IMC-2020 Presentation 22:20 Minutes

by Richard Hare, AWE

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) plays a crucial role in the national defense of the United Kingdom (UK) and has been at the forefront of the UK nuclear deterrence program for more than 60 years. AWE works under contract to the Ministry of Defense (MoD) through a government-owned-contractor-operated (GOCO) arrangement.Recently, AWE identified the need to enhance their Asset Management approach to ensure they retained capacity to meet MoD needs today and into the future.

The ‘Skies the Limit’ presentation describes how a dedicated team took the concept of operating drone technologies across its sites as part of the asset management improvement program this culminated in the successful launch of a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Service Centre. In April 2017, AWE realized there may be benefits of operating UAV’s to support operations. We were met with many different challenges before the business accepted the routine use of UAV’s.

Key elements for discussion include:

• How the team targeted key stakeholders who would benefit from this technology.
• How we identified critical inspections that would benefit from the use of the UAV either due to safety or quality issues.
• Explain the selection process for determining the most suitable UAV equipment to use across operations.
• Explore how the team sold the concept and safety to operate drones across nuclear regulated sites through effective communications.
• Explain how the business embraced this innovation to realize safer, more cost-effective ways of working.
• Show some of the data used to justify this innovative program.

This presentation is relevant to anyone who wants to introduce UAV’s to their business and needs support to realize their ideas. UAV’s have multiple applications, so why not invest some of your valuable time to these valuable investment opportunities.