The USA Board of Directors (BOD) unanimously approved a new ‘Going Forward Strategy’ and Business Model for the Utilities Service Alliance (USA) for 2018 during its Strategic Planning Meeting with Gap Focus Owners (GFO) held Sept. 6 at USA Corporate Offices in Overland Park, Kansas.

“The development of the strategy and business model is an important step in achieving the alliance’s mission of safe, cost-effective excellence,” said USA BOD Chairman Timothy S. Rausch. “The new model ensures accountability resides with individual station leadership teams, but facilitation of performance improvement through synergies, lessons learned, simple template models and sharing resources will now be easier than ever to achieve and sustain.”

The most significant shift to USA’s strategy is that it will no longer provide a Governance and Oversight Role to its members, but will focus on a Service, Support, and Facilitation Role.

The following changes to the USA business model were approved as a part of the new strategy, with its three strategic objectives to:

i. Improve Operational Performance through facilitation of lessons learned, conduct of assessments, industry benchmarking and best-practice sharing
ii. Improve Economic Performance through use of our Supply Chain agreements, personnel sharing and other cost-savings opportunities
iii. Facilitate common response to targeted and focused fleet performance gaps or issues as approved by the BOD

USA’s new strategy also includes a change to a single membership level – ‘Full Member’ status – which covers all ‘Core Business’ activities and services. Additional projects or Gap Closures will be supported on an individual (a la carte) basis as desired by the member stations.

Additionally, the Site Leadership Team will be disbanded and a Site Rep team will be created to facilitate implementation of the new model. Revised accountability and engagement criteria will be implemented for team members.

And to top it off, USA will no longer invoice utilities for their membership dues. Membership dues will be paid directly from station rebate dollars.

“There is a great deal of excitement around the new model and strategy, which has been in development since early 2017,” said USA President & Chief Executive Officer John Christensen. “After the changes we experienced last year, as well as ongoing competitive pressures in our industry, it was clear that refining the USA model to re-double efforts toward collaboration, efficiency and cost-reduction will best serve our members moving forward. We are pleased with the results of this effort and appreciate the input and support from our CNOs.”

Core Business Activities which will remain as part of the new Business Model are noted below:
• Aggressive Use of our Supply Chain Services and Tools including:
o Supply Chain Agreements
o Supplier Performance Monitoring (SPM) Tools
o Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Savings Reporting
o Process for adding new agreements (Initiative Proposal Summary [IPS] Review and Support)
• USA Annual Executive Summit
• USA Annual Winter Supply Chain Conference
• USA Facilitation of Member Support of stations in INPO Elevate, Escalate, or Recovery
• USA Nuclear Safety Culture Assessments
• USA Mid-Cycle Assessment Support
• Shared Personnel for Outages and other key activities
• Shared Tools and Equipment
• USA Networking Team Monthly Calls
• USA Jump-Up calls for emergent issues
• USA Communications Team Calls and Support
• Regulatory Affairs T&Q Program*
• USA Valve Team support*

* These programs are facilitated by USA but are industry initiatives that are self-funded and separate from USA dues.

USA will be working over the next three months to implement the change management plan to communicate and implement transition to this new model. Additional information will be provided as we proceed through the transition.