A new tool has been created to help train managers at Sellafield – a board game.

Vulcain Engineering has come up with the product – called Synergy – which is designed to help train the site’s asset management team.

It focuses on four teams within Sellafield and aims to get all of these to work together.

This has gone down well with staff and has been shortlisted for two prestigious awards.

Vulcain is a French company with an office in Phoenix Enterprise Centre, Jacktrees Road, Cleator Moor.

Locally the operation has had several different owners and became part of Vulcain last year.

Simon Spencer, the principal consultant in Cumbria who has also worked at Sellafield, explained that there are lots of benefits to using board games as a training tool.

He said: “Asset management is a big subject and it covers a big area. I have been doing it for 20 years and I am still learning.

“The question is how do you make the fundamentals of asset management interesting.

“If you in sit in a presentation, you will take in about six per cent of the information,” he added.

“In a face-to-face conversation it is 20 per cent but with an activity between 50 and 75 per cent of the information will be retained in your head.”

The game covers four areas of the Sellafield business – retrievals, projects, operations and infrastructure.

Teams will at first focus on one of these but as the game progresses they then have to learn how to work together and consider the organisation as a whole.

They have to consider issues like cost, risk and performance and the impact of each of these on the other.

The game is usually played by between eight and 12 people from various different staff levels around Sellafield. It usually takes about three hours to complete.

“One of the things we try to break down is the silo mentality,” said Mr Spencer.

The game has impressed both nuclear and asset management professionals.

It was nominated for a prize in the knowledge management category at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris, and was runner-up to EDF.

The game has also been nominated for a prize with the Institute of Asset Management, the winners of which will be announced this month.

Lucy Hughes, asset management standards and assurance manager, has been pleased with the impact the game has had.

“It is an innovative new way of delivering training; we are always looking at new ways to to be informed,” she said.

“There are four teams and they start off working separately with their own teammates and then by the end they are working together.”

She added: “There is a lot of science behind it, it is not just a game.”

Other companies are also discussing similar games with Vulcain.