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Ambitious plans to construct the Tees Renewable Energy Plant (TeesREP) required support to recruit and manage workers under strict NAECI regulations, helping to deliver the 299MW biomass-powered CHP plant on Teesport safely and compliantly.
Navigating NAECI
To successfully achieve the TeesREP project, a green energy plant designed to power 600,000 homes, subcontractors on site needed to adhere to the working rules set out under the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI).
With several contractors on site new to these requirements, NRL drew on their extensive expertise to work in partnership with multiple subcontractors to ensure full compliance management for workers on the Category 1 project.
Identifying the right competencies
NRL’s clients were mainly engaged with the construction and erection of the fuel silos on the project. This was a critical part of the project and a new area within the engineering construction industry. This therefore created a challenge with identifying and securing the skilled labour required to complete the work competently, given the lack of industry recognised qualifications.
The NRL project team worked with subcontractors on-site to develop a comprehensive interview screening and competency assessment process, to ensure a workforce could be engaged that understood the safety requirements for the project. In addition, NRL supported subcontractors and workers to ensure that everyone understood the NAECI working rules, and more crucially how NRL’s NAECI compliant payroll would operate.
Working together to ensure compliance
Having supported NAECI projects since 2008, NRL’s project team understand first-hand that for major projects such as these to be delivered to a very high level of compliance, relationships must be built on-site with the workers, subcontractors, and industrial relations. To achieve this, the team maintained a regular presence on-site to support with any questions workers may have, as well as explain any queries around their NAECI payroll.
A compliant approach to NAECI
Throughout the project, NRL’s team provided robust and compliant processes to meet the recruitment and onboarding requirements for the project, and the subsequent payroll and worker assignment management. Working together with the NAECI Site Auditor, NRL were able to ensure 6 subcontractors on site could engage 335 workers across the construction stage of the project whilst maintaining full compliance within the working rules and legislation.