Business-Driven 365
A blog full of actionable ideas for quickly transforming your business with Microsoft 365.
Technical Assistance Facilitation - Matching Experts with Needs Across a Large Organization
The Situation
After the 2012 merger, and with a workforce of more than 5,000 employees in just the fossil-hydro generation section, the fossil-hydro organization was struggling to match those with technical needs and issues with the people responsible for high-level technical decisions and...
Work Management Barrier Resolution - Radically Reducing Time Spent Tracking Improvement Progress
The Situation
One large generating station conducted a regular weekly meeting in which recent barriers to efficient maintenance work were discussed and actions planned to eliminate such barriers in future work.
These barriers were such things as mechanics getting the wrong parts due to incorrect...
Help Desk Process - A Simple SharePoint Solution for Emailed Support Requests
The Situation
At one point during my career, I was the only SharePoint support person for more than 5,000 employees and contractors, about 90 locations, and more than 300 SharePoint sites. What compounded the difficulty of this situation was the fact that I also had to serve as developer,...
Facilitating the Review and Certification of 170 Procedures in Thirty Days
The Situation
At the end of 2014, a station was ordered by the COO to ensure that 170 procedures were reviewed, certified, and organized by the end of January. Most source files were stored on a station shared drive at that time, but a few were on the plant’s SharePoint site and a few were...
Using a Single Source to Display Information in Dozens of Locations
The Situation
The fossil-hydro fleet had a goal of radical improvement in safety, environmental, and operational performance. Implemented tactics involved heavily publicizing negative events fleet-wide and forcing awareness and learning across the fleet every day. While this effort involved much...
Using a SharePoint Meeting Page to Make Meeting Agendas Flow
The Situation
All generating stations conducted morning management meetings by various names. Much of the time spent in those meetings was monologue in nature. Shift supervisors from the night shift told incoming management personnel what had transpired overnight, and incoming management...
Outage Reporting – Using Upward Reporting to Capture Lessons Learned
The Situation
Maintenance outages are a stressful and action-packed time for electric generating stations. It is not a small deal when a utility idles a large generating unit because if things go badly and return to service is delayed, that unit’s generation may not be available for peak...
Hot Work Permit Log – Consolidating Electronic and Hard Copy Logs into a Single Location with Short Notice
The Situation
During an internal safety audit one morning more than ten years ago, it was discovered that a large generating station’s Hot Work Permitting Logs were insufficient and not up-to-date. Hot Work is defined as any work that involves burning, welding, using spark-producing tools,...
Op Model Assessments - Reducing the Cost of Assessments by 50% with SharePoint
The Situation
We developed an Operating Model during merger transition work in 2005. The “Op Model” became the bible of generating station management at the new company. It prescribed detailed operating, maintenance, and financial management methods.
Adherence was expected of station...
Generating Station Visitor/Contractor Log – Eliminating Phone Calls and Emails
The Situation
After 9/11, generating stations came under a lot of pressure from Homeland Security to shore up security at their entrances for the sake of the country’s electrical grid. Additionally, generating stations generally use a considerable amount of contractor labor. Maintaining...
The Author
Arnie Howes
Arnie Howes has spent more than 25 years working with hundreds of organizations, using Microsoft collaborative technologies and Lean Office techniques to eliminate email overload and information chaos.
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