in the field, walking around, that’s part of the style. Yes, one of the best ways to communicate is face to face so we will be using a lot of this, also focus groups, round tables, every mechanism we can, including electronic media.”

What is your message to the workforce?

“We believe in getting the partnerships right with the employees, stakeholders, regulators, and the NDA. We have to establish where exactly we’re going and all go together – that’s the key.

“The people side is built on safety, but developing and giving everyone opportunities to participate, to develop, everybody has aspirations of something else to do.

“We’ll spend time with each of those individuals as part of an approach as to where they’d like to go in their careers and what we can do to help them to achieve that.

“We have the advantage of having three companies in our consortium who believe in developing resources. Some of that may mean individuals going to one of those facilities in the United States, in France, or in the UK, seeing how things are done, maybe working there for a week, a month or even a year and then coming back here to Sellafield.”

One of the big concerns is the predicted reduction in jobs through accelerated clean up.

“There is a balancing. Near term, there’s more work on the plate than we can possibly do with the resources we have at the site.

“You have to look at this in the longer term. If we don’t take care of the legacy issues, if we don’t clean up the site, if we don’t make it both safer and more efficient, then the site will not have a future. It will be a closure site.

“Our goal is to take Sellafield to a level so that commercial entities or government want to put additional missions here because it is efficient or the risks have been reduced or eliminated. Our job today is site preparation for the new missions of tomorrow, if we don’t do it there won’t be any new missions.”

How important is commercial production as opposed to clean up?

“It’s part of the total mix. It has to be done well, safely, efficiently. Again, more processing will occur if we can do it efficiently and business case says that’s the right way we can go.”

As the new boss would you like to see more fuel reprocessing, which has always been the bedrock of the site, to sustain employment?

“Right now, that’s a good question and it’s one really for the NDA. They are going to decide from a long-term perspective how much work is done at Sellafield. They are going to make that decision based on how safe and efficient we are.

“So the way we influence the decision makers is to be very good at what we do. Our goal is to be very good at everything we are doing so that more of those missions, more processing will come in the direction of Sellafield.”

A matter then of proving yourselves?

“Exactly.”

In what ways will you be asking the workforce to work more efficiently?

“Our first action will be to actually ask the workforce. The people who know how to do that are at the site right now.

“We need to enable them and help them, we need to eliminate those barriers that will allow them to work more efficiently.”

Nine out of ten of your new directors are new to the site and have no working knowledge of Sellafield, is that a worry?

“It’s not a concern. We have been through two years learning about the site, through a very strenuous induction process.

“The new directors bring extensive experience from the nuclear industry. All have them have run programmes or facilities on other sites either in France or the US.

“They are bringing all of that knowledge and capability. The idea is to mesh that with the existing workforce.”

If anyone comes to you and says there might be a better way of doing something, will you listen?

“Certainly. Absolutely. We’d be foolish not to. That doesn’t mean we are going to do everything that people would recommend, that input is extremely valuable, we’ve got to have that. To be successful we have that.”

You personally ran Savannah River, the nearest thing to Sellafield, and there were some large scale redundancies.

“There were. It was a combination of things, funding levels, some work that was completed.

“ The redundancies would have been significantly higher than that had we not been able to utilise retraining opportunities and multi-skilling.

“We did a lot to mitigate the reductions. There’s a lot of alternatives when you look at how to balance the workforce with the work and the funding.”

Lessons to be taken on board at Sellafield?

“We hope we can bring in all of those lessons, some of them will be applicable to Sellafield, some won’t. We may have to work out new solutions if necessary.”

In the foreseeable future you don’t see any redundancies at Sellafield?

“We need the workforce that’s there focussed on the work that’s to hand and there’s lot of work to hand.”

You say Sellafield is on the verge of something special?

“We are convinced things are going to work.

“The NDA has been great to work with and we are establishing a partnering role.

“We each have different focus, they are focused on strategic directions, we are focused on delivery, but those two have to mesh together.

“We have started very strong to allow us to move in a very steady direction forward rather than zig-zagging.

“I think we will be able to make some differences. The previous leadership team was in a very difficult spot.

“They knew this change was coming so it was very difficult to do some things we will be able to do, I think people expect that change to occur now.”

Would it not be important to retain more of that experience?

“It was not that the experience was deficient in any way.

“Part of the bidding process was that we would put together a full team and we spent a lot of effort with this team to become a unified leadership group.”

Do you intend to be good neighbours to the community?

“Absolutely, that’s a corporate responsibility all three companies feel and has been demonstrated at all the facilities we operate.”

And you are going to be the new public face of Sellafield?

“I will be one of the public faces. You will see a number of our leadership teams. We will be in the community – that’s the way we operate.

“The only thing we will be looking for is where can we contribute our personal resources to the community. Where will it best fit.”

To use an American expression, where does the buck stop and who with?

“Obviously, me.”