Working in Partnership

 The Skills Alliance for the Nuclear Industry

The National Skills Academy for Nuclear is a wholly owned subsiduary of Cogent Sector Skills Council.  Cogent SSC was formed with the support of the industry to develop strategic, targeted action to meet nuclear industry skills needs. Throughout its developing programme of work, key employers and professional bodies have taken a lead role in driving forward Cogent’s workforce development agenda.

Upon its formation Cogent set about an analysis of the availability of Suitably Qualified and Experienced Personnel (SQEP) – responding to the industry’s need for fresh intelligence on skills and the size of the challenge.

Through its research into nuclear skills via its Sector Skills Agreement process, it discovered a number of skills shortages, mainly in specialist resources such as Radiation Protection, Safety Case authors and some of the computational disciplines.

Resulting from this analysis was the Cogent Sector Skills Agreement (SSA): aimed at securing the range and level of skills necessary to secure a sustainable future for the industry.

An essential and exciting aspect in delivering on this agenda is the National Skills Academy for Nuclear.  Together Cogent and the Skills Academy (alongside employers who lobbied for two years for this specialised centre of excellence), are driving a strategic skills programme. It’s a plan that takes on board the totality of the education pyramid: from schools through to apprenticeships and further education colleges, to graduate and post-graduate programmes.