RWE npower - projects as creators of value

 

A power station that’s not working can be extremely costly! So an essential aspect of operating power stations is to carefully manage the times when a station is taken ‘offline’ and out of production, for scheduled maintenance and repair to take place.

 

Opportunity

The correct amount of scheduled maintenance within this offline period, known as ‘outage’, needs to be planned in order to keep unscheduled outages to a minimum. In mid-2004, leading integrated UK energy company RWE npower, which operates and manages flexible, low-cost coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, and a large portfolio of renewable energy generation activities, embarked on an initiative to improve its management of outages.

Approach

Project management was recognised as essential to achieving this objective. By focusing on each downtime as a project, rather than a series of processes, the company ensured a set of management actions existed within the outage strategy to deal with risks and issues.

RWE npower has a tradition of providing best-in-industry development for its people, from the graduate entry-levels up to senior management. As RWE npower became more project oriented in the way it conducted outages, and indeed its business, the need to formalise its approach and project management development became necessary. RWE npower chose CITI to tailor and deliver a suite of project management courses and sponsor briefings with emphasis on driving a consistent, project management based approach to managing outages, to ensure the minimisation of costly downtime.

To this day CITI works closely with RWE npower to understand its business. Our tutors regularly tour power stations to learn not only how they work, but why the outage strategy is so important to the business’ viability. We work in partnership to create and deliver a set of development interventions combining a method-based approach with pragmatic application in specific environments.

Outcome

RWE npower is seeing measurable benefits, with a positive financial impact, as outage times are optimised and further streamlined and, there is a much better understanding – and therefore synergy – between sponsors and their project managers. This mutual success is illustrated by the fact that CITI now provides project management development and sponsorship programmes to the Generation, Renewables and Cogen businesses within RWE npower.