Consultancy Services
A three-year workforce plan for a nuclear new-build civils package
A ramp from 180 to around 900 people over 30 months, in a travel-to-work area already stripped of SQEP by adjacent programmes.
- Nuclear
- A tier-one civils contractor on a nuclear new-build
- South West England
- 14-week consultancy engagement
The challenge
What we were asked to solve
The contractor held a multi-year civils and structures package with a labour curve rising from roughly 180 to around 900 site-based staff and operatives over 30 months. The commercial model assumed that curve could be met; nobody had tested it against the actual labour market.
Three constraints made it hard. Adjacent major programmes were drawing on the same SQEP pool. Security clearance — BPSS as standard, SC for a subset of roles — carried lead times that nobody had built into the onboarding sequence. And a planning obligation committed the project to a defined proportion of local labour and apprenticeships.
Sitting underneath all of it was an inherited PSC population whose IR35 status determinations had not been reviewed since the contract was let, alongside CDM duty-holder responsibilities that had to be carried by named, competent people at every stage of the ramp.
What we did
How we ran it
Built a demand model off the programme, not the org chart
We translated the P6 baseline into a month-by-month demand curve across 42 disciplines, so the plan showed when each trade and staff role was actually needed rather than a flat annual headcount.
Mapped real supply in the travel-to-work area
A heat-map study of the 60- and 90-minute catchments against competing programmes, with an honest view of which disciplines could be recruited locally, which needed a travel and lodge package, and which would have to be grown.
Designed the clearance pipeline as a critical-path item
Vetting was re-modelled as a lead-time constraint, with onboarding gates re-sequenced so BPSS and SC applications started far enough ahead of need dates to stop clearance becoming the thing that held the pour schedule.
Reviewed status determinations and the rate card
A structured IR35 review of the contractor population alongside benchmarked rates by discipline, so the ramp could be costed with a defensible commercial position rather than a guess.
Handed over a mobilisation playbook
Everything landed as an operating document — demand curve, sourcing strategy by discipline, clearance gates, rate card, local labour and apprenticeship pathway, and the reporting pack to run it monthly.
“We had a labour curve in the bid and no evidence it was deliverable. What came back told us where it broke, and what to do about it eighteen months before it would have hurt.”
The outcome
Where it landed
The contractor went into the ramp with a costed, testable plan instead of an assumption. The figures below are illustrative of this engagement type, not audited client data.
- 42
- Disciplines modelled against the P6 baseline
- 11 weeks
- Average clearance lead time identified and designed around
- 38%
- Of the ramp mapped to the local labour catchment
- 30 months
- Of demand curve handed over as a live planning tool
NE Project Solutions is a young business and these are representative examples of the work we deliver, written from real UK market practice. Clients are described generically and never named, quotes are attributed by role only, and figures illustrate the shape of each engagement rather than audited client data.
Disciplines
Consultancy team deployed
The disciplines this engagement called for — a useful shorthand for the kind of work we resource in nuclear.
- Workforce Planning Lead
- Labour Market Analyst
- Nuclear Resourcing Specialist
- IR35 & Employment Status Consultant
- Mobilisation Consultant
- Rate Benchmarking Analyst
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