POWER January 2016 - 44

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
real value to the organization. Reducing the time it takes to get information
to decision makers helps us achieve our mission of operational
and financial excellence for the station. "
Implementing a Process Improvement Plan
As part of a multi-year strategic plan, the IT team, in partnership with
station and corporate leadership, developed a four-pillar approach to
help ensure the company delivered on its key results. These pillars
were: financial optimization, operational excellence, people development,
and value to customer.
The first action taken was to fully internalize and understand the
company's key results or long-term goals. Once these were understood,
the IT department worked on its strategy to deliver on those key
results with accuracy and quality.
The process involved several steps. First, a thorough review of IT
projects both large and small was conducted to determine how they
supported the larger organization's key results. If there was a question
as to their value-add to the overall organization, they were quickly
culled from the list. Then, backlogged items were prioritized to ensure
that the person-hours spent reducing the backlog would directly
contribute to the company's key results. Items were categorized according
to the four pillars of long-term focus.
KPIs were created to measure the success of the four pillars. Once this
process was completed, a holistic review of the strategy was conducted
with IT and station leadership to ensure the connectedness of IT goals and
long-term objectives with STP Nuclear Operating Co.'s key results. It was
important for STP's IT leadership to illustrate how projects that IT personnel
worked on contributed to the company's bottom line or helped add
value to business and plant operations.
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Departments Embrace Technology
Operational excellence was one of the four pillars and continues to be
a focus for the technology department at STP. Over the past several
years, key technologies have been put into place, which have proved
to add tremendous value and efficiency to the way STP operates its
business. The following examples are a few IT system improvements
implemented in recent years.
Video Surveillance Management System. In 2012, IT worked
with the Health Physics department to install a turnkey solution to view
and capture video of outage activities. The innovative use of a software
application called Omnicast-a video surveillance management system
supplied by Genetec Inc.-allows users on the local area network
to view video feeds from containment and other active outage areas
around the station. The feeds may be viewed live as the activities are
taking place or retrieved from archived footage on the server. The video
feeds may also be shared with offsite vendors when necessary.
" The ability to do this has allowed us, on many occasions, to go
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44
back and critique entire evolutions and develop process improvements, "
said Robert Bowers, STP Health Physics ALARA (as low
as reasonably achievable) technician. Radiation exposure to personnel
has decreased significantly since implementation of the Omnicast
system (Figure 3). STP's Health Physics team estimates that the plant
is reducing dose by as much as 20% per outage, depending on the
scope of activities. The new camera equipment is quick to install and
remove, and requires fewer people to complete the task (Figure 4).
The magnetically mounted equipment allows fewer personnel to be
inside the reactor containment, because supervisors and technical experts
can view tasks remotely instead. Wireless access throughout the
STP site, including in the power block and containment (more than
550 access points), has allowed IT staff to assist the plant and provide
24/7 recording of key activities.
Handheld Log-Taking Devices. Staying true to its vision of supporting
operational performance, IT provided a valuable solution to
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POWER January 2016

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