How to create a culture for success
Plant Story
Band 32 Nein 2 2022
9 Dezember 2022
Chris Mudrick from Bruce Power talks to Inside WANO
Bruce Power located in Bruce County, Ontario, Canada, currently operates eight nuclear reactors and is home to one of the largest nuclear power plants in the world. The company contributes a reliable 6,550 Megawatts (MW) of power to the Ontario grid from its eight pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR), each with gross capacities varying from 786MW to 891MW and accounts for approximately 30 percent of the total energy consumed by the province. Bruce Power employs around 4,000 full-time employees and currently has another 3,000 contract workers on site, placing it as the largest employer in Bruce County and one of the largest construction sites in Ontario and Canada
Bruce Power is also undertaking an initiative to increase peak site output under Project 2030. By the time we complete the MCR process for six of eight reactors, the plant will generate an additional 500 MW through increased efficiencies, bringing the total output to 7,000MW by 2030 which is equivalent to adding a ninth unit to our site.
An essential part of achieving excellence is maintaining a focus on continual improvement; constantly look for ways to be better. It is reflected when, as an organisation, we seek to improve each facet of our business on an ongoing basis — relentlessly and from top to bottom.
You can see it in an organisation when:
- The front-line worker takes pride in their work and is looking to make this easier. When they encounter situations that are unexpected, they use their fundamentals and human performance tools, follow up appropriately and work with their supervisor to make it better for next time.
- When managers instill a sense of intolerance to deviation from standards and are constantly looking to coach the team to perform to the expected standards of excellence
- When station leaders have fostered trust and have systems in place that aggressively correct deficiencies and use internal and external OPEX to move towards detection and prevention. They help the organisation tie the results of their work to the organisation’s future.
- As a corporate organisation, we have developed an effective governance and support structure that challenges long standing practices and norms to ensure consistency to standards in the industry and ensure that we do not become isolated.
- We have a robust independent organisation.
The key steps that I will cover that have led to us further our performance are as follows:
- Aligning the site to a common vision, set of values, tools and behaviours
- Focusing on excellence
- Instilling an intolerance of cyclical performance
- Strengthening corporate monitoring and oversight functions
Bruce Power is aligning the business under one excellence model that provides a full picture of organisational effectiveness and illustrates how we achieve excellence as a company and deliver business results through safe, reliable operations.
As a company, it is important that we all understand what excellence looks like at Bruce Power. It means collectively living our common values, demonstrated through our behaviours, using our tools to achieve the results we want for the business – Safe. Reliable. Securing Tomorrow. We are also building on our You Can Count on Me commitment by living our updated behaviours and implementing the use of a standardised accountability model. We look at enhancing the following facets of the organisation:
STANDARDS: We continue to have challenges with occasions where employees are choosing to not adhere to standards where the perceived consequence is low. We are tackling this through a sitewide plan.
TALENT: A self-sustaining organisation requires that high performing individual contributors and leaders from within have the right picture of excellence and are increasingly capable and willing to take on senior roles.
SUSTAINABILITY: As we head into single and multi-unit refurbishments, we will be operation between six to seven units at high power while having one to two units in refurbishment. Operational and construction excellence and ensuring that our improvements are sustainable by extending the life of the Bruce Power units, we ensure the people of Ontario have a safe and reliable supply of electricity at a stable price for decades to come.
INNOVATION: Staying on top will require that we are able to achieve improvement in performance by having workers and leaders focus on high value work and automating low value work.