4.0 Summary of Major DCISC Review Topics, 18th Annual Report - July 1, 2007 thru June 30, 2008
4.14 Organizational Effectiveness and Development
4.14.1 Overview and Previous Activities
The focus of Organizational Effectiveness and Development is centered upon the process transformation and process structure and organizational effectiveness initiatives. DCPP’s cultural change efforts, leadership initiatives and activities, strategic change efforts, etc, are intended to function as interrelated efforts. This focus also supports an INPO initiative to review cultural change, leadership issues, and even human performance, under the area of “organizational effectiveness.”
PG&E developed a DCPP Five Year Business Plan to be sure all departments’ goals and plant goals have total alignment. Prior to the business plan, the plant and department goals and objectives did not have total alignment.
PG&E began discussions in July 1999 with four other similar, well-run nuclear stations (Callaway, Wolf Creek, South Texas and Comanche Peak) to explore shared cost savings and increased industry influence through alliances and to ultimately decide whether to form a joint nuclear operating organization called the Strategic Teaming and Resource Sharing (STARS) initiative. A STARS management structure was established and implementation teams created to begin on approved initiatives.
In previous reporting periods the DCISC reviewed the following Organizational Effectiveness topics:
- NEXIS Project
- Management Observation Program
- Status of STARS
- Management Review Meeting
- New Performance Management Program
- Organizational Effectiveness
- Employee Engagement
- Transformation Update
- Leadership Coaching
- 2007 Business Plan
- All Hands Meeting
In past period the DCISC concluded that there were a number of promising initiatives, programs, training classes, and employee meetings designed to enhance the organizational effectiveness and performance of DCPP.
4.14.2 Current Period Activities
During the current period, the DCISC reviewed the following Organizational Effectiveness and Development items:
- Observe Management Review Meeting
- Management Coaching
- NEXIS Project
- 2007 Business Plan Results and 2008 Business Plan
Observe Management Review Meeting (MRM)
The Fact-finding Team attended an hour of the three-hour Management Review Meeting (MRM) at the December 20-21, 2007 Fact-finding Meeting (Volume II, Exhibit D.5, Section 3.2).
The MRM is now the Performance Review Meeting (PRM) and will be scheduled to meet each month except during refueling outages. The meeting handouts included PRM schedules for 2008, the November 2007 Plant Performance Improvement Report (PPIR), and Presentations Expectations. The meeting was attended by all Vice-Presidents, Directors, Managers, some Supervisors, and certain presenters. This meeting was led by Lance Hopson, Manager, Problem Identification and Prevention.
The agenda included:
- Opening remarks
- Safety & Compliance
- Reliability
- Organization Effectiveness
- Cost
- Employee Concerns
- Emergency Services
- Engineering Services
- Maintenance Services
- Operations Services
- Business Plan Report Outs
- Closing Remarks
The Plant Performance Improvement Report (PPIR) identified five areas with improved performance and three areas of declining performance since the October 2007 PPIR. The five areas of improved performance were:
- Cost-Expense
- Control Room Deficiencies Unit 1
- Maintenance Services 30 day error rate
- NCR Corrective Actions to Prevent Recurrence (CAPRs) overdue
- Strategic Projects Human Performance error rate
The three areas of declining performance were:
- Category, A, B, & C schedule adherence (Maintenance)
- Maintenance rework/repeat
- Accuracy & completeness of Quality Problem Closure
The meeting was well organized, with good presentations. The PRM is a communication and information meeting for people with major responsibilities at DCPP. Management stresses 3-way communication to be sure the information is understood. 3-way would be too time-consuming at the PRM, but effective communication to all attendees should be a goal.
The Plant Performance Improvement Report (PPIR) presented at the Performance Review Meeting identified five areas with improved performance and three areas of declining performance since the October 2007 PPIR. Overall, the meeting was well attended and organized, and the presentations were crisp and informative.
Management Coaching
The DCISC Fact finding Team met with Terry Musch, Senior Lead Coach, to review the Leadership Coaching program at DCPP at the November 13-14, 2007 Fact-finding Meeting (Volume II, Exhibit D.4, Section 3.13). Coaching is a major aspect of the cultural transformation process within PG&E. Kent Oliver was also present for the discussions.
Background about Coaching at DCPP
After a two-year hiatus in coaching efforts at PG&E (2004 to 2006), PG&E executives decided to revive the program as part of overall cultural transformation efforts. Mr. Musch was hired in early 2007 to be part of a corporate Leadership Coaching Development Team of 27 people whose purpose was to reinforce and further develop leadership skills and behaviors at work. Mr. Musch is the Senior Lead Coach for this purpose at DCPP to establish an internal DCPP cross-functional coaching team at the plant and use the skills of those individuals to create a demand for coaching at DCPP among leaders in senior, middle-management, and supervisory ranks among those who had graduated from the PG&E Leadership Academy.
Current Status of the Coaching Program
There appears to be progress toward embedding coaching for leaders at DCPP, although Mr. Musch characterizes that progress as slower than hoped for. Of the four senior leaders of DCPP, one has fully embraced being coached formally and coaching others. A handful of middle-managers are fully involved, with even more participating at the Supervisory level. Those participating are mostly graduates of the Leadership Academy, where the importance of coaching is explored in a classroom setting. Those being coached are experiencing the value and usefulness of coaching, both for themselves and for their subordinates.
The plan to have a capable cadre of internal coaches at DCPP who devote a portion of their time to coaching (under Mr. Musch’s direction) has not yet materialized. The major obstacle to the solidification of the internal coaching team seems to be a lack of collective management willing to free up the time of potential team members to fully develop their coaching skills and apply them systematically. Coaching is a collateral duty and gets deferred by other more pressing tasks. When too little time is invested developing and applying coaching skills, the effectiveness of a team coaching effort is sapped. This situation is an example of what Mr. Musch described as a cultural propensity toward “firefighting” at DCPP: that is, a cultural habit of giving so much attention to daily problems that seem urgent, without a deep consideration of what ought to be treated as true priorities, while allowing important longer-term matters to get less attention than they need and deserve.The negative performance link between the tendency toward daily “firefighting” and the seeming lack of time/energy for leaders to be coached/provide coaching is significant.
The coaching program is important to the success and credibility of the DCPP Cultural Transformation, and even in its early life the Coaching program has offered value to leaders who have participated in it. The DCPP Coaching Program does not appear to be receiving the management attention it deserves nor is it progressing as would benefit the organization. DCISC should continue to follow the progress of this work in future fact finding meetings.
NEXIS Overview
The DCISC Fact-finding Team met with Eric Nelson, Project Manager – NEXIS to review the status of the Nuclear Excellence Information System (NEXIS) project at the March 10-11, 2008 Fact-finding Meeting (Volume II, Exhibit D.8, Section 3.4).
The scope of Project NEXIS is to install SAP software at DCPP. This is a major overhaul of the operational data management system, covering work management, clearances and tagging, maintenance, engineering, supply chain and warehousing, and the Corrective Action Program. The clearance module uses another sub-program with the trade name of eSOMS (Electronic Shift Operations Management System). eSOMS installation has been completed and it was in operation during 1R14. DCPP’s clearance experience during 1R14 was good.
NEXIS will take the place of PIMS (Plant Information Management System), the internally-developed software program set which has been handling these functions at DCPP for more than two decades. PIMS will continue to run after NEXIS is operational for archive purposes, but can no longer be used for active system work. All information will be transferred to the SAP System.
DCPP has several contract employees on the NEXIS project who have experience in converting other nuclear plants to SAP, and they will be assisting in the conversion and training of staff. They will set up 6 classrooms for training. These will be mobile class rooms using laptop computers. They will also set up a “war room” to answer all questions. There will be about 1500 employees needing training in the new system. Depending on their usage needs, some employees will need the maximum initial training of one week (45 hours). Others who will use SAP for their desktop needs (as they used PIMS before) will not need as much training to begin using the news software at the conversion date.
Training of operators will start in June 2008 while most other training will start in July 2008. The objective is to complete the initial training phase in September, 2008. The NEXIS system is projected to be operational for all staff use by September 2008.
DCPP has brought in the necessary experienced employees to assist them with the startup phases of NEXIS. The schedule appears more realistic than earlier plans. It will require substantial training time for all employees before they will be fully capable of using the new system. DCISC should ask DCPP to make a presentation on the installation and progress of NEXIS and its potential for improving reliability and safety information at the January, 2009 Public Meeting.
Diablo Canyon Business Plan: 2007 Results and 2008 Goals.
Jacqui Hinds reviewed and discussed the goals and results for 6 focus areas of the 2007 DCPP Business Plan at the DCISC January 23-24, 2008 Public Meeting (Volume II, Exhibit B.6).
Industrial safety and human performance was a focus area of the 2007 Business Plan. Goals included an injury-free year and a reduction in the number of significant human performance errors to 2 or fewer. Results achieved included 3 disabling injuries, 2 of which were to PG&E employees, and 3 significant human performance errors including an error involving controlled access to a high radiation area.
The 2007 Business Plan focused on energizing employees. A goal was established to create an environment that recognized superior performance and encouraged and rewarded sharing ideas to improve plant performance. Results indicate the Premier survey, an annual employee survey, found employee engagement remained the same as during 2006. The Rewards and Recognition Program continued to reward employee teams and Breakthrough Teams were dedicated to work simplification issues.
ALARA was a 2007 focus area for the Business Plan. The goal established included completing 1R14 with @#8249;84 person-rem for outage related work and accomplishing non outage work with @#8249;8 person rem. Collective radiation exposure during 1R14 was 103.2 person-Rem and non outage work resulted in 8.914 person-Rem exposure. Exposure as a result of the August 2007 unplanned outage counts against the goal. There was no report of individual dose because no worker had an individual dose close to a danger threshold.
Refueling outage performance was a 2007 focus area for the Business Plan and the goal was to complete 1R14 with no recordable injuries and no human performance events in @#8249;25 days. Results included 6 recordable and 1 disabling injury, 1 human performance event and an outage completed in 29 days, 19.5 hours.
For the first time, the 2007 Business Plan included focus on performance improvement as part of a systematic approach to training and the use of performance analysis tools to meet improvement targets. Results included meeting 88 of improvement targets. Success was achieved in implementing Performance Improvement Roll-up Meetings as part of this focus area. Fundamental programs as defined by each organization were implemented and focused on areas each organization needed to be successful, such as the Corrective Action Program and accurate planning.
Project performance was an identified 2007 Business Plan focus area and the goal set included accomplishing 5 key projects. Of these key projects, 3 were accomplished including those related to the positive displacement pumps, the Containment Sump Project and the Steam Generator Replacement Project. There were 2 key projects from the 2007 Business Plan delayed and deferred to 2008. These included the modification to plant facilities necessitated by the ISFSI Project, due in part to seismic qualification issues related to the Fuel Handling Building, and the replacement of the plant process computer by NEXIS.
There are four cornerstones of the 2008-2012 Business Plan: safety and compliance; reliability; cost; and organizational effectiveness. Focus areas were identified in the Business Plan, with details including milestones and measurements being contained in Action Plans. Performance goals have been established with key performance indicators having targets for five years. Progress toward achieving results is then reviewed periodically at the Performance Review Meetings.
Large groups of plant employees had input into the focus areas, and the officers considered their feedback as part of the employee engagement component of the 2008-2012 Business Plan. The DCPP Vision Statement has been expanded and employees from the bargaining and non-bargaining units were encouraged to provide input to create alignment and to get the work accomplished concerning the identified focus areas.
The 2008-2012 Business Plan has eight focus areas:
- Safety & Compliance Cornerstone:
- Industrial Safety - in 2008 combined with human performance
- ALARA - collective radiation exposure.
- Reliability Cornerstone:
- Equipment Reliability - also a key area in the 2007 Business Plan, focused for 2008-2012 on single point vulnerability studies and preventative maintenance optimization.
- Cost Cornerstone:
- Cost Performance - the cost to produce electricity.
- Organizational Effectiveness Cornerstone:
- Employee Engagement - rewards and recognition and business planning and work simplification. Each area will have performance measures established.
- Human Performance Improvement - a split focus area between error prevention tools, the performance roll-up process and improved procedures.
- Refueling Outage Performance - identifying gaps to reliability. In developing the 2008-2012 Business Plan, DCPP reviewed “tier one” measures and selected the most important.
- Project Management Performance - focused on how people work and on the strategies which relate to how the organization does business and overall project management, not the projects themselves.
The Business Plan rolls down to each employee depending on his or her job. It is expected to be promulgated to the employees by the conclusion of 2R14 outage. DCPP has been developing business plans in various forms for at least 10 years. There now appears to be more interest among DCPP employees in the business plan and it is seen as a tool to improve alignment and to ensure accountability.
4.14.3 Conclusions and Recommendations:
- Conclusion:
- DCPP Organizational Effectiveness is moving forward with initiatives such as Management Performance Review meetings focusing on organizational effectiveness as well as plant performance, the Nuclear Excellence Information System (NEXIS) Project and associated process improvements, and a promising business plan developed with employee input.
- Recommendations:
- None