Assign Areas to Maximize Power-Plant Skills

Work assignments based on areas of responsibility allow supervisors to focus on the big picture by shifting much of the day-to-day responsibilities to journeymen.

By T.E. Baker, Sumatron Inc.

Use this labor-specialization approach to make the most out of a limited number of skilled workers, cut costs, improve efficiency, and enhance safety.

Countless operations around the globe are feeling the impact of the ongoing skilled-workforce crisis. That situation, combined with the types of advanced digital-logic technologies on which industries now rely, presents serious challenges for plants, including those in the power-generating sector. Overcoming them calls for best-practice strategies and tactics when deploying available workers. A form of labor specialization can be an effective approach.

This article focuses on three crafts or journeymen positions at large generating stations: electricians, instrument technicians, and protective-relay technicians. The principle responsibilities for these individual positions, from the least to the highest paid are:

• electricians–electrical-apparatus maintenance
• instrument technicians–physical measurement of pressure, flow, and temperatures, and associated closed-loop process control
• protective-relay technicians–protective relaying, electrical measurements, and generator excitation.

Note that there are a number of gray areas involving programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other equipment that could be assigned to any of the journeymen positions to balance the workload. For example, let’s use a site that doesn’t have enough protection work to justify a full-time protective-relay technician. In such a case, the relay technician could also be assigned responsibilities for turbine-governor control, turbine-supervisory instrumentation, main-unit tripping, and managing electrical drawing revisions.

The self-sufficient method

Power-plant managers generally take one of two staffing approaches—minimize manning by contracting out the necessary work or hiring sufficient in-house staff in the required skill areas, i.e., the self-sufficient approach. If managed properly, the self-sufficient approach is more economical than using contractors. Benefits include:

• more efficient workforce through labor specialization
• faster turnaround times, as a result of having on-site expertise to immediately deal with equipment failure
• better utilization of employee strengths
• higher employee job satisfaction
• enhanced plant-maintenance control, leading to improved personnel safety and equipment availability
• reduced training expenses.

With regard to being self sufficient, on a five-day weekly basis, over the course of a year, the following loading seems practical:

• two man-days for routine work
• one man-day for troubleshooting work
• two man-days of float.

The annual number of routine man-hours can be identified for each work element for which the craft is responsible, assuming that there are no problems uncovered during the routine process.

On an annual basis, if there is enough routine work for two man-days/week, or 104 man-days annually, on average, that much equipment will generate approximately one man-day/week, or 52 man-days annually for troubleshooting purposes. The additional two man-days of float/week, or 104 man-days annually, provide for vacations, holidays, meetings, and unforeseen maintenance.

Some in the power industry advocate a “super technician” position that can effectively handle the electrician, instrument-technician, and protective-relay-technician functions. The disadvantage of that approach is there are no super people. Even the best of us are just mortals.

It’s also very rare that any individual can capably handle all three responsibilities. A super technician is normally paid more, but those who were previously electricians, for example, still perform mostly as electricians while receiving the higher wage.

Power-generating station managers can reduce the impact of the ongoing skilled-workforce crisis by using a self-sufficient approach that involves assigning area responsibilities to personnel.

Assign maintenance areas

Discussions of area maintenance bring to mind an old TV commercial for a California supermarket chain: “It may be Mr. Albertson’s supermarket,” a worker proudly exclaims, “but the produce section belongs to me.” Similar sentiments can apply to power-station personnel whose work assignments are based on areas of responsibility. An area-maintenance approach can generate a number of benefits, including:

• pride of ownership
• improved specialization of labor
• support for focused training
• easy understanding of management expectations
• visible and obvious improvements in employee performance
• assignments based on employee strengths
• natural fostering of friendly competition
• greater interest in housekeeping
• additional interest in reducing man-hours.

Work assignments based on areas of responsibility also allow supervisors to focus on the big picture by shifting much of the day-to-day responsibilities to the journeymen. To help realize these benefits:

• Provide workers with business cards that identify their respective areas of responsibility, i.e., “Unit 1 Electrician.” Individuals will naturally take greater interest in housekeeping for their areas of responsibility and look for ways to reduce the time required for different tasks.
• Make it possible to contact the responsible journeyman without going through management. Workers should be encouraged to order and organize parts and supplies needed for their own areas of responsibility and to work directly with operations for electrical clearances or tag-out procedures.
• Treat areas of responsibility as separate business units. If, for example, there is an outage on Unit 1, the Unit 2 journeyman could assist in the Unit 1 outage and charge his/her time accordingly. Annual appraisals might be centered on employees completing the routine work for their areas of responsibility, troubleshooting strengths, housekeeping, and managing their area effectively by reducing costs.
• Avoid long overhaul outages by performing routine technical work during short, unplanned outages. Protective-relay testing, for example, can be performed during any outage and still meet NERC testing requirements. In fact, some of the work could be completed when the unit is online and might not require a complete unit outage.
• Organize work to reduce time wasters. For example, each journeyman should be able to locate vendor information, drawings, tools, test instruments, and spare parts for his/her area of responsibility in a few minutes. When these workers have free time, they should organize those items and fabricate test or maintenance fixtures that reduce maintenance man-hours. Lockable job boxes can be staged where they will be needed. Test equipment also should be configured to reduce setup and take-down time.

It’s more than economics

While self-sufficiency/area-maintenance approaches are important from an economic perspective, there’s more at stake: Large oil, gas, and nuclear-power generating operations can present a range of hazards that require additional personnel to mitigate or eliminate. Operating mistakes clearly can have an enormous impact on personnel safety but, on the technical-maintenance side, a power-generating station depends on electricians to properly maintain the electrical equipment to prevent explosions. It counts on instrument technicians to maintain the controls, trips, and logic permissives for safe operation of large turbines and boilers. It also relies on relay technicians to automatically isolate short circuits and other anomalies.

Thus, it is imperative that the equipment systems in these operations be maintained properly, that employees understand what is expected of them, and that they have formal responsibilities. In a technically complex power-generating station, a safe environment can be best achieved through some form of specialized labor. MT

Reference

T. E. Baker, Electrical Calculations and Guidelines for Generating Stations and Industrial Plants, Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2011.

Author

T.E. (Tom) Baker, is principal engineer at Sumatron Inc., Laguna Niguel, CA (sumatron.com). Prior to joining Sumatron, he worked 36 years at Southern California Edison (SCE), 15 of those years as principal electrical engineer for 12 large SCE gas, oil, and coal-generating stations. Email: tbaker@sumatron.com.