[en] The Western nuclear countries have embarked on numerous programs to improve the safety of the Russian-designed nuclear power plants. In Russian-designed plants in Eastern Europe, plant management is being asked for the first time to decide which safety projects to implement and is finding itself lacking in nuclear safety analytical tools and practices, funds, and experience with project management and project engineering skills and tools. Some of the major areas where assistance is needed are: 1) Defining plant weaknesses toward nuclear safety. 2) Evaluating and grading the importance to safety of proposed modification. 3) Project Planning and Scheduling using computer based scheduling software. 4) Project Finance Development and Management using well defined cash flow management techniques. 5) Contract Management and Change Control. 6) Interface Management. Each of these areas requires a significant amount of discussion to understand the issues and problems associated with them. However, this paper is limited to the Project Management areas. This paper encourages the use of a design engineering firm experienced in safety practices and associated management and technical skills to serve as the Owner's Engineer/Project Management Consultant for the program period for a Russian-designed plants located outside Russia. This approach would allow for the availability and transfer of knowledge of safety practices to plant personnel and owners engineers at nuclear plants outside Russia, improving their nuclear safety culture. The plant personnel would control plant modernizations and upgrades based upon a proven and well-defined process for detailed project definition, configuration change control, and project management. This offers the opportunity to enhance the long-term safety culture by developing plant personnel knowledgeable of the safety practices, plant design basis, developing a modification control process enabling them to control the design basis through future projects and providing plant personnel the continuity of assistance necessary to gain sufficient experience in these areas. It further helps assure that the plant's expectations for modifications are met. The Project Management Consultant would establish a modification planning and scheduling protocol for use by plant management on all tasks. The Consultant would focus on development of the modification package process from the problem definition phase through detailed design to the new as-built documentation phase. Additionally, the Consultant would work with the plant staff to develop those managerial programs required to support the modification package process. At project completion, plant management would have these new processes in place and the experience of working with these processes on all plant equipment changes performed during the period, enabling them to work effectively within traditional Western-style contracting schemes.(author)