As we continue into 2013, I wanted to take a moment and recognize the success of the Utilities Service Alliance (USA) last year and our plans to continue moving forward towards Excellence.
USA has entered a new era of accountability and engagement. Our members are working more closely together than ever before. Our main focus in 2012 was on implementing the core peer team (CPT) improvement plans to drive specific fleet performance in targeted areas as well as changing the stations’ paradigm from being an individual, stand-alone operation to that of being part of larger team. This was championed by the USA Site Leadership Team (SLT) who took on an increasing role in leading these performance improvement activities as well as driving the behaviors of a fleet organization.
We also received positive feedback when the USA Board met with Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) senior management to discuss our performance improvement initiatives and activities. INPO commented that we had made notable improvements in our focus on performance as a fleet and indicated that our actions were consistent with other high performing fleet organizations.
We saw many successes last year including the continuation of the Excellence in Outage Management seminars, development of a lead scheduler training program, successful implementation of SOER 10-2 assessments and implementation of other key CPT improvement initiatives. Another significant item to note was the formation of a USA Fukushima Response Team that is aggressively staying ahead of industry initiatives and requirements.
Yet, the USA fleet and its members still faced many challenges. Outage performance continued to be challenged throughout much of the industry including USA. Increased regulatory and INPO oversight has continued at some of our member stations and equipment challenges have resulted in several unplanned downpowers and outages. Lower natural gas prices have also created additional economic pressures as members are required to meet new federal regulations to ensure their continued safe operation.
So far in 2013, we have concentrated on aggressively implementing fleet-like behaviors to prevent declining performance from occurring and helping stations where performance challenges exist. This is being done through our new behavior initiative where the CPTs are identifying, assessing and reinforcing the behaviors that result in excellent performance in our stations’ operations. Behaviors have been identified to be at the root of many of our performance issues across the fleet so this will be a key focus area throughout the year.
The table has been set for accelerated performance improvement in 2013. The infrastructure and processes are in place to make USA successful and we have never been more prepared to take that next step.
On behalf of the USA Board, I would like to ask everyone to step up and get engaged with USA. The more you are engaged, the more you will benefit. Please join me and the entire USA team in our ongoing commitment to achieving excellence.
Thank you.
Carl E. Parry
President & CEO
Utilities Service Alliance