The Utilities Service Alliance (USA) Board of Directors recently met with representatives from the Institute of Nuclear of Power Operations (INPO) to discuss our fleet’s performance. The discussion focused on the USA management model and the important role each USA team plays in the fleet’s success.
“INPO recognizes USA has made significant progress the past few years,” explained USA Board Chairman Tom Joyce. “It started with a strong commitment from each member utility and their leaders to be engaged. This has led to stronger fleet processes and an infrastructure that enables us to grow and be successful as a team.”
During the discussion with INPO, increased oversight and accountability was seen as a major driver. The fleet’s core peer teams (CPTs) are more engaged and developing plans to address performance issues in their respective functional area and incorporating these into the USA business plan. The site leadership team (SLT) has also played an active role in reviewing all team actions for horizontal alignment across the fleet and ensuring these improvement actions are properly integrated into each member station’s on-site excellence plan.
“USA’s success is based solely on the success of each and every member of our fleet,” said USA President and Chief Executive Officer Carl Parry. “We continue to see success in training accreditation renewal and security force-on-force exercises as well as improved performance in chemistry and industrial safety. The list continues to grow each quarter. The dedicated professionals at the USA stations are being successful by working together, sharing best practices and supporting each other through peer visits, challenges and reviews.”
As part of the meeting, discussions also included how USA can better utilize INPO resources. Many USA CPTs share information with INPO on a routine basis and invite their counterparts to participate in USA meetings and training opportunities. This has led to better communications and alignment on key industry initiatives within our fleet. Ongoing communications and information exchange with the rest of the industry and with INPO remain a major focus as INPO looks for continued strong performance across the USA fleet.
According to Parry, sustaining improved performance will be every bit as challenging as achieving it, especially with increasing demands from emergent industry issues such as the Fukushima response and cyber security. These are two more areas where USA members are benefiting from the strength of fleet membership through the sharing of workload, costs and the joint development of innovative solutions.
“Working together, we have been able to establish USA’s role as a major force within the industry,” said Joyce. “We must build upon this success and remain actively engaged. Only then will we move closer to excellence.”