Case studies

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: Convenor for Stakeholder Engagement

Download a pdf version of this case study: NDA case study [pdf document, 258KB - opens in a new tab/window]

The Brief

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has a strong commitment to engaging its local and strategic stakeholders on a whole range of issues as part of its decision making process. They wanted an independent party to manage all aspects of this work to ensure that stakeholders were able to question and challenge its senior representatives and have an opportunity to influence NDA decision making.

Dialogue by Design along with partners 3KQ were contracted to manage and run the NDA's stakeholder engagement programme over a three year period, from 2006 to 2009. Dialogue by Design and 3KQ operated under the branding of 'Convenor for NDA Stakeholder Engagement'.

The Process

The Convenor took on a broad role as part of this project, providing advice and guidance, managing a database of more than 600 stakeholders, stakeholder communications, and running workshops and online consultation processes.

The first action was a review of the NDA's arrangements for stakeholder engagement both nationally and locally (20 UK sites). The national review used our online consultation tool and the local arrangements review was carried out by paper questionnaire sent to all Site Stakeholder Groups (SSGs) and other interested stakeholders. The result was a set of recommendations which we used for the three years we ran the national process as well as revised guidance for the SSGs stating the mutual expectations between them and the NDA.

A major thrust of the work was to design, run, facilitate and report the many workshops covering a wide range of topics among the NDA Strategy workstreams. Audiences varied for different workshops and processes, but most included invited members of local site stakeholder groups, regulators, representatives of devolved administrations, NGOs, industry and local government. The centrepiece of these were the twice-annual National Stakeholder Group (NSG) meetings. These two-day events involved around 150 stakeholders.

The Outcome

During the course of the work with the NDA the independent Convenor delivered many workshops and consultation processes that have contributed successfully to the relations of the NDA with its stakeholders and provided real and useful outputs for their work. We undertook a comprehensive review of the NDA's stakeholder engagement and during our three years working with them put in place strong foundations for the future success of the NDA's stakeholder engagement programme.

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