Hello, and welcome to the APM Podcast.
My name is Professor Adam Bodison, and I'm the Chief
Executive of APM and your host today.
We're delighted in this episode to welcome to the podcast Gareth
Taylor. Gareth was recently appointed a
Nuclear Sector Director at Turner and Townsend, having
previously spent over six years at the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority, or as we prefer to call it, the NDA.
Gareth has over 25 years of experience in the nuclear
industry and has held a range of senior leadership roles.
At the NDA. He led transformative programmes
to improve asset management, programme delivery and
operational efficiency across EU KS Nuclear estate, and his work
included implementing A programme management and asset
management strategy that identified over £10 billion
worth of savings and advancing net zero air goals.
So a mechanical engineer by background, Gareth's earlier
career included roles at EDF Energy and British Energy.
So Gareth, thanks very, very much for joining us today.
It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
And maybe to kick us off, let's talk a little bit about you.
Can you give us a sense of your background and your career
journey to date? Thank you Adam, and thank you
for the warm welcome. I'm delighted to be here today
and pretty important spending the afternoon with you.
So yeah. So a bit about me then.
So Gareth Taylor, I live in South Wales, I studied at
Bristol and a mechanical engineer by qualification,
started my career in aerospace and then progressed into an
energy utility where I was in a mechanical engineering role.
And I pretty soon realised that perhaps solely the engineering
aspects weren't for me. And so I started my journey into
project management from early in my career, starting with roles
in project engineering, then some site engineering,
construction management, starting to then pick up my own
projects and then delivering bigger projects to various
levels of complexity and size. Culminated in my role as a
Programme Delivery Director at Hinckley Point C, the new
nuclear project in Somerset. We're left in 2019 to join the
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
As you've said, when I left there earlier this year, I was
the Group Performance Improvement Director with
responsibility for projects, Programmes, operations, asset
management and engineering. So yeah, Projects has been a
current throughout my career and I'm a real advocate, as you
know, Adam, of the APM and the great work that it does.
Wow, that's, it's quite the career.
And I, yes, you, you've been a long standing champion of APM,
but I would say also the, the, the profession more broadly.
And, and I think what one of my takeaways from that is that you
know, you're, you, you've kind of one of these people who kind
of spans multiple professions. You know, as we know, you've got
the engineering side of things, you've got the leadership side
of things, you've got the project side of things.
So to have you really kind of getting behind the profession
this way means a lot. Maybe tell us a bit more about
your current role then, Gareth, because you're obviously in this
role as a nuclear sector director.
What what, what does that involve?
And can maybe share some examples of the kind of projects
you're currently working on? Yeah, sure.
So I've delighted to join Turn in Townsend a little over six
weeks ago. Turn in Townsend is a global
leader in project delivery. My role is to lead the nuclear
sector in the UK. So working closely with our
clients and the supply chain that deliver successful
outcomes. So we're present across various
projects in the nuclear life cycle.
By that I mean from early stages of of manufacturing, fuel
manufacture, mining through into new builds into operations,
decommissioning and also in future supporting future
investments as well. So a really varied portfolio.
Locally in the UK we we're present at Hinkley Point C as I
mentioned where I previously worked and the great work that
the team are doing there. We're also present at Sizewell
C, the sister station to Hinkley Point, another big nuclear power
station that is being built that's going to provide power to
7% of the UK both at Hinkley and at size or so major energy
infrastructure being built there.
We're also supporting the next wave of nuclear reactors and
keen to be involved in that programme of small modular
reactors and advanced modular reactors as the as they progress
into the UK. So quite a varied portfolio in
terms of the new energy. But also we're keen to support
the legacy as well and existing operations.
And also the great work that the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority do and its subsidiary companies in making sure that
the legacy nuclear sites that we have are dealt with
appropriately, safely and sustainably to encourage a
bright future for the nuclear industry.
So important times, we bring a lot of cross sector experience
in Turner and Townsend and that's something which I think
the nuclear industry can benefit from and does benefit from as
well as transferring from the nuclear sector into other
sectors. So exciting times, delighted to
be here. That's great.
And, and you know, for our listeners that there'll be
people who are listening to this who work in the nuclear sector
or have worked in a nuclear sector and know all about it.
My, my experience is that most people when you talk to them
about nuclear, they only know what they've seen maybe on the
news or the television. They have a very kind of
polarised view maybe of nuclear. I know that in your work you've
kind of done everything you've described some of it there, the
full nuclear life cycle, if I call it that, from kind of new
build right through to decommissioning to help our
listeners kind of understand the kind of the breadth of nuclear
as a sector. I wonder if you can give some
examples of, of the big projects or some of the most significant
projects from your career, maybe the ones that taught you the
most, the ones that were really complex.
And, and I'll just help people, I think understand the the
breadth of it. It's not just, you know, it's
not only nuclear power stations, for example, There's, there's,
there's lots of other things going on, right?
Yeah. So I agree, Adam, I think it's
important that people are informed of what nuclear power
can bring and, and the nuclear sector in general.
And and I think it's important that if I'm an energy generation
capacity, nuclear is important to be part of a mix.
It's not the only install solution.
So I've been involved in a variety of projects in the
nuclear sector and some of fairly large scale like I've
described around building new power stations, but also some in
terms of helping maintain the existing power stations.
So in terms of the nucleus sector, it kind of starts with
you need to get a fuel and fuel is mined.
The fuel is then manufactured and so it can be used.
It's then used placing what we call the reactor.
And the reactor is effectively the kettle of the power station.
It creates A fission reaction that generates heat and then
then creates steam that can then drive a turbine that generates
electricity. So then that part is quite
traditional and simple with other conventional modes of
electricity generation. The significance of nuclear is
it has nuclear waste that needs to be managed carefully and
sustainably. And that's where the Nuclear
decommissioning Authority play a vital role in creating routes
for the waste to be transported and transferred and then
importantly managed for the legacy of its life.
So all under it's under controlled, it's well regulated
and undertaken by some real professionals including many
from the projects and programmes profession, but also from
engineering, commercial and other technical aspects.
Yeah, I know that that's been really helpful.
Thank you. And, and I suppose I'll just say
as well for our listeners that this is actually the second
nuclear podcast I've I've done. So I did one I wouldn't say
about the 18 months ago now with Professor Sir Nigel Thrift and
he was talking a lot about the geological disposal facility and
about the some, some of the complexities around that and so
on. So for those people who are who
are enjoying this conversation, who also want to find out more
about the, the kind of the nuclear waste and disposal side
of things, that's a particularly good one to, to, to, to look up
after you've listen to this one. OK, well, let's talk about
leadership and particularly project leadership in the
context of scaling up nuclear activity in the UK.
Clearly leadership is important in any sector and in any
profession, but from what, from your perspective, what are the
kind of main challenges around project and leadership that come
up when you're trying to scale up specifically in the nuclear
sector within the UK? Yeah, good question.
And so I think I look at the challenge as an opportunity.
And so the nuclear sector can bring a lot of opportunity for
people. It's a first of a kind in many
instances because we've not built power stations in the UK,
nuclear power stations in the UK since the 80s and 90s.
So Hinkley Point C was a first of a kind in that guard and the
kind of skills and experience in the supply chain had had
evaporated over that time. So that presents the opportunity
to regrow it, create opportunities for the supply
chain, create opportunities for partners, create opportunities
for most importantly people. There's a real opportunity to
regenerate skills across the industry for generations to
come. There's an opportunity for us to
create vibrant communities in the power with in the stations
that are built often in remote locations so they can be a real
heart and soul of of a community and really create a legacy for
the future. So, so Gareth, you know, thank
you for talking about that. And one of the things you
mentioned in your, in your answer there was about this kind
of almost loss of institutional memory, if I call it that, over
time, sector memory, where people who've been involved in,
in nuclear, you know, decades ago and you know, because we
haven't built any power stations in a long time, that that was
kind of lost and we had to rebuild that from scratch.
We're obsessed in the project profession about learning
lessons. On this podcast, we're always
talking about learning lessons and applying lessons in, in, in
your sense, how you know, if you were given advice to, to whether
it be to government or, or decision makers about how, how
do we learn the lessons of, of that, of that gap, if you like,
that we had in the past to make sure that after we build these
power stations, we don't make that same mistake again and go
say, yeah, we're good now for another 50 years.
You know, how do we keep that that that that new talent, that
new set of skills that we've developed kind of live and
kicking in fresh for the next 50 a hundred years and avoid making
that same mistake again? What advice would you give to
the policy makers? I think you keep it live kicking
in fresh as you said, Adam by using it and continuing to grow
it. And so building a fleet of small
modular reactors, building more larger scale nuclear reactors,
maintaining a steady flow of development and project work at
the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority so that that
capability is maintained and can be grown and sustained for the
future. So I think it's using it as key
and interestingly around lessons learnt, whether it be
specifically from first of a kind projects is making sure
that we do embed the learning and not just capture the
learning. And I think that's important
that it's done in a systematic way such that it does and also
through our people. You know, the best way to
transfer lessons is through both people and and through the
energy that they can bring by transferring to different
projects, bringing that experiences, bringing that
learning, bringing those characters to really help others
gain and benefit from that. Yeah, that makes good sense.
I was, as we were talking, I was thinking about the rail sector
and you know, we've got all of this experience from, you know,
whether we think HS 2 is a good or a bad thing.
We've certainly developed a lot of capability in rail, you know,
whilst we've been funding that project.
And one of the interesting things I've seen is that other
countries, take Australia, for example, where they're doing
metros in Sydney and, and Melbourne and so on.
They are tapping into the workforce that's been developed
in the UK. So it ends up being, we end up
being a bit of a, a net exporter of skills as well.
So there's this, I always feel there's a bit of kind of, I
don't know, system generosity to, to, to what we're doing in
the UK as well. Maybe maybe that's something in
the nuclear space that we can replicate as well.
Because I know there are some countries that are further down
the line than those, but there's equally plenty that looking to
develop the kind of skills and capability that we've been
building up and to and to move in the direction that we're
moving. So yeah, that'll be a one to
watch, I think. OK, let's talk a little bit more
about skills because one of the things I've observed, and by the
way, challenge me on this if you think I'm, I'm going off on a
tangent here, Karen, But one of the things I've observed is that
I see job descriptions for project professionals in the
nuclear sector, which will insist that they have experience
of the nuclear sector itself. To what extent if you're kind of
taking people on in nuclear, is that a kind of an essential
versus a desirable in terms of the skills?
Is it more important to have the project background?
And then you can and then you've got other kind of nuclear
experts around you or actually do you want nuclear experts and
then you want to kind of teach them the project kind of skills
and and competences. I know obviously in an ideal
world, you'd want both, right? I get that.
But it you know, if you if you're pressed into one or the
other, because there is this big skills voltage out there, which
way do you lean? It's not one-size-fits-all, I
think would be my my summary. Adam, I think there are certain
roles where nuclear experience is required and particularly if
you're dealing with the nuclear aspects of the power station, It
was a power station or mutually material.
It was managing waste or so I think that's important, but
that's not all of the work and it doesn't need to be all of the
people. You know, the project profession
can be applied across all sorts of scale of work.
So let's not be fearful. Let's not create unicorns of
people that can only do the job if they've already done the job,
which is clearly you're not the case and shouldn't be the case.
And so I think the profession has really matured as the
project profession and through the chartership is now available
through the APM. That's really created some real
kudos and clarity in how project professionals can conduct
themselves and how they can really bring that rigour and
that robustness that typically is required in high hazard
industry. So I think it's role dependent,
but I would say for most of the roles having nuclear expertise
and experience is desirable but not always essential.
Yeah, no, I really like that. And, and, and what what struck
me about what you were saying there was it's a bit like you
talk about the maturity of the project profession.
It reminded me of other professions.
So I was thinking if you were an accountant, for example, nobody
is worried about the accountants who goes from nuclear to IT to
healthcare to pharmaceuticals to construction or whatever,
because we're employing them because they're a good
accountant, right? I mean, that's, but, but
actually if they had domain experience, they could be an
even better accountant, even more valuable.
But actually it doesn't stop them being appointed in the 1st
place. And, and the idea that that's
kind of linked with maturity of the profession, I think is a
really, really good insight to know.
Thank you for that. Let's talk about kind of
teamwork, because obviously when you've got people with different
skills, different experiences, it's going to be important that
that that that they can work together and that you can get
the most out of people. And to do that, it's often means
you've got to have a great leader to kind of get the most
the most out of those teams. In your opinion, what is the
most important traits or traits of a of a great project leader?
So I live my life by my values, Adam.
So integrity and honesty is something which is dear to me.
But from a leadership perspective, I think
authenticity and ambition is vital because that creates
inspiration. And as a leader it's about
inspiring people to be the best they can be because they want to
be it. So creating that environment
that they are comfortable in that gets the best out of them
to deliver successful outputs and successful outcomes.
So I think that's that's really important in the leaders for
today. They don't need to be the best
technical experts. They don't need to have the most
commercial acumen. They don't need to have the most
construction experience. They need to have a mixture.
But I think it's important that they can engage across the
profession and engage the right people such that the project is
successful in delivering its output and the programme is
successful in delivering its outcomes.
Yeah, no, that, that, that makes sense.
And, and, and I suppose if I, you know, if I play devil's
advocate, I listen to what you've just said.
And with the exception of the bit where you talk about a
project and a programme at the end, you could say what you've
talked about. It's just good leadership
generally. I mean, is there a difference in
your mind between, you know, really impactful and effective
leadership in a kind of project or programme sense versus, you
know, just good and effective leadership full stop or are they
the same? I think the similarities, but
they're not directly the same and this is what I said earlier
about the the profession and how the professions really garnered
respect. I think historically someone who
was perhaps a good organiser, who understood the technical
aspects was put into a role as the project manager, but didn't
really have the core skills of project management in pulling
A-Team together to get the sick most, the best from everywhere.
So I think that is a skill that you use around.
And there's tools and techniques obviously that we use in
projects around how we measure, manage scope, how we deliver a
schedule, how we manage risk, how we manage cost and so how we
manage stakeholders. So they are tools and techniques
that people need to know, need people need to deploy.
They're not just something that people pick up as a secondary to
the day job. So I think yes, there's a real
connection with good leadership, but you need to have the skills
and techniques to deliver successful projects.
Yeah, that's, that's interesting.
And, and and you know, one of the things I've observed because
sometimes we talk about the kind of image problem that project
management has or the project profession has.
And, and I think it don't think it's actually the project
profession that has an image problem.
I think it's project management. And I don't think that's
actually to do with projects. I think it's to do with
management. I, everyone I meet wants to be a
leader, Gareth, but nobody wants to be a manager, right?
Because that's, that's the bit that has all of the, the
technical things that you have to learn and all the difficult
people issues and all of that type of stuff.
And everyone wants to kind of leapfrog that bit to become a
leader. In my experience, the best
leaders I've met and worked with over the years.
They're often the people who've done the hard yards in
management somewhere. And so I've got this theory.
I'm just going to sound this out now.
You can tell me whether you think this is sensible or not,
that if you've been a project professional, probably a project
manager at some point in that journey.
I think that is probably one of the best groundings you can get
for being a really effective leader at some point in the
future because you you learn these techniques, these skills,
these approaches, you've got all these tools that you described
just a moment ago. And just having those in your,
in your toolbox, as it were, as as a leader, I think just makes
you a more effective leader. Am I on to something here, or am
I just down the yellow brick road somewhere in another world?
No, I think you're right and I think it's an example of what we
spoke about earlier about learning and how you put
learning into practise. So I've been involved in lots of
different projects, some really quite large projects, multi
billion # projects. What have been involved in some
projects that were hundreds of thousands of pounds were much
smaller scale. And with size becomes scale and
it's how you manage the scale. But with the complexity is
really something that is challenging in projects.
And so I think that's really important because I've learned
probably the most from the projects that have not gone so
well. And I've been involved in a few
of those where we may have sometimes delivered the output
at the end, but we had some bumps along the way, perhaps in
terms of how we contracted it, perhaps how we manage the scope.
I've also been involved where the project has gone very
smoothly, but the output at the end didn't always meet the
expectations. And so we needed to make some
adaptations. So I think it is both, and you
learn a lot from that. And I think knowing that you've
been there and managed it and been in the shoes of the people
who are leading the work and knowing how they feel, I think
is an in vital ingredient of project leadership.
It's not something you can just learn from a textbook.
You're learning through doing. And I think that's really
important point for the profession and in terms of how
we charter our people in the evidence that we that we provide
to give it that credentials and that real respect that it's now
got. Yeah, Yeah.
That makes sense there. Thank you.
Now thinking about the profession more broadly, now we
we know the profession, we love the profession, we're part of
it, but there's lots of people out there that that either don't
know it or they think it's something different.
I mean, for example, you mentioned earlier on that
sometimes people who are good organisers end up kind of being
the project manager, you know, because they can get stuff done
or something like that, which is almost a, a misrepresentation of
like the real skills and, and, and competencies that it takes
to be an effective project professional.
And, and many people I talk to and if I ask them, how did you
get, how did you become a project professional?
And they tell me things like, Oh, you know, I, I started as a
structural engineer or I started as a, an architect or, or, or
something like that. And then they woke up one day
and discovered they weren't doing that anymore.
They were actually managing projects.
People seem to fall into this profession leaders, you know,
I've met people who are kind of, you know, keep finance officers
and then all of a sudden they found they were delivering
digital transformation projects and things like this.
So it seems to be one of these professions that people fall
into rather than plan to go into.
You know, I don't hear children in school saying when I grow up
I want to be a project manager or project professional.
I don't hear that is, is, is, you know, does the profession
have enough of a public profile and how did it work for you?
Did you, you know, you're obviously a project professional
now, Did you plan for that from the beginning or are you one of
those people that fell into it as well?
From my own perspective, I was brought up in a household that
it was an engineering background.
I lived in an area where where industrial area where where
engineering was quite prevalent. So, so I thought around what
that I want to do in my career and I was encouraged to do what
I felt brought the best out of me and what I enjoyed.
So for me, I probably didn't label it project management then
as I probably would now, but I kind of quickly knew that I
wanted to be involved in an end to end delivery of an output and
that I wanted to see more than just one part of it.
And that's what project management gives you.
But I don't think at the time, 25-6 years ago when I started my
career, it was probably as obvious and as prominent as it
is now. So I think people now are
starting their career as project managers.
I think it's important that people understand what the
project management community brings and I think through the
APM I think there is opportunities for people to get
close to that early on now. So we have graduates that join
our schemes and they are keen to do projects from the outset and
they have an understanding of what project management is from
the outset. So I think through working in
schools, through working in universities, we are seeing
graduates that come now with a better understanding of the
profession, eager to get the qualifications, eager to learn
and then eager to deploy. More so than perhaps.
So I think it's evolved since I've been through my career.
I think it's continued, it can continue to progress and I think
through the chartership and the recognition and respect that
that brings, I think it really can make the profession stand
stand strongly on its own. Yeah, you're quite, you're quite
right actually. As you were talking, I was
thinking, you know, actually we do have a lot of student members
at APM and I meet a lot of apprentices at events and so on
who are exactly in the category that we're talking about here
where they've come straight out of school or, or the even degree
apprenticeships, you know, where people are, are, are kind of
learning and getting these qualifications on the on the job
as it were as well. So yeah, maybe we've got reason
to be optimistic actually about this.
So yeah, that that's that is quite exciting.
And I think we have and I think I can really get back, sorry, I
don't by me just improved outputs that I have seen in my
career who people who have become project professionals.
So at my time with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, we
really promoted the chartership. We really promoted people
getting qualified through EAPA and that correlated with
improved performance. You know, we improved the
project performance in the NDA group significantly in the time
I was there and that went in parallel with people becoming
more qualified, more able. And we, as I said, we increased
the profession qualified professionals by 60% and we saw
milestone attainment improved by 70%.
So that's a fairly close correlation.
It wasn't the only thing that we did, but we knew and had
confidence in our team and because of the training and
experience that they gained, how to equip them to deliver
successful projects. Yeah.
Well, that's the, you know, that's a great statistic there.
So 60% investment in the in upskilling the capability in the
organisation, the people side and you saw 70% impact on the
milestones. That's yeah.
Powerful, powerful stuff. I.
Can see. And Taylor and Townsend is a
world leader in project delivery.
We have hundreds of qualified professionals and so it's a real
requirement for us to get a sort of established programme project
management role. So again, that proof is there
for all to see. Yeah, makes sense.
So final thing from me then, Gareth, is there are a lot of
people who'll be listening to this podcast who might be early
on in their career. And you have the benefit of
being, you know, having lots of experience to this point.
And I suppose you've got the benefits of hindsight as where I
was going with this. And if you were kind of either
talking to your younger self or talking to some of these, you
know, emerging project professionals who are right at
the beginning of their career, just starting out, and you were
going to give some advice for how they could be as successful
as you've been, even better maybe what what advice would you
give? I think understand it and then
deploy it. There's nothing quite like
learning as you are delivering and I think I really want the
project professionals of the future to have the opportunities
that I had and to really test themselves in delivering
successful outputs. It's not about the theory, it's
not about the desktop exercise, it's about delivering.
And I think if the project professional of today goes about
their work in that manner, that says it's the outcome and the
output that we're focused on and the process and the procedures
there to guide you. I think that's what's going to
create a vibrant project profession for the future.
So don't expect to learn it straight away.
Don't expect to get it right first time, but learn from it
and don't be fearful. You know there'll be people
there to support you. Be curious, be curious, have
ambition and really own your career because it can be really
varied and really extensive in projects.
You could be building a nuclear power station, you could be
building the next hospital for the NHS, you could be building a
new railway link through Eastern Europe.
You could be building anything you wish around the world.
You could creating a solution for the future so the
opportunities are plentiful. Take it with both hands and
enjoy it. Yeah, enjoy.
That's definitely good advice. I love that it's all about
learning and growth, and I think it's been a theme through the
conversation today. I always remember someone saying
to me, Adam, where growth stops, decay begins.
Maybe that's a a suitable quote to share in this nuclear focused
discussion that we've had. Gareth, thanks so much for
joining us and thanks to everybody for listening and
watching and or watching. We'll be back in a couple of
weeks, but in the meantime, you can get in touch with us at
apmpodcast@thinkpublishing.co.uk or if you're watching on Spotify
or YouTube, do leave us a comment directly under the
video. So that's it for this episode
and we'll see you next time. Music.