Reflections ... Jobsite Visit
APM Team,
This next week we devote our messaging to Lean. I encourage you to engage in the Lean messaging as Lean is permeating every facet of our business. If Safety is our keystone by which all other disciplines are rooted, then Lean is our operating system for how we execute the business.
I recently got to visit our team at Exelon Colorado Bend. Exelon is a valued utility, often thought of as a nuclear utility, yet has expanded their portfolio to include gas and combined cycle, including the modern 7H gas turbine. The Colorado Bend site is high profile based on the presence of the 7H units; this job for us was emergent work in the middle of outage season, and our team worked hard to get good crews at site to support this job. And out of pure coincidence, the day we visited was a high profile day, as we were lifting one of the 7H rotors (with buckets and blades intact) off the deck and onto rollers at ground level. The lift was deemed critical for lots of reasons, and thus the day was devoted to planning the lift using detailed standard work lift plans. The lift took approximately 3 hours to complete, with multiple STOP moments to adjust, yet was executed methodically and without event. Success!
About 100 yards away from the 7H lift activities was another task being performed. Two millwrights were tasked to use a forklift to lay down another component. The task was awkward and the millwrights were struggling. They positioned the component half a dozen times, stopping and re-evaluating, tweaking and adjusting their plan. Even the FE came over to help. Yet despite their best efforts, as they were lowering the forks to lay down the component, it began to slip and ultimately landed in place with a small thud. Fortunately no one was hurt and the component was not damaged.
At lunch we asked the crew to reflect on these two polar opposite tasks for the day. A critical lift that was methodically planned and executed -v- a peripheral task of moving a component from point A to point B. Of course there was discussion around improving human performance behaviors – better planning via the STA card, STOP and get help. Yet we also challenged the crew to think differently about the design of the task. What if we had moved the component from the deck to the laydown spot in one move without the need to move again with the forklift? Could the entire process have been one task versus two or three? If not, could we have at least positioned the component better, for example on a pallet, so the forklift move would not have been as awkward?
Thus two reflections I leave with you from this visit and the contrast between the critical lift and the peripheral task:
First, most of our injuries this year are occurring when performing “peripheral tasks”, ex: moving material from point A to point B.
How well do we plan the peripheral task?
How well does our STA process identify the risks and mitigations for that peripheral task?
How well do we think of those “what if” scenarios?
The STA process is our standard work for performing any task. No task is too small to be well planned.
Second, of those injuries this year, we have found ourselves asking why this task was even being performed.
Could we have designed the flow of work such that we would have eliminated the task completely?
This is the harmony of safety and lean. Eliminating a task simply by better frontend planning and designing the flow of work, both eliminates unnecessary activity (waste) and unnecessary risk. Good lean discipline will lead to good safety performance. All home safe 100% with high satisfaction for a valuable, productive task well done.
-Jake