Customer Success Story
Deltek COBRA Takes Control for the UKAEA and NDA

Earned Value Management ensures nuclear decommissioning stays on track

The Challenge

Some projects carry far too much risk to be allowed to drift off course. Perhaps they involve large sums of taxpayer's money or the public's safety and security is at stake but, whatever the reason, their high profile dictates they are managed with utmost transparency and control.

One such project is the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's 20 civil nuclear sites. This critical task is being carried out by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a non-departmental public body set up under the 2004 Energy Act.

To ensure the stringent control and measurement of this major operation, the NDA has specified that all contractors working on the project use Earned Value Management (EVM). EVM has been used for government projects in the U.S. as far back as the 1960s. It has gradually grown in use, and recently gained considerable momentum with legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Now, both the UK and U.S. governments have mandated the use of EVM on all defence contracts over £20 million and $20 million respectively, and EVM has been mandated for nuclear decommissioning in the UK since 2004.

The Solution

As a means to enforce the use of Earned Value guidelines and processes, the NDA and its main contractors, which include the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), have chosen to use Deltek's cost and EVM system, COBRA.

According to UKAEA programme control and systems analyst Adam Ellwood, his company has always advocated tight project management and control, but it hasn't always used an EVM software system. "EVM is a culture rather than a type of technology," he said. "It means putting clear parameters at the outset of a project to objectively measure results as it progresses."

However, on such a complex project as this, it was clear that an EVM and cost management software system would take away much of the routine processes, plethora of Excel spreadsheets and endless time needed to research and collate information usually held in numerous, disparate systems.

Consequently, around 2003, the UKAEA began to survey the market for a flexible and comprehensive solution to support the requirements set out by the NDA. "EVM is mandatory on this project – but the NDA hadn't specified a particular system. We undertook a detailed cost benefit analysis against the available products in the market and after due consideration, COBRA was chosen as the software tool of choice for UKAEA based on its flexibility, ease of use and compatibility with client systems," said Ellwood.

The COBRA solution spans all UKAEA sites, providing centralised cost management reporting and analysis by interfacing with UKAEA's ERP and scheduling, accounting and cost estimating systems. It pulls out information from these three core platforms into the central COBRA reporting system.

The Benefits

The result, said Ellwood, is that COBRA gives project managers "far more accurate and faster reporting capabilities, plus round-the-clock access to current project data and status. In addition, the main benefit of EVM is that it enables project leaders to foresee and catch situations that could become serious problems at a later time and take remedial action before they do."

With COBRA, project managers need no longer extract information from each system, manually recreate data and put together their own reports, said Ellwood. Instead they can go to the centralised system at any time of night or day to access reliable, accurate and current information on the status of the project. ERP activities are imported via an electronic link to the COBRA cost system for cost analysis. The approved unit rates for labour and so on are applied to time-phased budget amounts, and then act as a basis for all cost information, both summary and detailed.

"The ease of integration between COBRA and these other proprietary systems was essential to enable us to share and monitor information," said Ellwood.

"The quality of the data has also improved significantly," he said. "There is no longer so much room for human error. And because the data can be trusted, it is far more valuable to the entire operation."

"But above all it acts as an early warning system if a particular section of the project is veering off course – and as it manages the entire portfolio we can, for example, re-route funds or resources to a struggling sector to help turn it round, if necessary."

The UKAEA is also required to send an electronic data submission on performance to the NDA each month, and is able to load it directly into the NDA's COBRA system. "By providing a centralised, integrated and holistic view across our entire portfolio, COBRA gives us a real-time snap-shot of the current project situation," said Ellwood. "It is difficult to know how we could keep such rigorous control – and complete transparency between ourselves and the NDA – without it."

The Deltek Advantage

Since they began using COBRA as a way to meet stringent Earned Value Management requirements, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and subcontractor UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) have been able to foresee and catch a number situations that could have thrown their project off course, and have taken the timely, remedial action necessary to avoid serious problems. COBRA's ability to provide more accurate and faster reporting capabilities, plus round-the-clock access to current project data and status, has made this possible.

About the NDA and the UKAEA

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a nondepartmental public body set up under the UK's 2004 Energy Act with the vision to ensure the safe, accellerated and affordable clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy. The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is a world leader in nuclear clean-up and fusion research, manages the decommissioning of sites at Harwell, Culham, Dounreay, Windscale and Winfrith.