Conference Grid

Learn resiliency and reliability tips from three different industries – wildland firefighting, aviation and healthcare. Hear lessons learned from wildfire firefighters who have performed so reliably that they now act as testers for reliability concepts and practices. Also hear insight on how aviation achieves the highest reliability of any industry, as well as a case study on the steps that hospitals took to improve resiliency after it was reported that hospital error was the third leading cause of deaths in the US.

As the power generation space transitions to the 21st century, the demands on the workforce continue to increase. This session will examine the process to train and develop workers through transitions of all types, including coal-to-gas, low-tech to high-tech, etc.

This session will relate how NERC has adapted the lessons learned from Wildland Firefighting, Aviation and Healthcare industries (4B), all in an effort to promote behavior consistent with the concepts of a Highly Reliable Organization (HRO) and to promote resilience in the Bulk Power System.

In organizations with strong safety cultures, safety is not a goal but a way of doing business. This interactive session will explore the attributes of a safety culture by presenting a road map that’ll ensure your facility is achieving an optimal safety approach.

There are two choices: fix the worker or fix the system. Fixing the worker means training, disciplining, or terminating a person who did something they didn’t mean to do in the first place and don’t intend to do again. In fact, they are the one most likely NOT to do it again as they’ve learned the lesson the hard way. Fixing the system means looking at breakdowns that set the worker up to fail and will be better for the worker, the organization, and is really the only reliable path forward. This session explores how to move from a “crime and punishment” model of managing safety to a “diagnose and treat”. You have to choose: blame or learning culture. You can’t have both.

Efforts to increase plant reliability are often focused on equipment but many plant trips and equipment failures are triggered by human actions. This means reliability ultimately comes down to people. We begin with an understanding that work in power plants is variable and complex. This leads to a different approach to work than traditional safety systems. For example, practices focus on developing deep knowledge and improving decision making. In these sessions, practical strategies and tactics will be shared to move toward being a highly reliable, resilient organization.

Presentations and discussions continue from 4G: Design for Resilience – Practices, O&M (Session 1)