Corrective Action Program Best Practice 16 – On-duty Operations Staff Notification of Operational Deficiencies
On-duty operations personnel are responsible for a facility’s safe and reliable operation. To ensure they are capable of meeting this obligation under normal, abnormal, and emergency conditions, operations personnel must be aware of the performance status of the equipment under their control. Therefore, these watchstanders must be immediately notified of deficiencies that currently or will potentially diminish facility performance.[wcm_restrict plans=”48929, 25542, 25653″]
Operational Deficiencies
Operational deficiencies are those adverse conditions impacting safe, reliable facility operations including those necessitating internal and/or external operational report filing. These deficiencies are typically represented by:
- Equipment and software failures, deficiencies, and nonconformances including deviations from operating specifications
- Design specifications, drawing, manual, and operating instruction (procedures, work instructions, and tagging orders) issues
- Human performance issues including departures from management standards and expectations
Recognizing Operational Deficiencies
Each employee possesses different levels of technical knowledge and operational experiences. Consequently, those filing condition reports may or may not recognize issues representing an operational deficiency that should be reported to the on-duty facility operations staff.
Electronic and paper-based aids can be used to ensure the operations staff is promptly notified of all operational deficiencies. Primary among these is the operations staff notification of all issues associated with designated systems, equipment, components, and work instructions. Secondary is the operations staff notification of all high priority issues. (See StrategyDriven Corrective Action Program article, Condition Report Prioritization) When using electronic condition reporting systems, condition reports associated with predefined items or having a high initial priority are automatically routed to the operations supervisor for review. Organizations using a paper-based condition reporting system provide user aids to help condition report authors recognize the need to notify the operations supervisor of their issue.
Final Thoughts…
Automatic forwarding of condition reports by electronic systems is imperfect as is the use of aids to identify operational deficiencies. Therefore, all submitted condition reports should be screened for operational impacts by the reviewing supervisor and condition report meeting participants. Those reports identified as an operational deficiency and not communicated to the operations staff should be forwarded to the on-duty operations supervisor immediately.
The on-duty operations supervisor should be the individual to whom all operational deficiencies are reported. It is this individual’s responsibility to see that this information is further communicated to the operations staff whose watchstation equipment, procedures, etcetera are impacted by the issue.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”48929, 25542, 25653″]
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About the Author
Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.