Rolls-Royce is my third placement on the scheme and during this time I am working in a team to develop new concepts and products within the civil nuclear sector. The team is based in Warrington and Derby and was set up a little over a year ago and has been great to meet and learn from people who have worked in a variety of different companies and locations.

This placement hasn’t been anything like my previous placements as it has not only incorporated both project management and physics but has also challenged my ability to learn completely new skills and techniques to do very high level analysis. This can be even more challenging than detailed analysis because at the very start there are no details, you have to find them all out yourself!

As part of my small/medium enterprise portion of footprints during my third placement I have been working with a lady that is very knowledgeable when it comes to starting and running businesses. She has been involved with the Sustainable Restaurant Association launch at the beginning of March 2010 and is keen to find ways to improve sustainability in her restaurant and surrounding community.

My recent work involved researching other companies that are currently running similar schemes, for example in America they have a Green Restaurant Certificate and many British restaurants are becoming more aware of the importance of ethical food and services. So next time you are in a restaurant look out for things like the Marine Stewardship Council, Carbon Trust Standard and soon to be Sustainable Restaurant Association membership!

DZ1

It all started back in September with the Nucleargraduates Cohort 3 ‘development training zone 1’ in a walkers hostel at Wast Water Lake. This was a busy couple of weeks where a company called Zense gave us a range of training including an overview of the industry, self awareness exercises, team building activities  planning goals for our secondments and many other things. Wast Water is a fairly remote location, with no phone or TV signal so this gave the 7 members of our cohort the perfect chance to really get to know each other, as well as the area. We had only previously met during one welcome weekend (apart from at assessment centres in some cases) which was also the first time in Cumbria for most of us.

Welcome Weekend- Go Ape

For my first 6 months I worked in an off site Sellafield Ltd design office in a project team that is designing and procuring equipment to decommission one of Sellafield’s legacy buildings. As my first degree is in Electrical Engineering I was placed in the control electrical and instrumentation (CE&I) team. I was surprised to learn the amount of new construction that goes into the decommissioning of legacy facilities. When you think of decommissioning you think about taking things apart and knocking them down. In reality, before this can take place, new equipment and infrastructure needs to be produced that can safely retrieve and store the radioactive waste contained within the building and this can be an extremely complex and challenging process.

I undertook a wide range of general CE&I work during the placement including; planning cable routes and interfaces; checking electrical drawings of equipment; and investigating the best new components for refurbishing old equipment that is being reused for decommissioning operations. I learned a great deal from the many experienced CE&I engineers who I carried out this work with. I also learned about the type of challenges that face multidisciplinary teams. The best solution to a given problem from a CE&I perspective is rarely the best for another discipline and therefore adequate compromises must be found. An example of this was that easiest cable route and best cableguration would often place an unacceptable load on the building from a civil structural and architectural (CS&A) perspective.

As well as this I was responsible for developing a strategy for ensuring that new equipment conforms to all relevant European directives and can therefore be CE marked. This involved talking to engineers from all backgrounds, working on all parts of the project. This was a great way to learn what was going on across the project and gave me the chance to become the resident ‘expert’ on CE marking. This meant I could help the people out who I had been relying on to help me with other work, when they had questions to do with CE marking.

The last couple of months I have been working in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) strategy team. This has been a very different type of work to the previous design office type work. It has given me a much greater understanding of what is going on across all the NDA sites and projects and has shown me how the work I was involved in for Sellafield fits into the wider decommissioning mission.

For my footprints work I have been acting as a science technology engineering and maths (STEM) ambassador in local schools. This work has included helping out with after school science clubs at primary schools. Some of the activities the children carried out here included making bridges, wind up toys and kites. I went in to some science lessons to help explain where the principles children were learning about were used in the real world and tell them about what it is like to work in science and engineering. This included answering a wide range of questions about electricity, from where it come from to how fast it travels. I helped with several day long events run by Cumbria STEM centre. One of these involved telling sixth formers about studying engineering at University another involved teaching school children about programming robots. A couple of times I was helped out by a robot called Oscar, who was built to speak to children at such events. Oscar is unfortunately sometimes distracted by attractive water machines, and asked me to build him a girlfriend in front of a couple of schools.

Oscar

Next up for me is 8 months focused on Defence, when I am due to be moving between the MOD and Rolls Royce in Barrow in Furness and Caithness respectively. It is exciting to be moving on to new things but also a bit sad, as we are all fairly settled in a couple of rented houses between all of our cohort, and we will all be spread across the country in a few weeks. Oh well bring on Training zone 2, in an as yet unknown (possibly) top secret location!

The election is called and excitement is in the air. The prospect of having little ‘real’ work to do and instead having to write countless briefings for every possible election scenario (except a Tory/Lib Dem coalition it seems), does little to dampen election fever.

6 May, 09:30

6 May 20:15

7 May 10:00

7 May 12:00

7 May 16:00

11 May 12:00

11 May 19:00

12 May 

14 May 10:30

New Prime Minister David Cameron visits DECC to give a rousing speech and tell us what an important job we’re doing. Classic line – “Someone pointed out when you mix blue with yellow – you get green.”

Since being based in Cumbria I and three other Nucleargraduates have taken on a triathlon which is a good excuse to do mountain walking, cycle round the lakes and join a running club and trust me there is not a better place to do it! One of our recent feats has been carrying a 20kg kettlebell up Scafell Mountain and doing a kettlebell class which we are calling Extreme Cumbrian Kettlebells….I think it will catch on!

I’ll use this post to talk about the development zone which we had in a remote Youth Hostel in Wasdale, Cumbria. The views of Wast Water lake were spectacular with surrounding mountains and miles of green forrest and fields to wake up to every morning.

The development zones are organised and run by Roy Miller on behalf of a specialist training company called Zense. The goal is to learn about Nucleargraduates and the Nuclear Industry from a technical and commercial perspective, to bond with the other graduates and to develop important skills and strategies which will help us perform better when entering our working environment.

The training which Zense delivers is truly unique with emphasis placed on participation, open discussion and tailoring a flexible, bespoke package to reflect the personal needs of each individual. An example of this was an activity where the engineers delivered an ‘idiots technical guide to the Nuclear Industry’ and the business or politically motivated graduates delivered an ‘idiots commercial guide to the Nuclear Industry’. From this activity we: learned how to communicate - tailoring a presentation towards an audience who isn’t necessarily confident with the presentation topic; learned how to work together - we can use the skills of each other to help overcome barriers in knowledge; learned more about the industry - the information was fairly new to the people presenting so we were all conscious of areas our audience may find difficult understanding and so we used drawings to simplify things - I found this form of learning easier to absorb information.

The training also included visits to Sellafield and Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station. These were two completely different sites since Sellafield is still running and Chapelcross is midway through decommissioning. This was an excellent opportunity to experience the environment in which we would potentially work, compare sites and also witness the change in the Nuclear Industry.

In the background of all this we were assigned group tasks and asked to present our conclusions to the NDA. With the restrictions of not having readily available internet and communication we had to plan our time well to utilise visits and resources to gather information we could use in our conclusions. This was an opportunity to test our teamwork as the restrictive timescale and location placed extra pressure on relationships between Nucleargraduates but I’m pleased to say we all got on great and reflecting on the feedback we can all give ourselves a pat on the back.

Reflecting on why I enjoyed the development zone…well it would have been easy for Roy to talk at the group, hammering information like facts, figures and diagrams. Instead, right from the start exercises were delivered on a, ’try it your way —> did it go well —> here’s ways to help you’, basis. This style of learning was very effective and ultimately will make us more valuable to our employers as individuals, Ambassadors of the Nuclear Industry and Ambassadors for Change.

Development Zone Highlights: Outdoor group activities which were a great laugh but also had a serious side where performance was related to communication and teamwork.

Development Zone Bad Time: There was an extremely limited, non varying menu and everything appeared to have one common ingredient….if I see one more black pudding there will be hell!