Shorter—and fewer—outages for the community of Grand Coulee

Grand Coulee Power Office

The Grand Coulee Power Office (GCPO) was faced with a challenge. They needed to repair aging infrastructure, but their progress was hindered by high workplace turnover. The high turnover resulted in staffing shortages, which meant extending scheduled outages while seeing an increase unscheduled maintenance requirements. GCPO also had to be mindful of documentation compliance, as well as health and safety concerns for the surrounding community.

Enter our Programs and Business Solutions team, who would work to improve organizational practices through enhanced processes, innovative technology, and strengthened staffing procedures. Our main goal was justify increased staffing levels, but we also suggested improvements to operational structure, enhanced maintenance managements systems, and sought out smarter strategies to capital investment planning and delivery.

Beginning in 2012, the project aimed at addressing capital project budget concerns, scheduled overruns, increase in capital work, and regulatory compliance measures. Our team would also focus on improving the efficiency and ease-of-use for organizational processes, such as SharePoint workflows, training tracking databases, lifecycle models, and standard operating procedure management.

Since then, GCPO has been on a path to improved workforce productivity, staff retention, and improved capital planning and delivery. The outcome? Shorter—and fewer—outages for the community of Grand Coulee.