The “Breakthrough” (in Russian “Proryv”) consolidates projects on development of large power fast neutron reactors, closed nuclear fuel cycle technologies as well as new types of fuel and structural materials, and is targeted to achieve new quality of nuclear power. The project goal is to develop a nuclear power facility, which would include a NPP with fast neutron reactors, a nuclear fuel regeneration (recycling) and re-fabrication plant, and a radwaste treatment facility to prepare waste for ultimate removal from the process cycle.
The contest of the federal and regional executive bodies, publicly-owned corporations and institutes of development is run by the Analytical Center of the Government of Russia. Its goals are to support organizations, which actively implement effective project management tools, and to promote the best practices. “The contest topic is in a great demand and acute,” Konstantin Noskov, the Head of the Analytical Center, said. “When conceiving this project, we wanted to set up a common site for discussion and practical use of the project management techniques where the leaders in implementation of the project management could demonstrate their developments, share their experience, while the newcomers on this uneasy but efficient and constructive path could choose the best techniques and solutions. We evaluated efficiency of built up and applied management systems rather than results of projects and programs,” he said.
This year, 100 applications were submitted for the contest. ROSATOM was struggling for the victory in the nomination “Project management systems with a consolidated budget of over RUB 500 million in public corporations, institutes of development and public companies”. Ultimately, ROSATOM outflanked all rivals: the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the state-run company AVTODOR (Russian Highways), the non-profit organization “Regional Development Fund of the Republic of Buryatia”, JSC “Academician M.F. Reshetnev “Information Satellite Systems“ and the federal budgetary enterprise Aleksinsky Chemical Combine.
Commenting on the victory in the contest, Vyacheslav Pershukov, Deputy CEO and Director of Innovations Management of ROSATOM, said: “The “Breakthrough” Project in a unique project for this country and the largest project of Russia’s nuclear power. A unique project management system has been built for it. It is not a coincidence that the “Breakthrough” Project is called Atomic Project No. 2 (after Atomic Project No. 1 on development of the atomic bomb). It engages more than 1,700 people. It is an interagency project, which is implemented with a large number of the economy subjects and separate independent companies of different legal forms of ownership. In these conditions it was not easy for us to build an effective management system. Now, we are in absolutely different situation as compared to the soviet times: we bid for the budget funding and other financial resources, we compete for professionals. At the same time, the planning horizon, which we mark for us, is dozens of years. It is absolutely impossible to reach such ambitious goals without an integrated management system, resource management and staff incentives. Therefore, for us the victory in this contest is the recognition of our management system as efficient and the best one and adds one more plus to the fact that we go in the right direction.”
On his part, Sergey Pastukhov, the Head of the “Breakthrough” Project Office, noted: “This award demonstrates once again that the administrative vertical can be effective. By victory in this contest we have proven that R&D can be managed and can be managed effectively. For example, results of another stage of the “Breakthrough” Project implementation allowed us stating that the well-coordinated interaction of the administrative and scientific verticals helped work out solutions led to reduction of the development cost of a power unit with the lead-cooled reactor BREST-OD-300 by 33.3% as compared to OBIN (justification of investments). Moreover, the public corporation is not resting on its laurels; now, we implement the R&D effectiveness assessment system.”
The most important constituent of the “Breakthrough” Project management system is the integrated Roadmap, which is a network schedule chart containing thousands tasks and events. The weekly control of meeting the milestones and monthly update of the Roadmap with drawing out an analytical progress report and project outlook provides for understanding of how changes in local projects affect each other, of effectiveness of produced compensatory measures of the critical path. “The “Breakthrough” Project management system and the victory in this contest prove once again that the decision made in the past to implement the project management not only in the design and construction process but also in science and development of technologies and equipment was absolutely right one,” Sergey Pastukhov emphasized.
