IMPAQ Case Studies
Nuclear Plant Improvement
Synopsis | The Situation
The nuclear plant was ranked in the lowest INPO (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) quartile and wanted to increase Accountability in the organization in order to move up. Safety problems, outages and other issues were continuous; people weren’t being accountable to processes and procedures already in place. Management had tried just about everything they could to address the problem. The senior team purchased three different books on Accountability in an effort to build Accountability internally. They found the book “Creating the Accountable Organization” to be most helpful and called IMPAQ for assistance.
Summary | Our Work Together
We started with the Technical Services leadership group and emphasized cross-functional leadership which they were not used to doing at all. Initially, the team would arrive at clarity on an issue but then go into paralysis by analyzing the solution to the extreme. This produced solutions that were overly complex and created even more confusion at the operating unit level.
The leadership group began to take ownership for the whole department not just their individual silos. They discovered similar problems across units and began to work on them together rather than take a more fragmented approach.
The CEO was actively involved in the initial working sessions and stated that although he thought he had seen just about everything in the industry, nothing had been nearly as successful as this approach.
6 Month Results
- Average repair costs are down.
- Improved recordable and loss time rate related to safety issues went from 2.02 to 1.58 (a 22% improvement).
- Improved quality of Operability Determination outstanding issues reduced 40%.
- Average corrective action (items) went down from 900 to 114, prior to IMPAQ’s session, this number had never been below 120.
- Number of control room deficiencies down by 25%.
- Corrective maintenance backlog down by 25%.
- Reduction in AR backlog down 700 to 100.
- 79% of their Success Factors improved and 46% improved significantly.
Quotes from the CEO and Chief Nuclear Officer
You never know what the next challenge will be in the nuclear utility industry. Your organization must be responsive and focused in dealing with it. Working together as a team must be a natural behavior. IMPAQ and Agreements for Excellence [now Rapid Team Results] enabled us to achieve that level of performance.
– Vic Parrish-Energy Northwest, Richland WA
