New Nuclear Power (NNP) projects, including small modular reactors (SMRs), large light water reactors, heavy water reactors, microreactors, or other advanced reactor projects have a long lifecycle with multiple steps prior to authorization and construction and after the operating life ends. These steps include early project development, design phases, licensing activities, procurement, fabrication, and construction planning. Timelines for First of a Kind (FOAK) NNP projects are lengthy and uncertain. A key challenge for owners and developers of NNP projects is to manage the project’s team, risk, cost, and schedule.
NEI’s Strategic Project Management Lessons Learned and Best Practices for New Nuclear Power Construction report (NEI 20-08) identified numerous construction best practices specifically focused towards NNP projects. NEI has developed a series of Implementation Guides (IGs) that describe strategies for the best practices and lessons learned identified in NEI 20-08. Each IG focuses on a subset of the 59 key construction best practices discussed in NEI 20-08. This Implementation Guide, IG-05, discusses three areas of interest: schedule practices, team and data management, and configuration control. This guidance was developed from industry experience and is considered generally applicable to NNP projects. However, individual users of this IG should consider the guidance and apply it as appropriate for their specific projects.