Business-Driven 365

The Situation

In 2005, employees at our largest coal power plant (and the third largest in the country) used various, inconsistent means to request “Lockout Tagout” before working on equipment. “Lockout Tagout” is a process by which mechanics, electricians, and other...

The Situation

Due to very negative publicity resulting from an environmental issue in early 2014, the company began an effort to increase oversight of all activities having any risk of environmental consequences. It was decided that all such activities first be reviewed and approved by a team...

The Situation

After the 2012 merger, and with a workforce of more than 5,000 employees in just the fossil-hydro generation section, the fossil-hydro organization was struggling to match those with technical needs and issues with the people responsible for high-level technical decisions and...

The Situation

One large generating station conducted a regular weekly meeting in which recent barriers to efficient maintenance work were discussed and actions planned to eliminate such barriers in future work.

These barriers were such things as mechanics getting the wrong parts due to incorrect...

The Situation

At one point during my career, I was the only SharePoint support person for more than 5,000 employees and contractors, about 90 locations, and more than 300 SharePoint sites. What compounded the difficulty of this situation was the fact that I also had to serve as developer,...

The Situation

At the end of 2014, a station was ordered by the COO to ensure that 170 procedures were reviewed, certified, and organized by the end of January. Most source files were stored on a station shared drive at that time, but a few were on the plant’s SharePoint site and a few were...

The Situation

The fossil-hydro fleet had a goal of radical improvement in safety, environmental, and operational performance. Implemented tactics involved heavily publicizing negative events fleet-wide and forcing awareness and learning across the fleet every day. While this effort involved much...

The Situation

All generating stations conducted morning management meetings by various names. Much of the time spent in those meetings was monologue in nature. Shift supervisors from the night shift told incoming management personnel what had transpired overnight, and incoming management...

The Situation

Maintenance outages are a stressful and action-packed time for electric generating stations. It is not a small deal when a utility idles a large generating unit because if things go badly and return to service is delayed, that unit’s generation may not be available for peak...

The Situation

During an internal safety audit one morning more than ten years ago, it was discovered that a large generating station’s Hot Work Permitting Logs were insufficient and not up-to-date. Hot Work is defined as any work that involves burning, welding, using spark-producing tools,...