Dave Barker, CEO of Aquila has been invited to join the Southern region steering group which consider ways of making the procurement process within Site Licence Companies and Tier 2 contractors “SME friendly”. The NDA has recently published a three year plan to support greater opportunities for SME’s working in the UK’s decommissioning market. The SME action plan has been launched to meet the Governments requirement for all departments to develop proposals that will help to increase the proportion of public contracts awarded to the SME community The SME steering group meeting held at Harwell set the scene with Neil Foreman, chairman of Centronics a nuclear Instruments SME acting as chairman with NDA, SLC’s and Tier 2’s present along with SME representatives. Following healthy debate and lively discussions the first session resulted in some suggestions for quick wins which have already been implemented. Dave commented:
“This is a great initiative because it winds the industry back 15 years when innovative solutions provided by SME’s could influence the front end design. This innovation can result in significant cost savings, reduction in programme and reduced risk. Some people say you can’t turn back time, well, you can if it makes perfect sense and saves the taxpayer loads of money”
