Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

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For a start, I must note that I was never personally involved in any of these specifically-tailored study projects.

Rather, my understanding of them has come primarily from the time I spent at Gladstone Power Station during the sale process in 1994, when I spent a number of months stuck in the Data Room, reviewing documents as part of the Due Diligence process.

My job, during that period, revolved around reviewing pretty much all the documentation held onsite, determining what could, and could not, be released for the bidders to peruse.  As such, I spent many hours pouring over documentation relating to many aspects of the station, and quizzing the 2 senior engineers in the room if I did not understand something.

Any errors in my understanding (of course) are due to my own stupidity, and not due to explanations provided by others…

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What are “Value Engineering” Studies

My understanding is that “Value Engineering” (a term used interchangeably with “Value Management” studies) were “problem solving sessions” that:

1)  Were run over an intensive, couple-week period;

2)  When an inter-disciplinary team was shut in a meeting room and told not to leave until finished;

3)  And given a specific problem to solve.

4)  One of the keys to the success of the sessions was the way in which the sessions were facilitated (at least, that’s my understanding).

5)  As a result of this process, a number of capital works projects were commissioned, along with operational changes made (which required new processes written, etc…)

My understanding is that the concept was introduced by the QEGB/QEC at the time when Gladstone was already up and running – BUT was ramped up during the design phase of Tarong, and was a major reason for the successes achieved at both stations.

Particularly of interest to me at the time was the way in which the typical “bathtub curve” of forced-outage-rate at a power station was flattened for Tarong as a result of these studies, and the policies and procedures that grew out of them.

In simple terms, stations at the time were typically commissioned and experienced, in the early years, higher forced outage rates than on average – essentially as the operators “ironed out the kinks” left by the constructors.

There was a similar increase in FOR at the end of a stations life, as components reach the end of their useful lives.  This was of less relevance to the projects initiated that I read of (though, from memory, the studies at Gladstone revolved around a 100,000 hour “half-life” assessment – back prior to 1994!)

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 1994 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Business Management, Innovation, The Managing Director's Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.