August 1, 2010

Luminant’s Oak Grove Power Plant Earns POWER's Highest Honor

By Dr. Robert Peltier, PE

Workflow Management

At the height of the project, Fluor’s direct-hired construction labor force peaked at nearly 2,400 workers who contributed about 11 million hours to the project. Fluor support staff peaked at around 220; of that total, about 175 were located in Fluor’s home office in Greenville, S.C.

Project leaders also exercised Fluor’s global execution center in New Delhi, India, for about 20% of the engineering work, principally for the design functions such as piping layout, electrical connections, and structural design. Fluor also leveraged its global procurement network to purchase quality products such as the chimney, high-alloy pipe, and emissions control systems at competitive prices and with shorter delivery schedules. Additionally, Fluor worked with state and local government representatives and community and technical colleges throughout Texas to attract, recruit, and hire local talent to meet the project’s construction resource requirements.

Workforce Development

Watson joined the project shortly after the final air emissions permit was received (June 2007) and was promoted to plant director in late 2009. One of the first tasks the plant management team had was building the plant operations team from scratch; only a handful of the staff transferred from other Luminant facilities. Over the following months, the staff slowly began to fuse together as a team—a challenge to be sure, given that their experience ranged from first job out of high school to highly experienced operators. Watson said that building a plant operations team that was able to successfully commission Oak Grove was one of his team’s most important accomplishments on the project.

The Luminant-employed full-time staff of Oak Grove is currently 148 (excluding on-site corporate support personnel) plus 38 contractors from Fluor who are responsible for heavy and mid-level maintenance work at the plant. The plant staff consists of employee groups in several different classifications.

“Equipment specialists” and “apprentices” are responsible for operating equipment and performing light maintenance duties, such as changing filters, lubrication replacement, and electrical troubleshooting up to 480V in the main plant. Equipment specialists are bargaining unit (BU) employees and members of IBEW Local 2337. “Material specialists” and temporary support personnel (TSP) employees (also part of the BU) are responsible for keeping the lignite moving, starting with when the lignite is dumped from the bottom of the rail cars and ending when it enters the silos. Once the lignite enters the silos, the equipment specialists assume responsibility for its handling. Material specialists also perform maintenance functions in their area of responsibility. Plant operators are also part of the BU and are stationed in the control room. Other than a small group of equipment specialists with electrical knowledge who normally work a weekday, 8-hour shift, equipment specialists, apprentices, material specialists, TSP workers, and others assigned to shift work use the 12-hour shift schedule over a 28-day work rotation schedule. The remainder of the plant staff are non-BU employees and include technicians (chemical, instrumentation and controls, environmental, reliability, and planning), members of the planning and scheduling group, shift supervisors, contract coordination, site engineering, and plant management.

The Fluor onsite staff includes journeyman electricians, boilermakers, certified welders, millwrights, and other skilled trades. One very significant advantage enjoyed by Luminant with its Fluor alliance relationship comes during major overhauls or during a major forced outage. Fluor can quickly pull together just the right combination of journeyman skills from across the entire Luminant fleet and from other outside resources and focus that manpower and expertise on quickly fixing problems and rapidly returning a unit to operation.

Another consequence of starting with a relatively inexperienced workforce at a “greenfield” plant was the need to develop comprehensive operating and maintenance programs geared to the staff’s level of experience.

The training regimen for the majority of the newly hired Luminant employees working at Oak Grove began with attending the 18-week Basic Skills Tool Belt training program at the Luminant Academy in Tyler, Texas. The syllabus for this course included hands-on instruction in simulation equipment, industrial controls, pumps, piping, safety training, hydraulics, and rigging systems. With basic training completed, workers returned to the plant for a series of courses on particular equipment and systems presented by vendors, followed by more off-site training led by the Flour commissioning team. With their seatwork behind them, operators next began the hands-on commissioning of plant equipment under the direction of the Fluor commissioning team.

Training continues through an apprenticeship training program that includes completion of preplanned curriculum coursework off-site at the Luminant Academy and completion/sign-off of predefined work station–related “job performance measures” at the plant.

The maintenance program began with the tedious but necessary preparation of equipment maintenance procedures and entering volumes of data into equipment databases. While the equipment specialists and operators were attending training, both away and on the job, contractors were used to extract information from the vendor procedures and maintenance manuals to build the maintenance database. The level of detail of these operating and maintenance procedures was guided by those used at Comanche Peak, such as photos embedded in the procedures illustrating each maintenance step, the proper tools required, and the final inspection requirements.

Always Safety Conscious

In November 2009, Fluor achieved a significant safety milestone: 10 million safe work hours. “The health and safety of our employees is one of Fluor’s core values. We strive to deliver quality and schedule proficiency while accentuating focus on health, safety, and environmental (HSE) excellence in all phases of project execution,” said Dave Dunning, Fluor Power Group’s president. “For the Oak Grove project, this exceptional safety performance began with initial project construction in July 2006 and has fostered a new standard of HSE expectations.”

“Safety was a priority during construction and commissioning and the results were outstanding,” said Mike Williams, Luminant’s chief fossil officer. “I am exceptionally proud of the safe, timely and professional work of each Luminant employee involved in this project.” He added, “Every employee and contractor who works at Oak Grove is dedicated to the safe and reliable operation of the units.”

As we go to press, both Oak Grove units are online and operating. Unit 1 achieved commercial operation in April and has since been under ERCOT’s dispatch control. Unit 2 achieved “substantial completion” in early June, meaning that Fluor has demonstrated that the plant has met its performance guarantees and operation of the equipment transferred to Luminant’s care, custody, and control. Boiler and AQCS system tuning continue, along with Fluor’s ticking off items on the final punch list. Oak Grove Unit 2 is moving into the final online testing phase, which, when completed, will make the unit fully available for reliability dispatch by ERCOT. That testing should be completed in late August.