POWER May 2013 - 108

COMMENTARY
A Safety Milestone at
NV Energy
By Dariusz Rekowski
" S
afety is as Safety Does " and " Ignoring a Warning
Can Cause Much Mourning " are two of the more creative
safety slogans I've heard. Such inventive catch
phrases and workplace safety posters are just part of what
helps us achieve our ultimate goal, which is to ensure our
employees return to their homes and loved ones in the same
condition they left.
Only a collaborative and concerted effort, coupled with individual
responsibility, can help us safely manage our power
industry environment, which is full of extremely high temperatures,
high pressures, and, of course, electricity.
We are always learning and improving at NV Energy, and I felt
it was important to share some of the values and methods we use
to help keep each other safe.
Culture of Safety
One place within our fleet that stands out is at our natural
gas-fueled Fort Churchill Generating Station, just north of Yerington,
Nevada. Remarkably, this plant's team of more than
30 employees crossed a silver-anniversary safety threshold last
year. The vigilant personal responsibility and " watch-out-foreach-other "
safety culture at Fort Churchill has resulted in more
than 25 years of operation without experiencing a single losttime
accident. We've been told that is the best in the nation
for a fossil-fueled plant, and we are very proud of our team and
what they've accomplished. It's even more amazing when you
think about it this way: The last lost-time accident happened
when Ronald Reagan was president and a gallon of gasoline
sold for under $1.
No one effort or policy or program can take full credit for such
an accomplishment, but we've discovered that one of the most
important and successful approaches we use is unfiltered communications
between our maintenance and operations crews and
the executive level of our company.
Specifically, our executive team and safety leaders regularly
visit power plants to directly talk to our employees
about safety. To reduce normal employee inhibitions about
communicating information and making suggestions, we excuse
our power plant directors, leaders, and supervisors from
these meetings. This enables the discussion to focus on safety
solutions, without worry of unintended innuendo. Our role
as executives is to understand the issues and work to remove
any actual or perceived barriers to achieving a best-in-class
safety experience.
Another best practice at NV Energy is freeing up time and
resources to routinely allow small teams of power plant employees
to audit other power plants or work environments.
Too often safety-minded workers in a longstanding or comfortable
environment are blind to some of the everyday little
108
things that could turn into safety problems or injuries.
At the Fort Churchill Generating Station, we responded to
more than 1,500 safety suggestions over the years, which combined
to make the plant the safest in the nation. Those safety
recommendations came from safety meetings, safety audits,
individual suggestions, and the plant's safety committee. Additionally,
the safety culture of our Fort Churchill team benefits
from the fact that our employees are part of a larger community,
where children play sports together, spouses see each other
at the local market, and employees socialize offsite. These
interactions tend to strengthen our watch-out-for-each-other
safety culture.
Timely, widespread employee communications about safety
successes and failures are also part of our safety culture. Any
time we have an injury, we require our safety teams to do a
root-cause safety analysis. We want the lessons learned to be
available to all team members as soon as possible. This helps to
prevent similar situations and serves as a reminder of the importance
of safety in our workplaces.
Everyone Goes Home, Every Day
All of this brings me back to this thought: I believe that the most
important key to our success has been our dedication to value
" safety over production-always. " Leaders have the opportunity
to demonstrate this at all times, and employees know that they
are expected to stop all work, including plant production, when
safety could be compromised.
Our teams have established intentional slowdowns at the
beginning and end of planned outages to purposely demonstrate
this value. We have specific work tasks that are
not permitted to be performed when an employee is solo,
or when the site is in production mode with only two employees.
We insist that deliveries be turned away when we
do not have the proper after-hours staffing to accommodate
unloading.
Everyone must own safety. We cannot be hampered by the
potential of hurt feelings or myriad other factors that inadvertently
creep into a safety culture that could compromise
safety. Words cannot describe the hurt and loss to family
members when loved ones are injured or killed. Similarly, I
know how difficult it is for " company family members " when a
fellow employee is hurt. No motto can fix those situations-
only an ongoing collaborative effort that helps us keep up
with an ever-changing safety environment.
We cannot compromise on our environmental integrity, and
we cannot compromise our commitment to return our dedicated
employees back to their loved ones each and every day. ■
-Dariusz Rekowski is NV Energy's executive over
power generation.
www.powermag.com
POWER | May 2013
http://www.powermag.com
POWER May 2013

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