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Creating a Corporate-Based Outage Strategy for Power Plants
1. Creating a Corporate-Based Outage Strategy for Power Plants
Interview with Mike Crosson, Director of Planning & Scheduling at Calpine Corporation
Year after year, power plants come out of their outage seasons looking
for ways to strengthen their planning and scheduling tools and
strategies. Technology, communication, and a management approach
are some of the factors that affect how power generation professionals
achieve the best possible outage results.
Mike Crosson, Director of Planning & Scheduling at Calpine Corporation
recently spoke with marcus evans about key topics to be discussed at
their upcoming 13th
Annual Outage Management for Power Plants
(OMPP) Conference, July 29-31, 2014 at the Astor Crowne Plaza in
New Orleans, LA.
What does your Planning/Scheduling group look like at the corporate level?
MC: The planning and scheduling efforts at the corporate level are similar to at the plant level only
multiplied. Outage Services has responsibility for the turbine and generator major maintenance portions
of the outages or most work on the turbine and generator proper. The plants are responsible for the
HRSGs and other equipment or auxiliary systems. Most plants have some type of outage every few
months. Some are very short and require little corporate involvement except to track the events. Some
require extensive planning and coordination between the turbine and other site work. A large combined
cycle plant has a turbine outage once or maybe twice a year and a smaller or peaking type plant may
have a turbine outage every 2-5 years.
At the fleet level, there are 60+ forecasted outages per year. Our fleet consists of 30+ makes and models
and as many different configurations as there are plants. The magnitude of volume and variability make
managing the fleet a different exercise than that faced by a plant team managing only their own facility.
The main difference between a plant planning project and corporate planning project is the intimacy
factor. A plant becomes very familiar with the issues and details of their facility. Corporate planning is
much more dependent on others and system information.
Cost efficiency for outage management is a major topic of discussion in the industry. Do you
incorporate real-time budget tracking into your planning/scheduling system? If so, what does the
process look like?
MC: Tracking in and of itself does not lead to efficiency during an outage. However, tracking repeatable
scopes can lead to efficiency improvements. I’ve found tracking costs are primarily for a control function
or after-the-fact accounting function -- both are needed, but tracking is not typically used effectively to
reduce costs. If effort does not reduce outage cost or increase sales, then by definition it is not a high
value activity. To estimate the level of tracking to be effective, it should be set to the minimal amount to
2. meet regulations and increased proportional to the level of opportunity of making cost or sales
improvements.
A corporate-based outage group deals with multiple plants that are managed by different entities.
How do you go about collaborating with plant employees who answer to a different authority?
MC: Both the corporate and plant outage teams have the same ultimate goal of getting the unit
operating quickly and well. There are budgetary concerns that sometimes arise, but Calpine has internal
Divisions of Responsibility (DOR) that address most of these concerns. Also the turbine work is typically
critical path for the plant so this helps us to focus on the issues and resolutions with minimal
consternation.
How has new software and other technology affected your planning process?
MC: There are a couple aspects to this that apply to planning as well as business in general. I’ll speak to
the use of technology such as texting & e-mails. Electronic messaging has replaced conversation and
traditional meetings with agendas, notes and summary action items. It has made the passing of
information much easier but in many ways it has hindered communication.
A single issue can generate 20 or more e-mails with different conversation lines. The
time to read, understand, file and comment via typing either on the computer or smart
phone is time-consuming and singularly effective.
High volume electronic traffic leads to some e-mails not being read in a timely manner,
if at all.
Facial and body language is missing and leads to misunderstanding a situation, intent or
instruction.
Long e-mail trains can have buried details that can be missed.
Finally, there are the always present errors caused by poor typing, auto correction
features, and texting language creeping into business applications.
All of these can lead to errors in scoping and other planning functions that can be avoided with meetings
or even conference calls (provided that people are not multi-tasking during the conversation).
Once outage season ends each year, what is your process to plan for the next year? From past outage
seasons, what are some takeaways that have been implemented into your strategy for the following
year?
MC: At the fleet level, there are two outage seasons a year, the spring and fall. Therefore, Calpine is in
constant planning mode. Calpine is organized with an Outage Operations group and Planning &
Scheduling group. The Planning and Scheduling group is focused on the next season and the 5-year
forecast, while the Outage Operations group is focused on executing the immediate season’s work. Both
groups work closely together throughout the year and this has led to multiple improvement initiatives.
The Operations group conducts post-season reviews of selected outages in order to perform a “deep
dive” into the project’s performance including resources, tools, parts, finance, schedule and quality.
Calpine recently initiated a customer feedback loop to understand the customer’s perspective more
3. thoroughly. With a couple hundred events being performed annually, it is difficult to improve every
shortcoming. Therefore, this data is being captured, categorized, assessed for value/impact and used to
develop improvement projects that will have the highest impact to the company.
Michael has been in the turbine/generator maintenance industry for 16 years with both Siemens and
Calpine Corporation starting as a Field Engineer, Project Manager, Service Manager and now Director.
His experience has involved Nuclear, Coal and Gas Turbine outages both domestically and abroad.
Calpine Corporation is a power producer with approximately 29 Gigawatt portfolio of operating plants
throughout the US. Michael is responsible for the tools, processes and people who perform outage
forecasting, scheduling and planning for approximately 50 major maintenance outages annually as well
as various outage related fleet programs.
For more information regarding the highly anticipated marcus evans 13th
Annual OMPP Conference,
please check out the conference website or contact Tyler Kelch, Marketing Coordinator, Media & PR,
marcus evans at 312-894-6310 or Tylerke@marcusevansch.com.
About marcus evans
Marcus evans conferences annually produce over 2,000 high quality events designed to provide key
strategic business information, best practice and networking opportunities for senior industry decision-
makers. Our global reach is utilized to attract over 30,000 speakers annually; ensuring niche focused
subject matter presented directly by practitioners and a diversity of information to assist our clients in
adopting best practice in all business disciplines.
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