Support to Beacon Project to establish Group Planning capability - Call off from Strategy Framework NDA9/0916

Understanding the impact of our strategic interventions on the Mission and OpCo
Lifetime Plans, in isolation or in combination, is an important capability to assist the NDA
Group in strategic planning and prioritisation of how best to spend public money for
maximum value. The NDA Group does not, however, currently have a Group-level
strategic planning capability nor an approach to model ‘what if’ scenarios and evaluate
their mission benefit or disbenefit at group and/or opco levels.
Historically, strategic planning capabilities were held by Parent Body Organisations
(PBO’s) of OpCo’s, with each OpCo having its own planning capability, including
creating and maintaining Lifetime Plans. Today, the OpCo Lifetime Plans remain
separate data sets at different states of maturity (e.g. scope, accuracy, logic, integrity of
data, underpinning assumptions) preventing the simulation of ‘what-if’ interventions at
the Group level.
Our work to date includes:
• External review of others
• Early work to define the potential form and function
• Recon of NDA and opco capabilities
Nuclear Waste Services is also developing an enterprise waste inventory model (with
support from external advisors).
To predict the impact of one or multiple ‘what-if’ scenarios across an aggregated picture
of the estate (above the individual OpCo Lifetime Plans) will require the creation of a
Group mission plan, against which scenarios can be modelled. By creating a Group
planning capability around this Group mission plan, we will be able to model and
consider group portfolio trade-offs and inter-group dependencies and translate our
strategic decisions into delivery through OpCo delivery plans.
To respond to this need and realise the benefits of the OneNDA model and closer
working relationships, the group has confirmed the need to develop a Group planning
capability, which will be the objective of a multi-year Beacon Project commencing in
April 2024.
We aim to design and implement a consistent Group-level approach to planning, driven
by quality financial and operational / activity data. It will consider how all elements of
planning across the group are conducted and how various elements contribute to
meeting the NDA mission.
Beyond the work completed to date, below describes the further development work
required to successfully deliver Year 1 of the Beacon Project and the associated
‘Stretch’ measures/commitments made in the Group Key Target (GKT):
This engagement has two primary objectives:
1. To support the Beacon project working group to identify, design and implement a suite
of management arrangements to establish and maintain the initial group planning
capability and Group Mission Plan upon which it relies.
2. To design and facilitate to conclusion, a scenario modelling event that considers one
scenario (likely comprising several interventions) in order to determine and present in
a report the mission benefits and disbenefits of said scenario in terms of cost and
schedule impacts on the Group mission.