Increasing Efficiency through Improving CommunicationAt BNFL Magnox, Aled Roberts was asked to research and develop a website to be used as a tool for exchanging information during the station's annual maintenance period. Aled's solution, adopted by the company, has provided a simple way of improving communication from the Work Management Section throughout the company during the maintenance period, and has also helped manage the introduction of emergent work during this time.
Background:
British Nuclear Group is an international nuclear clean up business, serving government and nuclear utilities. At Wyfla Power Station, there are two reactors and every year one of the reactors is shut down for statutory 'outage'. The workload on the site during this 6-week outage is substantial requiring some 1000 workers. Prior to the outage, a long period is spent preparing and planning the resources to coordinate activities to ensure the outage is completed safely, cost effectively and within agreed shutdown dates. Aled was asked to generate an 'outage website' to bring all the data on outage projects to a single location where the user can obtain the latest information and progress.
Approach:
Initially Aled met with representatives from all outage teams, and the outage management team to define what information they required on the website. He then developed and programmed a website that could be used by all staff to review the outage information and progress throughout the period. The system was created so that each of the outage planners could easily upload their own information on to the site without additional training. Aled?s new design also encompassed a database to help manage any emergent defects that caused changes to the outage plan.
Results:
Aled's website, and database were widely acclaimed by staff using the system on site during the outage period. The system produced a significant improvement on previous years with around 140 changes registered and approved during the maintenance period. This allowed changes to the outage plan to be monitored more closely and the budget for emergent defects was not touched. This resulted in a saving of £180K. Aled's system helped ensure that the 2004 outage was very successful creating an overall saving of £375K.
"It's not easy for a student to join one of the most highly regulated industries, and perform as Aled has done. We are extremely proud of his significant achievement in producing this website"
Mr Andy Corrigan, Site Manager |
