BARRIERS AND ENABLERS

The above descriptions from other industries of example enablers for cost benchmarking suggest that some key enabling or desirable characteristics will need to be considered to support a range of options for initiating value-added cost benchmarking for NPP decommissioning (see summary in Table 4.5).

Table 4.5: Characteristics that need to be considered to support options for cost benchmarking NPP decommissioning

4.3. Collecting and sharing data – Barriers

What form of data is required?

As discussed in Section 3.2, to provide value to the different stakeholder types identified, cost benchmarks could represent two principal types or levels:

•Project level: Whole-project phase estimate ranges, accompanied by actual wholeproject out-turn.

•Activity level: Actual cost information at the sub-project, facility and activity levels (e.g. at ISDC levels 2 and 3).

To add value, both of these levels of benchmarking need to be accompanied by the knowledge and confidence in what the estimated and actual cost represents. When combined together in a form to allow normalisation, the cost information, knowledge and confidence become usable benchmarks.

In this context, the cost benchmarking data required provide the information needed to challenge and to justify decisions to secure funding. The data can be used to underpin the basis for the decommissioning plans and budgeting of the baseline cost. It is only through providing the necessary data that cost benchmarking will be able to provide the value sought by the different stakeholder group audiences for these two approaches. Different levels of actual cost data are required to support delivery of project-level and activity-level cost benchmarking. The different levels of cost data required are summarised in Table 4.6.