Magnox Electric Ltd

 Magnox North Sponsors Daily Post Community Award

Magnox North is proud to support the local community in North West Wales and is pleased to be associated with the Daily Post Community Award.

Magnox North, which is managed by EnergySolutions, is responsible for all of the activities at:
Wylfa Site – including electricity generation and the work being done in preparation for the decommissioning phase of the site’s life-cycle.
Maentwrog – the hydro electric station in Snowdonia which recently celebrated 80 years of generating electricity
Trawsfynydd – where world leading work on decommissioning and cleaning-up the site’s two former nuclear reactors – and associated plant - is being carried out.

Magnox North sees the sustainability of the environment and of local communities as being key to its role in supporting the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to safely deliver the work at these sites.

Magnox North has made a commitment to being a low environment impact organisation. The last few years has seen us move from merely complying with regulatory requirements to a having a fundamental consideration of all environmental, social and ethical impacts and putting the environment at the heart of the business.

Greg Evans, the Wylfa Site Director, said: ”Magnox North and our workforce are absolutely committed to supporting the communities in which it operates. Many people at our sites give their time to support local organisations – whether acting as school governors, community and county councillors, coaches of football teams and rugby teams, leaders of youth clubs.“

Phil Sprague, Trawsfynydd Site Director, said: “Around 60% of Magnox North’s work is placed with supply chain, including contractual arrangements to encourage recruitment of local expertise. An innovative partnership of contractors at Trawsfynydd site has resulted in up to 70% of contractors working on the site coming from the local area.”

Magnox North also supports the development of young people in the area. The organisation does a lot of work with local schools – supporting the teaching of science and technology concepts, essential to the future of the nuclear industry in the region. Apprentices are taken on at both Wylfa and Trawsfynydd and over the Summer 40 young people got the opportunity for work experience working alongside Magnox North staff to get a better understanding of the career opportunities within the wider nuclear industry. For more information about the 2008 Achievement Wales Award click here

Register now for NDA supply chain workshops

Dates are being finalised for the NDA’s supply chain strategy workshops and interested parties must register now to secure a place.

The NDA is holding a series of workshops across the country to take a temperature check on the current position and help shape its vision for developing the decommissioning supply chain.

Contractors, key regional players, trade associations and nuclear industry bodies will be asked to comment on a series of planned actions and determine priority levels for the following aspirations:

· open and timely communications at all levels;

· making it cheaper and easier to enter the NDA portfolio supply chain;

· reducing the cost of trading with the supply chain;

· improving the consistency of processes and applications;

· optimising the NDA portfolio, including working with other market sectors;

· exploring similarities with other nuclear clients; and

· creating a market with improved health, safety, security and environmental standards.

This is the first national consultation on a strategy for the development of the decommissioning supply chain. The organisation spends more than £2.5 billion a year, of which £1.2 billion enters the supply chain at Tier 2.   NDA also invite you to comment via an online survey by clicking here.

There will be a workshop held in: Birmingham on either August 7 or September 4, Kendal on September 11, with a possible one in Edinburgh in October.

To register email your preferred location to Samantha.dancy@nda.gov.uk

Magnox North Publishes Supply Chain Strategy

Magnox North has published its 2008/09 supply chain strategy. This document sets out the Supply Chain Strategy for Magnox North,  designed to support the delivery of an integrated and sustainable programme of work required for the generation of electricity and the decommissioning of nuclear sites to Care and Maintenance Preparations, all as described in the Magnox North Lifetime Plan 008 submission (LTP08).

This in turn will underpin delivery of Magnox North’s declared business priorities encompassing excellent performance in meeting and surpassing our contractual obligations under the Head Contract with the NDA, maintenance of the highest health, safety security and environmental standards and encouraging a culture of continuous improvement across the entire spectrum of our operations.

Click here for more information

 Magnox North Launches Annual Procurement Plan and Long Range Graphic

Magnox North has launched its 2008/09 Annual Procurement Plan (APP), which is available for download from the Magnox North Website.

The plan is a list of contracts over £500,000 which are to be let, or have already been let, by Magnox North sites in this financial year.

To download the 2008/09 APP click here.

The Magnox North Procurement Long Range Graphic provides a longer term perspective of planned procurements against the identified categories of work for delivering the Magnox North portfolio into Care & Maintenance.

 To download the Procurement Long Range Graphic click here.

North Wales Supply Chain Event

Wylfa and Trawsfynydd Sites Encourage Local Business to ‘Raise its Game’

As part of its commitment to working more closely with the local and regional supply chain, Magnox North captured the attention of 119 small and medium size Welsh businesses recently during an event to help encourage them to bid for work at Wylfa and Trawsfynydd.

The ‘Raise your Game’ Event was a joint initiative organised by Menter a Busnes, Wylfa, Trawsfynydd, the Welsh Assembly Government, Ynys Môn and Gwynedd County Councils and Bangor University.

Magnox North focussed on what work the sites anticipate undertaking over the next five years, what is expected of our sub-contractors and where they can seek assistance to achieve these expectations.

Key contractors from both the Magnox sites made themselves available to discuss future opportunities to sub-contract elements of their work on the two sites and to highlight other opportunities within other industries where they have a presence. The opportunity to speak directly with these businesses attracted over 200 people who shared a vision of building a sustainable local supply chain.

The event included a presentation by Bangor University describing how businesses can make themselves more marketable by engaging in Sustainable Development. The University offers a tool which measures each individual business’ impact on Social, Economic and Environmental issues. Wylfa and Trawsfynydd will follow up with a self-audit to highlight areas where their contribution in this area can be developed further.

John Idris Jones, Head of Socio-Economics, felt that the networking opportunity was priceless for businesses in our community. He said “This has been an invaluable first step in developing the local supply chain, which is in line with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Socio-Economic Policy. Our Tier 2 contractors were identifying not only opportunities for the smaller companies to work with them within the nuclear industry at our Wylfa and Trawsfynydd sites, but also on other projects elsewhere in North Wales - and beyond.”

The Tier 2 contractors found the event useful in sourcing local business support. Liz Pulford of Alstec said “I was impressed with the number and range of potential suppliers who attended - we had a very busy afternoon!”

Welsh Assembly officials gathered initial feedback from the attendees, 92% of whom regarded the event as excellent overall.

“As a company we were able to explain our tendering processes for contracts, along with our very high standards and our expectations of those companies who would like to work with us” added John Idris Jones. “Einir Young of Bangor University was very pleased with the interest and follow-up shown in her sustainable development presentation, and the audit tool promoted by Business Sense.”

It is hoped that local companies will now be better placed to compete for any work at the Magnox North, North Wales sites

Supplier hits safety milestone

AMCO - suppliers of electrical control instrumentation maintenence and installation services - have passed 300,000 working hours without a lost time accident whilst working on Magnox sites.

The company achieved this major milestone over a period of five years during work at Berkeley, Sizewell A, Dungeness A, Wylfa and Oldbury sites.

AMCO Contracts Director, John Landreth, spoke about the record: "We are all justifiably proud of the achievement, but I simply can't stress enough that we cannot be complacent going forward.

"I was delighted to be able to offer my congratulations to the team working on this contract and I don't have to remind them that the highest standards of safe working practices are the key to an accident-free future."

Trawsfynydd Capping Roof Contract awarded to Costain Group

A contract worth £11m has been awarded by Magnox North to Costain Group, which will see the construction of a new internal capping roof on both of the reactor buildings at Trawsfynydd Site.

This is a major part of the Safestore Height Reduction programme which followed a public enquiry in 2004. Each reactor building will be lowered by approximately one third in order to reduce their visual impact on the landscape within the Snowdonia National Park.

The 3.5 year project will be a very challenging and complex programme which will provide secondary weatherproofing to the buildings during the care and maintenance period of the decommissioning strategy. Once this stage of the work is finished, the existing external concrete cladding will be removed and the height-reduced buildings, known as Safe Stores, will be re-clad with materials that will provide a weatherproof envelope.

Works are due to commence physically on the Capping Roofs within Safestore One in August followed by Safestore Two in December. There is a considerable amount of work to be undertaken in advance of these dates, which will include method statements, health and safety documentation, quality assurance documentation, before and off-site fabrication can begin.

Gerallt Williams, Project Lead for Magnox, said: “As soon as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) were able endorse the full value of the project we wasted no time in placing the contract to carry out the work. In doing so, the site was able to achieve two Performance Based Incentives (PBI’s).”

As with all work of this type, the aim is to deliver the works in accordance with the Lifetime Plan and to maximise efficiency for our customer.”