Ensuring efficient and high-quality design at Sizewell C enabling works

MARKETS: Nuclear

LOCATION: Suffolk, England

CLIENT: Sizewell C

COMPLETION DATE: Ongoing

Sizewell C is the one of the biggest engineering projects that has ever taken place in the UK. Once finished, the 3.2-gigawatt nuclear power station will supply enough energy to power six million UK households. This should reduce carbon emissions by 9 million tonnes every year – or the equivalent of removing four million cars from the nation’s roads. But in order for Sizewell C to be built, we first have to complete enabling works. The Sizewell C construction site will be a mega-project in itself – accommodating approximately 9,000 workers alongside power sub-stations, sewage treatment, carparks, accommodation, telecoms, warehouses, water-storage, and everything else required by a project this size. This is roughly the equivalent of building a small town from scratch. Roads, access bridges, and the site of the power station itself will also need to be prepared, ready for the main construction phase.

AtkinsRéalis were hired to provide civil engineering design services across the project, leveraging the experience and partner relationships we have developed during our work on Hinkley Point C to ensure that the site and the station itself can be erected as safely and efficiently as possible.

Identifying design challenges early

Before anything can be built, it must first be designed. And one of the biggest challenges when designing at this scale is ensuring that different design elements, designed by different teams at different times, don’t clash with each other.

A design clash is what happens when two elements in a design overlap or don’t match with each other. For example, if a pipe is intersecting with a girder, electrics don’t connect up, or allowances haven’t been made for the foundations of objects. These clashes may all seem fairly common sense, but at this scale they can quickly multiply to the hundreds of thousands, and many that escape detection can go on to cause costly delays in construction. Identifying these clashes and sorting the major problems from those that can be quickly solved with a drill and some elbow grease at the construction site is therefore a major concern.

To help us identify, sort, and resolve these clashes, AtkinsRéalis are employing industry-leading clash management software alongside our own model object data dictionary, which provides stronger data for clash analysis. This allows each team to easily locate all the clashes affecting their work and address them – before they have the chance to become an issue. The model object data dictionary then supplies detailed metadata, allowing design teams not just to identify clashes, but to receive precise and actionable information on what is intersecting with what (for example that a lighting post is clashing with the ground surface, rather than that a cylindrical object is clashing with a flat object).

Joining the dots from Hinkley Point C to Sizewell C

To help ensure that Sizewell C’s enabling works can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively, many elements are being repurposed from our work with Hinkley Point C. Instead of designing these elements from scratch, these ‘next of a kind’ features allow us to leverage tried and tested designs and ensure quality can be delivered quickly. It also allows us to focus our resources on new or ‘first of a kind elements’ and on the challenges specific to the Sizewell C site. For example, unlike Hinkley Point C, Sizewell is being built on soft marshy ground, and bridges and careful planning will be required to prepare the site.

We are excited to be collaborating with AtkinsRéalis on the delivery of this project and look forward to seeing how their digital capabilities can help us deliver a low-carbon future for the UK.

Ben Walker; Senior Communications Manager, Sizewell C

Delivering engineering design at a massive scale

With over 9,000 deliverables at last count, delivering the enabling works for Sizewell C will be no small challenge. And at this scale, even accurately measuring progress can be seriously challenging. So, to help us manage the project and prevent unexpected delays, we have deployed our design management software Deliverable Manager (MIDP Online).

This software package integrates with systems such as ProjectWise to provide an authoritative and up to date view of project progress both overall, week by week, and on a deliverable-by-deliverable basis. This allows us to track project progress, identify potential blockers, and manage workloads – aiding resource management and supporting a culture of accountability. The system also allows us to share up-to-date reports with Sizewell C and our delivery partners, with a PowerBI dashboard to visualise progress for quick and accurate reporting that keeps everyone on the same page.

By leveraging Deliverable Manager and our integrated clash management software, the team can ensure that these enabling works are completed quickly and efficiently, reducing on-site issues, and ensuring work is right first time. The Deliverable Manager tool alone is predicted to save the team 4,000 hours or about £300,000 on the Site Establishment, Enabling Works and Earthworks design contract by the end of 2024. Combined with our expertise and experience, these innovations will allow us to deliver high-quality designs quickly, efficiently, and at a truly massive scale. Sizewell C is a vital project. It will support over 70,000 jobs and contribute an estimated £4 billion to the local economy. And successful delivery of the enabling works will be key to achieving these outcomes.

It’s part of how we are engineering a better future, for our planet and its people.