A Ready Instrument

It is difficult to overstate the value of mutual understanding in the success of partnership programmes, especially where city leaders are involved. Perhaps it is only when such understanding is present that one can really anticipate effective work and substantial results. Here we publish a short interview with Valeriy Dimitrov, the Head of Administration of the City of Sarov, who has participated in a number of key CNCP activities.

Mr. Dimitrov, how relevant and timely is the City’s participation in CNCP?

The involvement of Sarov in the Closed Cities Partnership programme is very timely and, as a result, highly effective. The city has fitted organically into the processes of the Russian-British collaboration to the point that it sometimes feels as if we have always been involved: proposals from companies with innovatory products, meetings with potential investors, exchange of experience... One can say with good reason that the Closed Cities Programme has today become not simply a bridge between nations, but more than that, a broad reliable bridge which carries traffic in both directions.

What has CNCP brought in reality?

Those of our enterprises which are taking part in the Programme have been stimulated to develop their projects. They have learnt how to position their offer, to formulate their own needs succinctly and to put down on paper what they expect to achieve with a minimum of mistakes. This is experience which is worth a lot.

It is certainly true that financial support through CNCP has played a crucial role. For companies, these resources have become a vital support for the realisation of plans that they had long pondered. I would give as an example of a successful project our Systema enterprise, which manufactures and installs theatre equipment. Each theatre has different light, sound and scenery mechanisms and the management systems that control them are different too. Scenery system assemblies are produced on a one-off basis to meet the individual needs of particular theatres – this is particularly true of large mechanical constructions. To produce these, Systema has created a new workshop, where they have set up unique machine tool and control and measuring systems. This became possible in part thanks to financial help from CNCP. Just the same could be said of a whole range of similar projects.

But CNCP’s activities are wider than just grant aiding commercial projects...

No less useful in my opinion are the exchange of experience visits. Personally, I have taken part in two study tours organised by CNCP and I am in a position to analyse the results they produced by comparing them. In 2007 we paid more attention to the nuances of management activities, exchanging experience about the work of elected and appointed public agencies, and we looked at manufacturing in terms of its relationship with municipal authorities. In 2010, however, the situation was fundamentally different. It so happened that at just that time, Sarov had begun a project to develop a brand image for the town. For Sarov, where the dominant enterprise is the Federal Nuclear Centre, it is vital to define a precise and unique locus for the city both for Russia and for the World. In this connection, my attention constantly turned to the way in which the concept of the «British energy shore» was created and how it was built up through local projects which linked the past and the future.

I vividly remember our visit to Sellafield, and work culture and organisation in the nuclear establishments in the County of Cumbria; and most important of all, how local government structures collaborated with business to engage the population and so create conditions which would encourage new investment.

I consider that the Closed Cities programme, with many years of successful experience in Russia, has become essentially an instrument which is ready to be adopted by others, with all the necessary regulations and standard procedures and methodologies already established. Similar grant assistance for closed cities and their innovatory companies could fit in successfully with the projects of the State Corporation Rosatom. I am sure that results would not be long in coming.

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