Finding Our Own Rosetta Stone

People naturally gravitate to areas with which they are most familiar. Given assignments within this area and left to their resources with minimal guidance, work gets executed in a pattern that best meets their understanding of what is expected. Positive reinforcement for the work completed, especially if it was a time critical need, further validates work effort and reinforces the work habit. Over time, groups develop their own theories based on valid observations, but not necessarily accurate root cause analysis.This gives rise to anecdotes in the form of “urban myths” that perpetuate through the plant and at times even influence Capital Project scope.In order to effect change within this system, we cannot come in with a known proven “solution” and impose it and expect successful adoption. We need to first acknowledge and validate the observations, deconstruct the events leading to the observations, engage staff vested in the area of concern in conducting root cause analysis, and guide them towards the solution which may or may not conform to their established belief system. This is a lot of work, but is required to make sustainable change. Imagine now having to address this across multiple silos within an organization without having the knowledge of each and every preconceived concept. It is akin to walking through a field of land mines.These are some of the challenges that we faced at Blue Plains within the Work Execution Management Process. While the multiple steps discussed above are necessary to deconstruct established perspectives, the effort is time consuming. To speed up the process to create revised Work Execution Management habits, a cross silo project was established. The first task was to create a common language of reliability across all of the silos within DC Water that interfaces with the Work Execution Management effort. This ranged from Operations, Maintenance, and Engineering to also include Finance, Procurement, and even the office of the General Manager. The rationale behind this decision was that different perspectives could then be discussed with the aid of a common language.Two factors were critical in this effort to develop common ground for discussions; the first was a common language, and the second a unified concept. The Problem-Failure Curve (P-F Curve) was successfully used as the one simple concept that everybody could understand and get behind. The paper also discusses the governance structure applied to this project, how it was received, the range of projects selected in support of the effort, and the change management program that was initiated to keep stakeholders involved.