Volume 9 issue 1 Nuclear Future


the most competent people are assigned to the highest risk tasks.


• The SQEP requirements for certain roles should be standardised across the industry such that consistent development solutions can be identified for contractors who work for a range of licensees.


• Team performance is at least as important as individual performance so team competence should also be assessed. First of all let’s consider the concept of competence in more detail. The European Commission [3] has defined competence as: ‘a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the context.’ It also identifies the concept of underlying key competencies which all individuals need for: ‘personal fulfilment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment.’ They identify eight key competencies, which are: 1. Communication in the mother tongue; 2. Communication in foreign languages; 3. Mathematical competence and basic competencies in science and technology;


4. Digital competence (i.e. computers and IT); 5. Learning to learn; 6. Social and civic competencies; 7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; and 8. Cultural awareness and expression. Given the move towards a multinational and multicultural approach to delivering the nuclear programme in the UK, the idea of key competencies that all staff should have would be a useful addition to existing competence management systems. This sets a baseline requirement for anyone in the industry and defines the ability to learn and adapt to new situations. It also recognises the new reality in the UK nuclear industry


that it is a multinational industry with new challenges that did not exist before (e.g. SQEP staff using a second language). This can then be built on with industry-specific competencies and specialist competencies to give a model as shown below:


Specialist Competencies


(e.g. engineering design, finance) Industry Competencies


(e.g. nuclear professionalism, culture) Key Competencies


(e.g. ability to learn, language skills) Figure 1: The competence mix


The HSE Office for Rail Regulation identifies the importance of attitude in the competence mix [4] and it states: ‘Competence is a combination of practical and thinking skills, experience and knowledge, and may include a willingness to undertake work activities in accordance with agreed standards, rules and procedures.’


Baker and Durant develop this further in their paper [5] where they introduce the SEKA model of competence, i.e.:


Ability Attitude commitment


and willingness to perform


C = S + E + K + A Competence Skills Figure 2: The SEKA model


This model is more in line with the lifelong approach to learning model which is proposed by the EC [3] and recognises the importance of attitude in the delivery of competence. It also introduces the idea of relevant experience (i.e. time served) being separate from competence.


People first


This starts to move us away from the standard approach to a more people-centric approach where the starting point for competence assessment is the individual and not the role. I favour this approach and recommend a model where an organisation assesses all its people using the SEKA model and then uses this database to align people to tasks rather than defining roles and assessing people against the requirements of the role. The competence management model here is that the


organisation maintains a database of all staff against all competencies required by the organisation. It then defines the tasks it needs to undertake (some of which will be fixed and unchanging and some of which will be transient, such as a design project) and searches for the most competent people to undertake the task. Ultimately this should produce cost benefits to the business through greater resource flexibility by giving visibility of the total capability of the entire organisation. Furthermore, if the tasks are prioritised on a risk basis and


people are allocated on a hierarchical basis such that the most competent people are allocated to the highest risk jobs then we are starting to apply the ALARP principle to our competence management system. Furthermore if we could visualise a standardised competence database shared by the industry then licensees could search for staff in all organisations that they maintain a relationship with. I show this alternative approach to competence management in Figure 3 overleaf. Clearly there are a number of issues such as personal


preference for specific roles and alignment with individual development opportunities but these could all be managed by the normal staff development processes. In fact this approach is far more aligned to the lifelong learning model of staff development by enabling all of the employee’s skills to be compared against a range of possible career paths leading to


SQEP 51 Experience Knowledge Attitude


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