Strategic errors made at the Nuclear AMRC and the University of Sheffield
Introduction
As with my previous articles [1][2], I am not following rigorous academic standards by providing appropriate references. Everything I am writing is coming from inside my head after over 8 years of working closely with the nuclear industry as a member of staff at the Nuclear AMRC . It is very high level, makes sweeping statements and is, to all intents and purposes, a ‘brain dump’.
One note; although I no longer work at Nuclear AMRC, I am going to say “our” and “we” throughout this article as it makes for easier reading.
Weakening the core
Some time in 2016, Cammell Laird were in the throes of becoming Tier 1 members of Nuclear AMRC (see the next section for an explanation of membership) but they did not want to pay ￡200,000 p.a. cash for 3 years. Their suggestion was that they provide the use of a facility on their site at Birkenhead. They would also employ a Research Engineer to be seconded full time to the Nuclear AMRC’s Rotherham facility. The in-kind value of the premises was deemed to be ￡130K p.a. with the Research Engineer value being ￡70K p.a.
So, now Nuclear AMRC had to ask the question “what are we going to do with these facilities?”.
Answer: “I know what we’ll do, let’s create a Modules Group”.
Is it just me that thinks this a back-to-front way of running a business? (Although there was a certain degree of logic to this. Modern day ship construction is undertaken by bolting modules together and is the premise behind Small Modular Reactors so there was a potentially justifiable 'industry pull'.)
The result was that one of our experienced Technical Leads relocated to the wrong side of the Pennines and a number of Research Engineers were recruited into the Birkenhead Modules Group using HVMC funds. For the three years of Cammell Laird’s Tier 1 membership there was quite a churn of Research Engineers at the Birkenhead facility and eventually the Technical Lead also left the Nuclear AMRC. Cammell Laird did not renew their membership at the end of the three years and so new premises had to be found. The very small team of two Research Engineers moved to a rented office at Birchwood and now one of those has left and not been replaced. The Modules Group has brought in very little income in 7 years and it is doubtful how much impact it has made in the nuclear sector. Surely MBA courses teach you that remote sites without the correct support structure are always prone to failure?
Now we move to Derby. Otherwise known as ‘Birkenhead on steroids’.
Probably around 2019, D2N2 - a joint Local Enterprise Partnership between Derby and Nottingham - contacted Nuclear AMRC. My understanding is that the conversation went something like this:
“Hi Nuclear AMRC. We’re going to build a new technology development zone at Infinity Park in Derby. We’d like you to be a keystone tenant. Tell you what, if we put up a building, can you rent it from us for 10 years? At the end of the 10 years we’ll give the building to you.” (I don’t know if this was the final agreement, but I am well informed that it was the opening gambit).
So now the same process is repeated. “What can we do with those facilities? I know, we’ll create a Controls and Instrumentation Group”.
Where did that idea come from? While there was some degree of logic in creating a Modules Group at Cammell Laird, where was the evidence that the nuclear manufacturing sector was being detrimentally impacted by a lack of technical development in how nuclear power stations were being controlled? Controls and instrumentation are a significant and safety-critical element of a nuclear reactor, but it is a very mature area and Catapult Centres do not operate in this area (as explained later in this article).
In the past 5 years a significant investment of HVMC funds has been made into personnel and equipment costs at the Derby facility. Again, there has been very high staff turnover and the vast majority of projects have been funded from the HVMC grant, not from commercial or collaborative sources - confirming what everyone else knew at the time, there is no ‘industry pull’ for these technologies.
The unnecessary distractions of Birkenhead, Derby and the Supply Chain[1], signed off by Nuclear AMRC and UoS senior management reduced the funding of the Rotherham facility (the only one generating income) and significantly weakened the organisation as a whole.
Maybe one day this could provide a salutary case study for a Business School?
Membership of the Nuclear AMRC
According to the Nuclear AMRC website (https://namrc.co.uk/members/ ) there are 14 Tier 1 member companies and 29 Tier 2 members. Membership is a three year commitment. Tier 1 members put ￡200K p.a. into the pot; Tier 2 members each contribute ￡30K p.a to the pot. Tier 1 members have a seat on the Research Board and all the Tier 2 members elect a single person to represent them on the Research Board. The Research Board pot of money is ring-fenced for commissioning projects to be undertaken by the Nuclear AMRC research staff using Nuclear ARMC equipment and meets every three months to govern those projects.
So, that’s ￡3.67M annual income for the Nuclear AMRC where they can do real industry-relevant research. The taxpayer inside me thinks that’s a great idea.
Except very few of the members are cash-paying.
Many of them are ‘in-kind’ members, and only a small number of those actually follow through on delivering any in-kind contribution.
In my time at the Nuclear AMRC we have had full benefit from in-kind cutting tool suppliers insofar as they provided cutting tools up to the value of their membership. These tools were used by us on HVMC funded projects and I expect that similar benefit may have been gained from welding consumable members. I am unaware of the realisation of any other in-kind benefits with the exception of:
But there are two other issues with the Research Board:
It is the Research Board members who get to vote on project proposals presented by the Nuclear AMRC research teams. However the sticking point is that all outputs from Research Board funded projects are shared equally with all the members. Remember, all but one of the people round the table are Tier 1 members, some of those members are industrial competitors and are loath to vote for projects which could produce tangible results that may provide a competitive advantage to other Board members.
Consequently, in the Machining Technologies Group, where I was based, we effectively stopped putting forward project suggestions which involved using the machining capability in our Rotherham facility because they were never approved. We gave up proposing really ambitious practical machining projects and scaled back to anodyne report-based desktop projects because they stood a chance of being approved.
Secondly, questions do have to be asked as to the exact people representing each of the member companies on the Research Board. It certainly feels as though their primary role is to protect their employer and have a good lunch once every three months rather than understanding their place in extending the nuclear manufacturing capability of UK industry.
The high number of in-kind members was challenged in a recent review by HVMC and steps are now being taken to try and redress the situation as and when each member’s membership comes up for review at the end of three years. But it is quite easy to see why this situation persisted for so long; having these organisations’ logos on the Nuclear AMRC website is a win-win:
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(As an aside, another factor in the dysfunction in the Research Board is the lack of proper commitment to nuclear new build by successive UK governments [2]).
Educating UK industry
I am now going to bite the hand that (should have) fed me.
The large scale UK manufacturing sector needs to get its head round the funding of manufacturing research. I am sick to death of the number of occasions when someone has come to us with a Statement of Requirements, we (or, more to the point, I) have expended considerable time and effort responding with a costed Statement of Work, to get the Yorkshireman’s plaintive cry of, “‘ow much?!!”.
Number 1. The UK taxpayer over the years has massively subsidised the creation of the Nuclear AMRC, its incredible machinery (e.g. a lathe that can turn a workpiece that is over 3m diameter and weigh up to 100 tonnes, a laser welding machine in the “Mr Bond, I expect you to die” level of power) together with fantastic research engineers and advanced machine operators. Nobody, but nobody, in the commercial sector would have created such a facility with this level of sophisticated equipment and people. There isn’t even anything comparable in the mighty United States of America [2].
Number 2. Why are you saying it is expensive? If a successful project costing ￡0.5M recoups its costs in six months then the project is cheap. If it costs ￡100K but takes seven years to pay back then the project is expensive. Basically, make sure your Statements of Requirements are justified by a valid business case. You should know what the various elements of your business are costing, do a Pareto analysis and pick the low hanging fruit. If you don’t know your cost breakdown, then give us, or a more conventional management consultancy, an initial order to come into your facility and find these values out for you.
Are Universities the correct organisations to run Catapult Centres?
To answer this question I need to explain the landscape in which Catapult Centres sit and this means you need to understand the concept of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) and their siblings, Manufacturability Readiness Levels (MRLs).
TRLs were created by NASA as part of the moon landing program to describe the maturity of a specific technology. There are 9 levels going from Level 1, blue sky thinking, to Level 9, fully tested and deployed. MRLs follow a similar structure but are focussing on the maturing of a manufacturing process with a very good description being:
MRLs are quantitative measures used to assess the maturity of a given technology, component or? system from a manufacturing perspective [3]
In respect of technologies and manufacturing systems, academia tends to operate in Levels 1-3, commercial industry operates in Levels 7-9. As a country, the UK is truly World Class in generating IP in Technology/Manufacturing Readiness Levels 1-3. However we fail badly when those technologies are commercially exploited at Levels 7-9, often losing them to another country when they try to traverse the ‘valley of death’ that is Levels 4-6.
Overcoming the valley of death is the overarching purpose of the HVMCs and is therefore the landscape where HVMC Centres sit. But most of them, the Nuclear ARMC included, are owned and run by universities.
Is this right?
In the case of the Nuclear AMRC I would argue it is not, for three reasons:
So why are so many HVMC Centres owned by universities? Five of the seven were already in existence before the HVMC was formed, each of these was owned by a university and were called Technology Innovation Centres (TICs). Each TIC was funded differently. In the case of the UoS the capital funding had come from the Regional Development Agency and the European Union. The five university-owned TICs were then combined with the Centre for Process Innovation and the Manufacturing Technology Centre, given Innovate UK funding, and the HVMC was born.
But are there any benefits for universities?
Until recently one tangible benefit was that the value of the research could be included in the university’s research funding figures and so boost their position on the relevant league tables which then has a positive impact on the funding they receive from UKG.
A less tangible benefit is that logically there should be a flow of the university’s TRL 1-3 research towards their HVMC Centre. However my experience over 8 years is that this is virtually non-existent. During my last 3 years I tried to set up a mechanism to create a communication channel between the Nuclear AMRC, AMRC and UoS Engineering Department and it was like pulling teeth getting engagement from the UoS. The Rotherham facility could have been in Timbuktu and it wouldn’t have been detrimental to the level of technology transfer between the Nuclear ARMC and the UoS, because frankly, there is very little.
Conclusion
I’m sorry, but I don’t know the solution. The sums of money and the necessary legal actions that need taking are well beyond my experience and (former) pay grade. What I do know is that action needs to be taken FAST.
The summer holidays have started. Eight years of managing research projects has shown me it takes three times as long to get anything done over the coming 6 weeks. But be assured, the nuclear sector vultures are already circling and actively approaching the Nuclear AMRC’s skilled research staff. If I was a young engineer with family responsibilities and I had a solid job offer in one hand and UoS/UKG procrastination in the other hand, I know which choice I would be forced to take for the sake of my dependents, because any remaining sense of loyalty has been completely smashed by the UoS handling of the current redundancy situation.
The technical teams at the Nuclear AMRC are a unique mix of highly specialised engineers. At a recent Project Manager training session I asked our non-engineer externally-recruited project managers what was different at Nuclear AMRC compared to their previous employers. They all said that our projects had a frightening number of staff from across the facility who were single points of failure because of their technical specialism. In the last few years there have been many struggles to deliver some projects because of a noticeable increase in the churn rate of our technical specialists. (Or, to be more accurate, the increase in churn rate only seemed to be noticeable to the technical delivery teams, not to the senior leadership of the Nuclear AMRC or UoS. But then if you don’t have exit interviews[1], what do you expect?)
Without rapid intervention from UKG, all the bright shiny equipment in the Nuclear AMRC’s Rotherham facility will just be sitting there gathering dust. And it won’t be quick and easy to get them back on line. There needs to be rapid intervention to save Nuclear AMRC’s Rotherham facility and then a proper reassessment by UKG of how ‘valley of death’ research is funded by the taxpayer and can then help grow our economy.
Footnotes
Mine Manager, Barrow Upon Soar Gypsum mine.
4 个月Yet another enlightening installment David. Should anyone doubt your description of the machinery in that building, they would do well to do a spot of research. There are indeed some mighty machines in that building, let's hope they remain in use.