POWER April 2017 - 51

OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE
Simplify Outage Planning to
Increase Collaboration
Courtesy: NRG
Many elaborate planning tools are available to help managers prepare for power
plant outages. However, there is something to be said for keeping things simple.
One modest tool that some NRG Energy facilities have utilized successfully is an
Excel spreadsheet with green and red color codes based on yes or no answers to
straightforward planning questions.
Larry Kofton
P
ower plant planned maintenance outages
are very similar to each other
across the power industry. Because
power plants need to be reliable for the heavy
summer and winter electricity demand, due
largely to consumers heating and cooling requirements,
maintenance outages are usually
completed during the spring and the fall.
The outage team's goal is to properly plan
and execute outages so that plants can deploy
capital effectively to achieve superior value
during peak requirements. To help achieve
that goal, companies have myriad technology
choices to help with outage planning. There are
software applications that can produce complex
models showing subtasks of subtasks, all with
estimated timing and critical paths.
Those tools are very useful during the
actual outage, but the programs are often
intimidating to many of the project team
members and they can stifle collaboration
during the planning process. Simplifying the
outage planning process can help to more
easily share the planning workload, open up
the needed robust communications, and drive
April 2017 | POWER
accountability to the individual stakeholders.
Share the Planning Workload
The outage planning process has several
steps that can take months to complete. To
coordinate the steps, the process requires that
regular meetings be held with all of the key
stakeholders in attendance. Often, the process
involves one person asking the status
of each preparation step while someone else
provides the updates.
This drumbeat-style meeting can hinder
feedback and participation of team members
supporting the outage, creating somewhat of
a silo effect. When people operate in these
silos, you can find your outage just weeks
away with several key steps still incomplete.
To mitigate this, it is best to share the planning
workload across multiple departments.
Tom Puthiyamadam is a principal with
PwC U.S., and in his article " How to Build
a Connected Workforce, " he suggested that
when people work in silos, different units and
capabilities are pulled in at various points in
the process. For example, engineering might
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hand off a task to operations or the sourcing
team might only be consulted after a design
is completed. That type of approach won't
cut it in today's world. Everything has to be
simple, seamless, and intuitive from the start.
As more departments gain involvement
throughout the process, it becomes more obvious
who can support the various tasks for
an upcoming outage. That added involvement
could help reduce the outage planner's
workload and increase knowledge transfer
between individuals with different experiences,
allowing better preparation.
Frequently, unexpected project participants
share valuable lessons learned from other outages.
For example, it is not uncommon for
safety, legal, or procurement staff (Figure 1)
on our team to provide risk input when one
plant is considering the services of a contractor
that recently underperformed at a different
location. If no other options exist and the contractor
must still be selected for the job, the
insight can help tailor terms and conditions to
minimize risk as much as possible.
Another huge benefit of pulling knowl51
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POWER April 2017

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