Top 10 practices
High-performing plants somehow find a way to stretch a dollar a little further or challenge employees to do just a bit more. TVA has invested much in the development of the Shawnee staff, and the staff have invested heavily of themselves for many years to achieve spectacular results. When asked for the secret of their success, the conversation inevitably returns to the three Ps and a focus on executing the details in the plant’s day-to-day operation. Parsley refers to consistently executing the basics of “blocking and tackling” rather than going for the more dramatic end zone toss with seconds left in the game. So let’s look at those basics.
Have you ever tried to make a list of what you do every day in your job? So many of the tasks are automatic and completed without a second thought. Good plant operating practices should be so institutionalized that they are not burdensome, make good intuitive sense to the staff, have a specific goal in mind, and can be repeatable with predictable results. These 10 essentials, though not meant to constitute a comprehensive list, provide insight into the culture of success at Shawnee. Perhaps they will spark an idea or two for your plant.
1. Use a systems engineering approach. At Shawnee, each major system has an engineer assigned to it who is responsible for its health and welfare. The system engineer is responsible for preparing a daily status report with key performance metrics as well as recommending planned and routine maintenance, determining equipment overhaul frequency, and providing economic justifications of upgrades and repairs. That individual is also the go-to person when there are any questions or if troubleshooting is required. Shawnee management believes this proactive system of monitoring and continuous system health reporting is critical to the plant’s success.
2. Plan for outages. A 10-unit plant like Shawnee will usually have at least one unit involved in an overhaul or maintenance outage at all times. Shawnee uses a 42-month outage cycle, which means two or three units are overhauled every year. Detailed outage planning, completed well in advance, ensures that all plant staff are prepared to meet the outage planning milestones. Shawnee has developed this process into an art form: the team meets over 95% of the schedule’s outage milestones. Plant staff fully expect an overhauled unit to run until the next outage, but typically it will have 400- to 500-day runs.
3. Document your procedures. During the early years at Shawnee, staff thought it a sign of weakness if an operator had to break out the procedure book. Today the culture has changed, and using procedures is the natural order of things. Every critical job maintenance work package is accompanied by a set of instructions—peer checks, checklists, and step-by-step procedures. Staff members are also expected to continuously review the procedure and suggest updates or changes. The operations manager receives all completed checklists and constantly updates them as new methods or processes are identified. Procedures and checklists are all available on the plant intranet, and emergency operations books are present in every control room.
4. Focus on good labor relations. Shawnee has seven separate bargaining units at the plant, yet they have found common ground: they all agree on excellence in plant maintenance and operations. Plant management believes that its responsibility is to ensure that each member of the plant staff is treated as a team member who, when necessary, will do the right thing. This atmosphere of trust must work, as labor problems tend to be minimal at Shawnee. Everyone who works at Shawnee, regardless of affiliation, is considered part of the Shawnee team—including contractors, vendors, and other temporary TVA employees—and is treated as such.
5. Improve your water chemistry and predictive maintenance (PdM) programs. Believe it or not, all 10 boilers are still outfitted with the original waterwall tubes that Babcock & Wilcox erected more than 50 years ago. Now that’s a testament to the quality of the plant’s water chemistry program. The laboratory reports to the principal engineer, as do all the system engineers. The lab includes a strong PdM program relying on thermography, oil analysis, vibration, acoustics for detecting pinhole leaks during any boiler outage, and more to give early warning of potential equipment problems. Shawnee has avoided many catastrophic failures due to the success of its PdM program.
6. Develop a multitasking staff. A good portion of the maintenance staff is composed of technicians who have multiple qualifications, but a cadre of experts will always remain. During a typical day shift, four shops are open at the plant: machine, boiler, electrical, and instrument. The first three shops have multiskilled techs who cover the range of crafts expected in a plant. Shawnee also has a small maintenance staff that rotates with the operations staff so that techs with various expertise are also available during the night shift and weekends. This approach has significantly reduced night callouts and unit derates that would normally occur. Maintenance staffs also do their own work on boiler tubes and pulverizers—chores that are typically outsourced at other power plants. Finding the best mix of multiskilled technicians and experts (certified welders, for example) is a work in progress.
7. Develop a safety culture. Shawnee had the best safety record in FY07 of all 11 TVA fossil plants, and the plant staff strongly believe there is a link between a best-performing plant and a safe plant. OSHA recordables were 1.0—only two recordable injuries for a staff of 330 people over the course of the entire year. The plant staff has a continuous focus on safety, and every employee has a high expectation of safety. Shawnee has a five-year safety plan that moves up a level in expectations each year. Safety is now part of the plant’s culture and not just a management expectation (Figure 4).
8. Manage your time. Shawnee practices careful advance planning of the upcoming workweek to ensure that the highest-priority projects are completed. A workweek management meeting, attended by the various foremen and first-line supervisors from maintenance, operations, and engineering, is scheduled each Friday at 12:15 p.m. At that meeting they plan and prioritize the details of the following week, crew by crew. The detailed planning loads about 85% of the available work hours based on work planning estimates, leaving the remaining hours for emerging work and unexpected absences. Shawnee, and TVA as a whole, uses the EPRI Maintenance Optimization Program (MOP) for work order planning.
4. Safety always comes first. Shawnee completed two million man-hours without a lost-time accident in 2006. Leading that effort is the Shawnee Health and Safety Committee. Front row (L to R): Rick Hubbard, Jennifer McCallon, Rick Stimson, Mary Lynn Spear, and Tim Pace. Back row: Kent Saxon, David Grief, Ronnie Coleman, Joey McCallon, Tony Mangina, Lane Van Winkle, and Ronnie Puckett. Courtesy: TVA
9. Spend your dollars wisely. Capital investments over the past few years have significantly improved the overall material condition of the plant. Those investments have reinforced the employees’ belief that TVA is serious about organizational excellence at all levels. Where those dollars were spent to improve plant reliability and availability was guided by input from throughout the workforce, including engineers and bargaining unit members. Regardless of the amount of capital spending approved, it’s important that those dollars are properly invested.
10. Expect success. High expectations are set for every plant staff member, and teamwork is put at the top of the list. Managers and employees are put in positions to succeed. Employees are involved in decision-making at all levels, including decisions that concern capital spending priorities. Employees also are deeply involved in safety initiatives, the Combined Federal Campaign, and community involvement projects. The plant is a community mainstay, and so are its employees.
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