Practices that Influence Safety Performance on Power Plant Outages

Power plants cannot function indefinitely without having to shut down one or more of the power generation units to perform major maintenance or when some type of upgrade work is necessary. These power plant shutdowns are referred to as outages and are associated with serious safety concerns that stem primarily from the fact that the workforce buildup is very fast and the work schedule is very intense. The schedule intensity is mandated by utilities that want the power plant to be fully functional as soon as possible. It is common for outage work to be scheduled with a 7 day workweek, 12 h days, and two shifts to perform this work. Research was conducted to identify those practices employed on power plant outages that resulted in low injury rates. The results showed that safer performances were associated with cost plus projects, projects where the utility financially supported safety promotion, projects where bonuses were linked to safety performance, projects that were shut down for shorter periods, projects where home office personnel gave greater support for project safety, and on projects where more innovative safety practices were implemented.