LONDON — Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is recruiting a director general to oversee a big uptick in nuclear spending and is trying to lure a top executive to the post by making it one of the highest paid jobs in the department.

The intention to appoint an experienced industry executive as director general, nuclear, to head a new organization being set up to oversee all military nuclear programs here was flagged as part of the Conservative government's strategic defence and security review (SDSR) published last November.

Now the recruitment process is underway with a decision on who will fill the key position possibly as early as June possible in June.

The executive selected for the new post of director general, nuclear, could earn an annual salary of around £200,000 (US $284,000) plus a 30 percent bonus, according to job details posted on the website of Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunter’s tasked with finding candidates for the new post.

Jon Thompson, who until a couple of weeks ago was the permanent secretary at the MoD before being promoted to a new post at the government's revenue and tax department, said the executive's pay could actually be higher than the figure indicated by the headhunters.

In an interview with Global Government Forum published April 4, Thompson said the nuclear chief could actually earn more than £300,000 annually.

That's still not huge by industry standards, but it is certainly a hefty paycheck for an MoD civil servant. By comparison, Prime Minister David Cameron earns £142,500.

Thompson said the MoD had also recently "gone to the market for a really heavy-hitting director general of commercial."

However, the accolade for the highest paid defense civil servant goes to Tony Douglas, the British executive who took over as the boss at the MoD's Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) arm late last year.

Douglas, who was previously the chief executive of Abu Dhabi Airports, is paid £287,000 with a £250,00 performance-related annual bonus.

As part of the effort to attract the skilled engineers and commercial staff it needs, DE&S has also been given approval to break civil service pay norms as part of a wider reform package at the MoD's £14 billion-a-year procurement arm.

Applications for the nuclear post close at the end of this month, with final interviews scheduled for the week beginning June 6, Heidrick & Struggles website noted.

That makes a summer appointment likely as the MoD wants the new organization led by the director general up and running at full operating capability by April 2017.

The SDSR said the new organization would act as the "single sponsor for all aspects of the defence nuclear enterprise, from procurement to disposal, with responsibility for submarines, nuclear warheads, skills, related infrastructure and day-to-day nuclear policy."

The headhunter's website said the job involves managing an annual budget of over £3 billion and a forward program of around £40 billion over the coming decade, including building four Successor nuclear missile submarines, construction of the remaining Astute-class hunter-killer boats and investing in significant infrastructure upgrades.

Parliamentary approval is still required for the next stage of the Successor program on which BAE Systems, Babcock and Rolls-Royce are the key industrial players.

The shakeup in the management of the nuclear enterprise here is not just limited to the introduction of a new nuclear organization which reports directly to the permanent secretary, the MoD's top civil servant.

Changes are being pushed through by the government at several levels of the nuclear sector.

Government concerns, particularly at the Treasury, over the ability of DE&S and industry to deliver the Successor program on time and budget led to an announcement in the SDSR that a new delivery organization would be created to strengthen procurement and in-service support  of nuclear submarines.

The four Successor boats are likely to cost around £31 billion. The government is also putting aside £10 billion as a contingency on the program.

Operation of the first of the new Trident missile boats was put back from 2028 to the early 2030s, the review said.

The new submarine delivery body is expected to have it's own chief executive or equivalent and be a separate entity to the new director general's organization.

The director general will in effect be the customer for the programs being handled by the yet-to-be-set-up submarine delivery body.

It's a similar situation at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) where the director general will be the customer for the programs being undertaken by the organization charged with maintaining and developing British nuclear warheads.

The industrial consortium, AWE Management, which manages the government-owned operation involving Lockheed Martin, Jacobs Engineering and Serco, has had performance issues of its own over the last year or so.

Media reports last year revealed the contract, due to run to 2025, was being reviewed amid concerns over cost overruns and delays to key programs, notably the £634 million Pegasus enriched uranium components facility on which a stop work order was issued in 2015.

The MoD announced last month it had completed the review and had secured an improved deal with AWE Management.

A ministry spokeswoman said the AWE contract has been kept under "regular review to ensure it continues to meet the MoD's requirements in terms of performance, affordability and value for money."

According to a March 31 statement by the MoD, the signing of the deal would drive better performance from the consortium, including greater risk sharing with performance incentives and penalties if targets are not met.

The contract review came just a few weeks after AWE Management announced it was installing new leadership, replacing  Lockheed Martin executives John Holly and Kevin Bilger at the helm of the consortium.

Ian Tyler, the chairman of construction company Bovis Homes, replaced Holly and became the first independent executive to take up the role of chairman at AWE . Former Network Rail boss Iain Coucher has taken over from Bilger as CEO.

Andrew Chuter is the United Kingdom correspondent for Defense News.

Share:
More In Europe