Magnox has become the first site licence company within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) estate to gain certification for its asset management work.
It is the culmination of six months of assessment by LRQA to successfully achieve certification to ISO 55001:2014, Asset Management.
This follows five years of development internally to meet the NDA’s requirement to work towards an enhanced approach to asset management. The certification takes this one step further, however, to embed the processes into Magnox’s ‘business as usual’.
To underline the importance of the achievement both the Office of Nuclear Regulation and Environment Agency have identified effective asset management as being of strategic importance to the UK nuclear industry, in managing the ageing of the UK’s nuclear infrastructure.
“This accreditation demonstrates that we are operating at a world class standard,” said Paul Marsh, Asset Management Programme Manager.
“The work has been a massive undertaking for all our sites and the central programme, conducted through a two-stage process to ensure documents were in place and worked in practice, and that there was management commitment and alignment to our business overall.”
Some of the assessments by LRQA were completed face to face and initially it was feared Covid-19 would have to pause the remaining audits. However, a flexible and supportive approach to the process by both Lloyd’s and Magnox sites meant the remainder were completed remotely.Caron Weaver, Asset Management Director said: “My sincere thanks to all the people who have contributed to implementing, improving and embedding our asset management arrangements into the Magnox management system over the last several years and hence have helped us to achieve this significant achievement – it is down to the dedication and hard work of all wider teams involved.”
Andrew Forrest, Technical Director, added: “I would also add my thanks, a great achievement and a good basis for driving further consistency in our effective management of ageing plant.”
David Derrick, Area Operations Manager UK&I, LRQA, commented: “Congratulations to everyone involved at Magnox in achieving ISO 55001 certification. We’re delighted to have been able to support Magnox with a mixture of onsite and remote audits to limit the impact of the current restrictions on their progress. We look forward to supporting Magnox in achieving further certifications aligned to areas of strategic importance for their business.”
