Integrated performance assurance for utilities
03 April 2019
Around
the world, utilities companies use a standard
risk management framework
for strategic asset assurance. This is an excellent method to anticipate
the likely performance of individual assets, such as hydro turbines or
power transformers.
This is great, but it doesn’t assure stakeholders about the performance
capability of an entire
power station or waste processing plant, which
relies on people – as well as machinery.
Beca Systems Engineer, Erik
Alston, explains how the Royal Australian Navy overcame this issue to
manage performance risk in its ships and submarines, and how the
approach could help
utilities companies do the same.
What do the Royal Australian Navy have in common with a utilities
company? Both have major assets with long lifecycles that are critical
to the organisation’s purpose.
Asset managers generally select the optimal maintenance, refurbishment
and replacement strategies for their assets to balance risk, performance
and costs. These strategies ensure that the assets are capable of
fulfilling their function without exposing the organisation to
unacceptable risk.
But they don’t take into account the performance of the greater whole,
and that’s where we can learn from work undertaken by the Royal
Australian Navy.
Royal Australian Navy – A case study
This was the issue that the Royal Australian Navy brought to Beca in
2014. The nature of defence means Navy Commanders may need to deploy
ships or submarines with little warning. But to make that call, they
need a true understanding of each vessel’s capability at that moment in
time.
Navy Commanders recognised that a naval ship or submarine is a complex
system of systems made up of, not just plant, but people and processes
too. Assuring a vessel’s performance requires more than knowing its
plant assets are properly maintained and capable of operating as
required. If a crew is not properly trained or lacks key personnel, a
submarine has undergone highly intensive operations, or processes are
not upgraded to reflect changing operating environment conditions,
vessels may not be considered ‘fully operational’.
Like any other complex system of systems, the performance capability of
a ship or submarine fluctuates across its lifecycle. Complex systems are
likely to have a few defects that reduce their level of capability.
Reflecting this, Navy Commanders have obligations to ‘raise, train and
sustain’ their fleet. They must be confident they are making decisions
to meet those obligations based on hard evidence.
A new kind of assurance for complex systems
To provide this evidence, Beca developed the ‘Sea Release Assurance
Framework’, a positive assurance system that creates easily understood
performance levels against which to measure and report whole-of-vessel
capability in a ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach. Today, Navy Commanders are
using the framework to make informed decisions about ship and submarine
deployment. It has become a mandatory element of the Fleet’s readiness
process, informing formal sea and battle-worthiness judgements.
The system monitors and assesses the effective completion, not just of
asset maintenance but crew training and the logistics and management
activities required for vessels to operate effectively. It contains a
standard, repeatable mechanism for enabling a component, ship or task
group to objectively demonstrate levels of readiness by providing
objective quality evidence against predetermined criteria at critical
points in the maintenance or training continuum.
The new assurance system relies on a formally documented, three tier and
three domain certification system to assure accountability in decision
making. The three tiers are each subject to formal certification by a
subject matter expert issuing a conformance certificate across the three
domains: personnel, plant and process.
All of this is aggregated up to a system level through a management
portal, enabling Navy Commanders to assess how individual assets will
integrate and perform to achieve their collective goals. Algorithms are
used to automate performance reports, which include aggregated risk
factors.
Important use cases in utilities
Tailored to the unique circumstances of individual utilities, the
framework we developed offers leaders an opportunity to achieve a
shared, evidence-based, fully understood view of an entire plant’s
capability at a given point in time.
Utility executives could receive assurance that a power station or water
plant will do what it’s designed to do throughout its lifecycle – not
just at the point of being commissioned. This ongoing performance
tracking would go beyond ‘Is the plant operating?’ to look at ‘How is it
being operated?’, taking into account staffing levels, the state of
morale and personal wellbeing.
If the Navy experience is anything to go by, I believe this ability to
achieve an aggregated performance measure for entire plants will assist
utility executives to strengthen risk management and make evidence-based
whole-of-plant decisions that improve safety and sustainability.
--ENDS--
Source: Beca - www.beca.com
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