Interview: how Sellafield is driving towards change around diversity and inclusion 

Sellafield Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). It is responsible for the safe operation and clean-up of the Sellafield site in Cumbria, England which, with over 1,300 buildings, including over 200 nuclear facilities, ranks as one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world. 

In response, the number one priority is to reduce that hazard. That includes a £2.5bn annual budget and 11,000 strong workforce, joined by more than 40,000 people from a diverse supply chain. A key part of this is building the new assets that will continue to manage waste and store it safely for decades to come, which is being undertaken by our PPP. 

The partnership brings together KBR, Jacobs, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Altrad Babcock and Sellafield Ltd, as one team. The PPP model is changing the way projects are delivered at Sellafield, creating a lasting legacy through long-term partnerships.  

As noted by the National Audit Office in 2012, our previous approach to complex project delivery had fallen short. PPP builds on learnings from the delivery of legacy projects executed through more traditional models. Driven by short-term thinking, we were failing to fully learn and collaborate across projects. The PPP enterprise model, consistent with Project 13 and the Construction Playbook, was created to overcome these issues. 

Much of our work is unique and what is different about us is the complexity of not only each project but the nature of the site itself. It is not a question of taking one template and rolling it out, as many of the traditional demolition and construction techniques are not possible in our environment. We are therefore having to come up with creative solutions each time, which means developing new ways of working. PPP was created to help us meet that challenge. 

As Head of Culture, Engagement and Sustainability, my job is to help enable the five PPP partners to perform as one team. This broadly means collaboratively shaping performance, engaging stakeholders and setting the ambition, whilst identifying areas of opportunity to leverage the wider value of PPP for Sellafield.

I also have sustainability in my remit as I promote the social impact of PPP’s work for the local community. As it stands, 60 percent of our staff are from Cumbria or Warrington, with 95 percent directly employed by PPP – our partners can invest in their people and communities with confidence under the 20-year model time frame. 

The task is all about making the five companies work as one. So, for each project, we set up aligned delivery teams – what we call ‘rainbow teams’ – where you have people from different companies coming together. We need these to be high-performing and when we looked at the ingredients needed to deliver high performance, we identified encouraging diversity and inclusion across the consortium as fundamental to achieving success.  

Ensuring inclusivity across our teams is a vital factor as we push ourselves to come up with new ways of doing things, levels of collaboration and ideas. To get five companies to work cohesively and productively, ensuring the correct behaviours are in place from the start is key. 

As identified through our partners, the NCD’s accreditation is recognised as the UK’s national equality standard, providing organisations with a bespoke approach to embedding diversity and inclusion into everything they do. Our workforce of around 1,400 people is largely technical so a challenge was to work with the NCD in a way that could impact all of our staff and be relevant to their daily work and priorities as well as the wider PPP benefits. After some review with our partners, we agreed the NCfD approach was a good fit for us. 

The accreditation process took a year and first involved a survey showing the baseline of where we were, where we were doing okay and where we needed to improve. The NCD then helped us create a way of working and a way of approaching diversity and inclusion that was tailored specifically to our workforce. 

One specific example that came out of the survey was that respondents felt we were not very good at challenging inappropriate behaviour. So, if somebody said the wrong thing, people would not necessarily do anything about it because they were not sure what to do, or if they should do anything at all.  

Of course, if it had been a traditional safety issue, our people would have felt very comfortable calling it out because safety is engrained in a desire to help and pride in keeping each other safe. The engraining of inclusion is also important to keep each other safe and valued. 

After the survey, we created an action plan comprising a raft of education, training and awareness-raising initiatives. One was a programme on how to challenge inappropriate behaviour safely and respectfully, so employees felt confident doing so. A lot of this was about helping staff with the language, so they could say and do what they already felt was right. 

There is still a way to go, but we have made a really good start. PPP is made up of people with a huge range of backgrounds, specialisms and experiences. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion is therefore about ensuring our staff feel they can bring their whole self to work and celebrate their identity with confidence. We know that, with confidence, they will perform to their best, knowing they are valued and respected.  

The accreditation was a first step, and a first for the nuclear industry, but there is more we need to do and are doing. It is all about continuous improvement, and it is key for us now to build on what we have started. A truly collaborative culture must be founded on inclusive behaviours. We are therefore creating a culture where every team member can thrive – one that will help us attract the diverse talent we need for the future.