Long-Term
Fleet-Wide
Alliance
By Bradley Smalldridge, Day &
Zimmermann.
Bradley Smalldridge
Bradley Smalldridge is Vice President
of Nuclear Operations for Day &
Zimmermann’s union shop business
unit. Mr. Smalldridge has more than
25 years of experience in management,
operations,
maintenance,
engineering,
supply chain, and
construction in
the nuclear power
industry. Prior to
joining D&Z, he
was Director at
Entergy Services,
Inc. where he led
a team engaged in
a highly successful
$870 million
215MWe extended
power uprate
(EPU) project at Entergy’s Grand Gulf
Station. Previously, he held a variety
of leadership positions with US Power,
Energy Northwest, American Electric
Power and others. He has a BSCE
from the University of Idaho and an
MBA from Regis University in Denver,
Colorado.
Responses to questions by Newal
Agnihotri, Editor of Nuclear Plant
Journal.
1.
Describe Day & Zimmermann’s
strategies which have resulted in minimal
refueling outage accomplishments.
Day & Zimmermann (D&Z) has a
successful track record of participating in
short-duration outages with many of our
customers,havingperformedmaintenance
and modification services on 130 nuclear
outages that were executed in 28 days
or less for 19 different utilities. The
critical components of this operational
success include an early engagement in
the customer’s pre-outage preparedness
planning efforts, assignment of skilled
and trained supervision, and the proactive
management of craft productivity.
2.
How is “les-
sons learned” from
one refueling out-
age transferred to
implementation of
“refueling outage”
of the same plant
or another Day &
Zimmermann main-
tained plant?
D&Z recogniz-
es that capturing and
transferring lessons
learned and best
practices among the
plant sites that we service requires a ro-
bust and systemic approach to ensure pre-
outage planning, budget estimating, work
execution, and post-outage assessments/
close-outs as well as the tracking and
trending of key performance indicators
(KPIs) are completed as planned. Among
our individual site teams, a shared orga-
nizational culture based on accountability
and continuous improvement is essential
to ensure successful implementation of
enhancements to safety performance,
project delivery, schedule adherence, and
cost reductions. D&Z also leverages its
participation in industry-wide initiatives
though its memberships and commit-
tee involvement with INPO, NEI, EPRI,
ANS, and the Construction Industry In-
stitute (CII) to ensure we are providing
services aligned with the industries' latest
standards and expectations.
3.
How does Day & Zimmermann
ensure
continued
availability
of
experienced staff at its different nuclear
power plants during an outage? How
is the attrition of staff made up by new
personnel?
Day & Zimmermann’s Staffing and
Recruiting departments are centrally
aligned to identify, supply, and “road
map” the top talent needed to meet our
customers’ outage or special project
requirements. The primary recruiting
tool we use is our internally developed
database of more than 164,000 qualified
personnel with nation-wide experience in
power plant maintenance, modifications,
and capital projects delivery. In 2014
D&Z will execute maintenance and
modification as well as specialty services
on a total of 44 nuclear outages. This
enables us to assure the allocation of
experienced staff resources with the
necessary skill sets to meet emergent
needs at our sites. In addition, D&Z has
instituted formalized training programs
for its project managers and supervisors
to earn their industry-recognized Project
Management Institute (PMI) Project
Management
Professional
(PMPs)
credentials.
4.
How does Day & Zimmermann
management ensure creating a condition
during refueling outage that enhances
teamwork,
communication,
create
harmony, among the staff which belongs
to several different organizations?
Day & Zimmermann has established
the Project Support Team (PST) model to
ensure a “field first” focus in the delivery
of home office resources and support
to our site managers and their teams.
This team-oriented approach allows us
to partner with our customers to drive
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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, March-April 2014
