The Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant was the first plant in the industry to try on for size the new INPO evaluation process. The INPO mid-cycle evaluation is taking the form of a pilot, completed in three stages. For the first week, the full evaluation team was on site at Prairie Island; during the second week, the team returned to Atlanta to review materials and begin writing their report; during the third week, a smaller team returned to Prairie Island to validate their findings for the final assessment report.

The purpose of the revised evaluation process is to promote excellence and encourage performance improvement while providing an accurate picture of our station’s performance and trends.

“The evaluation team that came to Prairie Island was a group of highly experienced, strong evaluators who had a lot of insight, feedback and expertise to share with us,” stated Kevin Davison, Prairie Island Site Vice President. “It was a great opportunity to learn from them and to ask what we can do to be better.”

The assessment scope was broad, reaching out to many departments, including Organizational Effectiveness, Maintenance, Operations and Engineering programs and processes.

“Participating in this pilot evaluation provided us the opportunity to give feedback to the INPO executive group on this new process,” Davison said. “We will participate in other plants’ future pilot evaluations so that we can help to shape and guide the new process for broader use across the industry. With some minor adjustments, future plants will benefit from this evaluation for continuous improvement.”

Prairie Island, site of the pilot INPO mid-cycle evaluation.