Every Rolls-⁠Royce SMR employee gets a North Star.

Rolls-⁠Royce SMR is scaling fast. Public listings show around 430 open roles across design, C&I, manufacturing, safety, delivery, supply chain and corporate functions, with Wylfa confirmed as the first UK site and export deployments in progress. The sector's hardest gaps are in new-build skills: commissioning, construction, project controls and reactor engineering.

The UK Nuclear Skills Plan expects the sector to grow from 83,000 to 123,000 skilled people by 2030, and its Optimising Training Landscape work calls for standardised role profiles and career paths. Developing Experts already works with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR, Sellafield, EDF, NNL and the MOD on nuclear skills in 6,000+ UK schools. North Star extends that pipeline into the workforce.

There is also a platform window. This year Rolls-⁠Royce SMR trains its people on Rolls-Royce plc's learning platform; next year it plans its own. North Star can run alongside the plc platform now and become Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's own training platform when it moves.

Every member of staff takes the Export Control course, because everyone handles controlled nuclear technology in some form. That makes it the right first course: it produces comparable evidence about every employee from day one.

Safe to be unsure. The tutor works best when people feel free to get things wrong and say when they are not sure, which matters in a strong safety culture. So what someone gets wrong while learning, and what they ask the tutor, stays private to them. Managers see section results, and misconceptions only as team patterns shared by three or more people. Readiness scores measure knowledge and how well people apply it. Moving into a role also takes experience, supervised practice, SQEP sign-off and the manager’s judgement. These settings are for Rolls-⁠Royce SMR to decide.

North Star is a platform built by Developing Experts. At its heart is the AI Tutoring Tool, co-developed by Developing Experts and PA Consulting. Staff take their courses in the Learning Zone. The AI tutor works alongside every course, then turns what it learns about each person into progression evidence. Rolls-⁠Royce SMR uses the same evidence to plan its workforce, set pathways and cost development.

North Star, including its learning, progression and workforce-planning platform, is the intellectual property of Developing Experts. The AI Tutoring Tool at its heart was co-developed by Developing Experts and PA Consulting. One product and one point of contact for Rolls-⁠Royce SMR.

EXP-100 is the case study because every member of staff takes it, so it gives comparable evidence across the whole workforce from day one. EXP-100 is split into eight subsections. Each one has the misconceptions staff most often bring with them, and each is mapped to the competencies it gives evidence for. The AI tutor probes for the misconceptions and the progression module uses the mapping.

We have assumed the "Export course" is Export Control and trade compliance, and that the tutor can report which misconceptions a learner showed and whether they were resolved. Both need confirming with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR.

The AI tutor diagnoses a misconception and then steps down a demand ladder, asking a Socratic question at each step until it finds the point where the learner's model breaks. It then climbs back to the original question so the learner states the answer themselves. Here is how that works in an Export Control scenario.

We have compiled the roles Rolls-⁠Royce SMR is currently advertising and grouped them into 11 job families, each with a five-level ladder from apprentice or graduate to head of function. Every role has required levels for nine shared competencies plus the technical competencies of its family. Each family has its own course pathway, built on a common core that starts with EXP-100.

Inside the platform, the AI tutor records one event per subsection attempt and the progression module turns it into a profile and pathway. The same records are exchanged with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's systems: sign-on and HR data in, completions and progression out. While Rolls-⁠Royce SMR is on the Rolls-Royce plc learning platform, completions sync both ways, so nothing is lost when it moves to its own platform.

{
  "event": "subsection.attempted",
  "learner_id": "rrsmr-004812",
  "course_id": "EXP-100",
  "subsection_id": "S4",
  "mastery": 0.58,
  "confidence": "fragile",
  "attempt": 3,
  "misconceptions": [
    { "id": "S4a", "status": "resolved",
      "ladder": { "lowest_step": 2, "turns": 5,
        "seconds": 190, "scaffold": "mcq",
        "surfaced": ["S7a"] } },
    { "id": "S7a", "status": "unresolved" }
  ],
  "timestamp": "2026-09-21T10:42:00Z"
}

{
  "learner_id": "rrsmr-004812",
  "profile": { "INF": { "score": 58, "level": 1 }, "…": {} },
  "north_star": "sc-5",
  "next_step": {
    "role": "sc-3",
    "readiness": 0.83,
    "gaps": ["INF", "SCM", "INT"]
  },
  "recommended": ["EXP-200", "SC-220", "SC-330"],
  "flags": ["below_current_role:INF"]
}

Once the Export Control case study has proved the method, the same process is applied to every course staff take. Each new course becomes another evidence source for North Star, so profiles get richer and the level of evidence North Star can confirm rises from practitioner to expert and leader.

North Star supports the company as well as the individual. Because it knows every employee's competency profile, it can compare the people Rolls-⁠Royce SMR has with the people each SMR needs. When a new SMR is commissioned, the planner shows how many staff it needs in each job family and level, how many existing staff are ready, how many can be upskilled or promoted, how many must be recruited, and exactly which courses to order and schedule, and when.

Timings are indicative and aligned to Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's move to its own platform next year. Commercials to follow once scope is agreed.

• Rolls-⁠Royce SMR has not published its internal competency framework. The framework here is a starting draft built from public job listings and recognised nuclear and engineering standards. Rolls-⁠Royce SMR should replace or validate it in Discovery.
• Role titles marked "Live listing" were seen in current public vacancies. Titles marked "Framework" fill gaps in a ladder and need confirming.
• Follow-on course codes and titles are proposals. Some will map to existing Rolls-⁠Royce SMR or Rolls-Royce Group courses.
• After the case study, every course is onboarded with the same recipe. The order of stages 2 to 4 is a suggestion to agree with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's learning team.
• Each SMR will have a set number of people for every post (domain and level). Rolls-⁠Royce SMR has not yet confirmed these, so the SMR staffing page uses estimates from a standard template and marks each number as confirmed or to be confirmed.
• Staff numbers per SMR, the split by family and level, unit dates and the current workforce profile in the planner are illustrative. Public sources give only headline figures: about 1,440 Rolls-⁠Royce SMR employees (Revelio Labs estimate), a 500-day construction target, up to three units at Wylfa with around 3,000 direct site roles at peak, and early works in Czechia and site selection in Sweden. Rolls-⁠Royce SMR should replace them with its own resourcing model.
• The Learning Zone opens on EXP-100 Export Control, written for this prototype with the AI tutor built in; its wording needs validating by Rolls-⁠Royce SMR Trade Compliance. Other courses can be built in the Course studio or imported from Developing Experts' content studio.
• The move from the Rolls-Royce plc platform, and the timing of Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's own platform, need confirming with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR's learning team.
• All people and scores in the employee and manager views are fictional sample data.

The pilot answers whether the AI tutor works. If it does, these are the questions to settle with Rolls-⁠Royce SMR before designing the full platform.