At USA fleet member Fermi 2, engineers Nicholas Taba, Craig Shepherd and Richard Glosup sat at a table, staring down at the incomplete construction of a toy car.

A procedure — with many of its steps circled and slashed — sat nearby, providing less-than-perfect instructions.

“Where is the supervisor for this job?” Taba called out, seeking help to determine the next appropriate step.

Somewhere behind him, a person answered: “He’s helping other workers.”

“Let him know we need him when he’s available,” Taba replied.

The three engineers were participating in one of four Dynamic Learning Activities in the Nuclear Training Center at Fermi 2. The activities were part of a two-day Human Performance training activity the Engineering department conducted prior to Refueling Outage 16.

The Dynamic Learning Activities, or DLAs, focused on engineering fundamentals as defined by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO). The program also aligns with the USA Engineering Core Peer Team’s new behavior initiative — which aims to improve risk identification, assessment and mitigation fleet wide.

John Klohn, a technical specialist at Fermi 2 who organized the program, said the benefit of DLAs is the ability to apply — rather than just define — human performance tools.

“It is nice to talk about tools but it is better to go through a simulated situation where you are forced to use the tools,” Klohn said. “I can sit down and tell you what risk recognition looks like and I can define it for you and I can show you a Human Performance tool that deals with it. But you don’t want to practice in the plant. If you go out in the plant and do things, it has to be perfect, there is no room for errors.”

“Doing it in a controlled manner, there is no harm, there are no real consequences,” he said. “But at the same time, you can still monitor behaviors and improve performance.”

Nearly 200 engineers — Fermi 2 employees, contractors from URS and three engineers from Davis Besse — completed four DLAs focusing on different themes. They were:

1. Oversight: Teams built a security vehicle, with one group in the team building the body and the other building the chassis. All the teams had to utilize was a procedure. The supervisor had photos of a completed vehicle and could provide oversight to the team if the team asked for help. Halfway through the activity, the supervisors were called away to a meeting.

2. Risk recognition: The teams participated in a gamed called the Chili Cook Off. The teams, given various rules, had to buy a list of items in order to make chili at a festival in Texas, which they could fly or drive to. During the cooking, various things could go wrong, such as faulty gas tanks. The teams were given fake money and were able to “purchase” various items. The goal was to buy the appropriate items based on the potential risks.

“You have to look at the potential risk and mitigate the risk,” Klohn said. For instance, in the case of the faulty tank, teams that anticipated such a problem purchased a spare tank.

3. Advocacy: Teams were given a scenario in which each individual was a member of a family. A child in the family is trying to convince the family to buy him a new vehicle to replace an old beater — the options being a used Ford pickup or a new Ford Fiesta. The team must weigh various factors and they must advocate their position.

4. Tolerance for accepting deviations: The teams faced four different tasks, all of which are real-life scenarios, including procurement issues, concrete quality and the issue of the South Reactor Feed Pump. The moderators try to get the engineers to accept and sign off on materials, calibrations or other data when they are outside of clearances. The goal is to teach the engineers the importance of minimizing such sign offs, which helps keep risk low and avoids decreasing our operating margin.

“The lesson is to trust but verify,” Klohn said, “especially with vendors.”

They are all lessons that resonate with the engineers.

“It drove home the fact that you can’t just pick up a task and go with it,” Matt Pierson, a systems engineer, said. “You have to be rigorous to perform a task.”

Richard Beck, in reactor engineering, said the lessons mimicked real-world experiences. He said that was especially true with the car-building exercise when the supervisor overseeing the job was called off to a meeting and was not available.

“I thought it did a very good job simulating real-world obstacles you may come across,” he said. “There are many instances where you need people’s assistance and they are not available. It was a good example of real world activities.”

Engineer Jessica Steffke, who works in Performance Engineering, said the lessons applied directly to her daily activities.

But one lesson was particularly significant, she said.

“I learned that it is important to know the processes even when they are not your specific processes,” she said. “If you are a team lead, in other words, you need to make sure you know all the requirements.”

Gene Benedicto, left, Diego Mora, standing, and Kalen Bennett participate in a Dynamic Learning Activity in which they put together a small toy car.