ST. LOUIS, May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The electric utility
industry has made tremendous improvement in its safety performance
in recent years to the point that a "safety culture" has emerged as
one of its most prominent characteristics. Safety, along with a
discussion on climate data and carbon policy, was the main focus of
industry professionals at EUCG's spring workshop in St. Louis last month.
EUCG, a global association of energy and electric utility
professionals, meets semiannually to discuss current and emerging
industry issues, share best practices and exchange data for
benchmarking purposes. The association is in its 37th year of
service to the power generation industry.
"Safety has always been important to electric utilities, but now
it is evolving as one of the industry's most distinguishable
features, on par with customers, service reliability and
shareholders," reported EUCG President Mark
Derry of Exelon (NYSE: EXC). "Today, an electric company's
culture is as deeply rooted and influenced by its safety
performance as a company's excellent customer service or high
returns on Wall Street."
Safety performance actually drives, or at least heavily
influences, other performance metrics, said George W. Sharp, EUCG vice president of American
Electric Power (NYSE: AEP). "Data are emerging that a company's
safety performance correlates strongly with other performance
measures such as profitability, customer satisfaction and service
reliability," reported Sharp. "Excellence is a cultural phenomenon,
and our industry is beginning to believe that safety performance
may have the greatest impact on achieving a measure of overall
quality."
EUCG recently formed a new committee to study electric utility
safety, share best practices and develop metrics for EUCG's members
to evaluate their safety performance. The Safety and Health
Committee is chaired by AEP's Ken
McCullough and has attracted significant industry interest
during the committee's incubation period.
"Our new safety committee has the potential to become the
electric utility industry's go-to organization for safety and
health data, benchmarking and best practices," McCullough said.
"Our committee members discussed during our spring workshop how our
industry has evolved from one that mostly reacted to safety
incidents, to one that is very proactive at every level. Our
committee discussed how some companies now spend as much time
discussing and analyzing safety near misses as they do actual
recordable accidents. The industry's culture has truly
evolved."
Thomas R. Voss, president and
chief executive officer of Ameren (NYSE: AEE), provided the
workshop's welcome address to the more than 150 industry
participants.
The keynote for the workshop was provided by Dr. Robert Peltier, editor-in-chief of Power
magazine. Peltier's address, "Climate Change Science: The Science
is Scuttled," presented an engineer's view of the means and methods
behind the collection, analysis, interpretation and communication
of climate data. Power is planning to publish a series of
articles based on Dr. Peltier's research and investigation into the
climate science debate, and his presentation gave workshop
participants a preview.
EUCG's industry committees reported that sharing best practices
continues to be one of the most popular features of EUCG
membership. "The Nuclear Committee invited Kunita Gear of Express Scripts to provide
examples of best practices from the prescription medicine industry.
We believe that the potential for best practice sharing isn't
realized unless you include an examination of other industries'
approaches and ideas," said David
Ward, Nuclear Committee chair from Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK).
"We will continue to invite other industries to our workshops in an
effort to cross-pollinate our knowledge base."
Kelly McNair, EUCG's Information
Technology Committee chair from Oncor Electric Delivery, stated
that his committee is focusing on sharing best practices around
"agile" approaches to electric utility IT management. "We discussed
how our member utilities are tackling e-mail system management and
governance policies, virtualization of desktop PC resources,
Information Technology Infrastructure Library and approaches for
application development and support, Voice over Internet Protocol
services deployment, and how companies are handling 'charge back'
issues for enterprise IT costs," McNair said.
Joe Martucci, chair of EUCG's
Transmission and Distribution Committee from PSEG (NYSE: PEG),
stated that his committee members shared best practices around
emerging issues such as complying with the new North American
Reliability Corporation's Critical Infrastructure Protection
standards and how companies are using stimulus money to promote
smart grid initiatives. "Our industry is evolving rapidly as new
technologies and standards are introduced," Martucci said. "Our
T&D committee will continue to share best practices around
these developments to keep our membership at the forefront of
leveraging knowledge for effective change management."
Tennessee Valley Authority's Jim
Miller, Chair of the Hydro Committee, agreed with Nuclear
Committee Chair Ward's assessment that utilizing best practices
from non-electric utility companies is beneficial. "Our committee
workshop included a presentation by Alcoa regarding how they use
benchmarking data to improve performance. The differences in how a
metals manufacturer uses data to identify best practices can be
eye-opening for an electric utility," Miller said.
Bill Bunker, vice president and
operations manager for Alcoa Power Generation, subsidiary of Alcoa,
Inc. (NYSE: AA), agrees in the inter-industry knowledge sharing
inherent in EUCG's spring workshop agenda. "The EUCG workshop is
easily the most valuable conference I attend each year. I return
with new processes and techniques that I can share with my team,
and I think the electric utility members learn a little from the
metals manufacturing industry background I provide as well," Bunker
said.
Robert Dool, Fossil Committee
chair from AEP, concurs that EUCG's workshops are fertile ground
for knowledge exchange. "Fossil Committee members are encouraged to
attend other EUCG committee presentations on best practices in
order to garner a broad-based, multi-disciplined understanding of
how to improve electric utility performance. The Fossil Committee
is working on inviting guests to future workshops from other
industries to optimize data and process sharing," Dool said.
EUCG will hold its 2010 fall workshop in Glendale, Ariz., Sept.
26-29. All energy professionals are invited. Interested
parties should visit the EUCG website at http://www.eucg.org for
more information about the organization's next event.
About EUCG: EUCG is a global non-profit association of
energy and electric utility professionals who discuss current and
emerging industry issues, share best practices and exchange data
for benchmarking purposes. The 37-year-old association is organized
into committees that represent specific utility functions:
Transmission & Distribution (T&D), Fossil Plants, Hydro
Plants, Nuclear Plants, Information Technology (IT) and Safety and
Health committees. Members attend semiannual workshops that focus
on strategic planning, maintenance practices, operations
management, outage management and various other aspects of the
electric utility business. Membership is open to all utility
companies and professionals worldwide. Interested parties should
contact Pat Kovalesky, EUCG
Executive Director, at 1-623-572-4140. Email: eucgexec@cox.net .
Website: http://www.eucg.org .
SOURCE EUCG