Hear From Puget Sound Energy at the Hydro Plant Maintenance and Reliability Conference

Online, April 19, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Hydro plants have been around for many years and due to the increasing generation demand, many of these plants are being forced to operate under less-than ideal conditions. It is crucial for hydro plants to determine the approach they should take in regards to preserving these assets and modernizing the aging plants.

John Mannetti is currently Supervisor of Asset Operations Analysis within the Wind Resources and Asset Management department at Puget Sound Energy. The Asset Management group provides physical asset management governance and business services to the generating facilities across the portfolio of assets. As Supervisor of Asset Operations Analysis, John's team is responsible for financial modeling and risk analysis of capital projects, strategic planning, benchmarking and maintenance management processes.

John Mannetti, Supervisor, Asset Operations Analysis, Puget Sound Energy will be a speaker at the marcus evans Hydro Plant Maintenance and Reliability Conference from June 9-10 in Vancouver, BC. John took the time to answer a few questions about how to implement work management processes to increase maintenance efficiency and achieve customer service level targets.

Can you describe the key performance indicators for monitoring and managing plant maintenance?

Our plants are currently reporting work management key performance indicators on a weekly basis. When trended over time, these indicators show us the overall health of our work management process, and how effectively work is being controlled at the plants. The KPI's that we review are emergent work percentage, schedule compliance percentage in both planned hours and number of jobs scheduled, PM schedule compliance, percentage of PM work scheduled, total work backlog and schedule loading percentage. These indicators all work together to paint a picture of how well the planning, scheduling and work execution processes are functioning.

Can you explain Puget Sound Energy's work management process and how that improves the hydro maintenance structure?

Our work management process was designed to help us control the work that was happening at the plants, and to effectively utilize SAP PM for planning, scheduling and to collect equipment history information. One part of the accomplishment of these objectives was to clarify roles and responsibilities for plant workers, planning staff and plant management and to align expectations around the goal of successfully executing the weekly work schedule. The other part was to make sure that SAP PM contained the right equipment and maintenance plans. There was a large upfront effort to input new and old equipment into the system, and to make sure that the correct maintenance plans were developed for that equipment.

How critical is it to budget and plan for maintenance tasks to enhance plant asset operations?

I think that it is highly critical. Effective job planning increases the efficiency of the workers at the plants and ultimately leads to a greater percentage of time being devoted to preventive maintenance, which helps to increase plant reliability. Also, by maintaining a long range schedule and measuring the backlog of work, the plant manager has more information available to justify resource and budget decisions.

What best practice can you recommend for plant maintenance and reliability in order to optimize use of assets?

I think that an effective and consistent work management process is key. It ensures that there is a standardized process to identify, plan, schedule, execute, feedback and trend all work at the plants. Work management also forms the foundation on which other, more sophisticated maintenance programs like SRCM or predictive maintenance can be built. Predictive maintenance technologies can provide reduced maintenance costs and increased reliability, but only if those systems are integrated into an effective work management process. This ensures that there is the discipline necessary to correctly plan, execute on-time and properly capture data on the critical maintenance work that is being generated by predictive systems.

More Information
The marcus evans Hydro Plant Maintenance and Reliability Conference will take place from June 9-10, 2011 in Vancouver, BC. Join Mr. Mannetti, along with speakers from the US Bureau of Reclamation, Ontario Power Generation, Southern California Edison, Progress Energy and many more at this two-day premiere event! For more information, please visit: http://www.marcusevansch.com/HydroInterview

For more information, please contact:
Michele Westergaard
Marketing/PR Coordinator
marcus evans
312-540-3000 ext. 6625
[email protected]