Membership does have its privileges, and USA member Cook Plant personnel openly welcomed the 15 peers from other USA sites in support of the Cook Unit 1 Refueling Outage this spring.

“The experience offered from our USA peers is outstanding,” said Tim Farrish, Cook Plant Site USA Shared Personal Liaison. “We have a well-trained group of professionals from our partner stations that offer not only quality work but great operating experience as well.”

This year’s loaned employees come to Cook from the following sites:

Wolf Creek – Bryon Martin and Jeff Bricker

Columbia Station -Loren Wikstrand, Ryan Perrault, Jim Beddeson and Mike Webb

Fermi – Thomas Gregg, Jon Taylor, Dan Martin, Shelly Turpin, Jeff Hoffman and Dianne Smith

Prairie Island – Dennis Bogan and Bryan Banks

Comanche Peak – Dick Sprouse

One important Utilities Service Alliance (USA) initiative is provide value to member stations across the country through the Personnel Sharing Agreement. This allows USA sites to supplement their staff during busy times like refueling outages with high-performing staff from other sites.

“Having shared personnel helping other plants is not only beneficial to the host site, the member station gains best practices as well,” said Cook CFAM Randy Ebright. “When you have experienced workers at your site for a few weeks there is time to share best practices. In the end each site will use the safest, most efficient and most cost-effective way of doing business.”

Interested in loaning your talent for a short period? Each summer USA member sites develop a baseline personnel sharing request database for the following year. Then throughout the year refinements are made to the database as conditions and needs change. It’s a great opportunity for workers to see other USA member sites first hand and to visit some beautiful locations around the United States.

Any interested USA employees should contact their site’s CFAM for upcoming opportunities.