POWER May 2014 - 42

OUTAGE MANAGEMENT
" Safety Is Not an Accident " in the April
2014 issue or online at powermag.com.)
Keeping track of the hours worked by
essential employees is also imperative.
Fatigue sets in very quickly during forced
outages. Often, workers have been awake
and may have worked an entire normal
shift prior to being called back for emergency
repairs. A proper plan can minimize
wasted time, allowing workers to maximize
their rest without unnecessarily prolonging
the outage.
Most companies have policies restricting
the number of hours that an employee
can work without a rest period, but even
those limitations can border on excessive.
The quality of work that you can expect
from an exhausted employee is much
lower than normal. Additionally, some
jobs can only be done by a select group of
qualified individuals.
For example, if you only have one welder
qualified to perform a certain weld that is required
to complete a repair, you can't afford
to waste that person's time because the job
could be shut down when they have to take
a rest break.
In nuclear outages, radiation dose must be
tracked even more closely than time in some
cases. Personnel with a skill set needed on
a high-dose-rate job must have their total
dose managed conservatively on other jobs
to maximize their availability for the work
that only they can do. Accurate scheduling
and time estimating is crucial to maximizing
their productive hours and minimizing overall
outage duration.
Of course, fluff is a scheduler's nightmare.
When workers provide a cushion for
themselves within their estimates, it will frequently
throw the entire timeline off track.
Realistically, finishing a job early is just as
bad as finishing a job late. The goal should
always be to have accurate estimates based
on the averages.
Postgame Analysis
During an outage, there should be a constant
flow of information-updating statuses
and projecting outcomes-but when
the outage is over, it's also important to go
back and review the results. It's no secret
that there can be a lot of stress and pressure
when a unit is offline. Corporate folks
want to know if the unit will be up on time,
finance types are curious if the projections
are right, people need parts " yesterday, " so
emotions can run high.
Conducting a post-outage critique two to
three weeks after startup with the plant back
online and making money allows cooler
heads to prevail. At that point, people can
look at the lessons learned, provide constructive
feedback, and come away with a better
understanding of what can be done to improve
the process in the future.
According to Starr, D&Z shares lessons
learned and industry best practices with its
clients. These include safety, quality, cost,
and scheduling practices.
" At the end of the day, the project management
tools and the principles are the
same across all industries, " Starr said. " We
try to drive the same planning concepts, as
far as the estimating, the scheduling, having
the core planning and execution team onsite
early, having an integrated schedule, your
lessons learned database and your historical
estimating, all of that is the same across all of
these industries. "
Good communication, a well-defined
scope, solid personnel who buy into the plan,
and the right checks and balances are all
needed. In the end, what works is having a
team effort. ■
-Aaron Larson is a POWER associate editor
(@AaronL_Power, @POWERmagazine).
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