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Live Outage – Outage process improvements:
You might be asking, what exactly is Live Outage? It's more than just a digital platform; it's a comprehensive solution that standardizes work procedures, enhances productivity, and eliminates waste at outages. This is possible by integrating safety, quality, and engineering standards into standard work checklists for execution teams, simplifying complex tasks, and delivering appropriate standard work across all projects.
What are the main benefits of Live Outages?
- Eliminates the site team's need to manage paper documents
- Delivers meaningful unit-specific content to the crews on-site in a digital way, including video and image-supported tutorials
- Enables real-time tracking of work
- Enables direct feedback from the craft mechanics on work methods and allows updated work methods to be distributed globally to the same workforce
Live Outage continuous growth:
We have seen significant growth during 2023 and expect to see even more this year. From 2020 to 2023, the number of 7F major inspections that used Live Outage grew from 0 to approximately 75.
Our Live Outage effort also includes a significant focus on tooling. We've innovated and produced many new tooling solutions to solve complex problems. These new productivity tools are safer, more efficient, and reduce the risk of damaging the equipment. Finally, we have accumulated almost 8,000 suggestions from the front-line teams that we are using to drive our improvement process.
During 2023, we also implemented Live Outage on 9F, 6F, and 7/9E gas turbines, as well as D11 steam turbines and generators. To date, Live Outage has been implemented on 179 outages, and we expect that number to exceed 300 in 2024.
Do you want to learn more?
Are you interested in learning more about Live Outage and how it can help improve your outage management? Take this opportunity to watch our webinar, "Let's talk Live Outage: What's new?" on-demand today. In this webinar, you will learn how to enhance quality and safety, reduce cycle times, and get the latest information on Live Outage and a demo of the digital platform.
Frequently asked questions
How do we ensure quality in the workplace and that work procedures are up to date and being followed?
Live Outage replaces traditional paper-based processes with a digital platform that allows us to update the procedure used at the point of work more quickly and effectively. When we update the work method, every job after will have access to the new procedure. Additionally, it is much easier to track and document the procedures that the field teams use.
What are some of the best practices for outage planning and preparation?
One of the best practices is to start early when planning for an outage. Get together with your customer project manager (CPM) or your service manager to help clarify the scope of the outage in advance to ensure the team accurately plans out the resources needed to execute an outage.
Additionally, plans must be detailed. Generalities don’t work. If customers are responsible for providing "special tools" that were delivered with the unit at commissioning, then the specific list of tools needs to be identified. The customer should find every tool on that list and make sure the tool is ready to be used. Too often, we don't look for the tool until we need it, and then the inability to find it or its poor condition delays the job.
Are there any adoption issues with Live Outage?
Some regions are more receptive to change than others, and there are also variations between teams within those regions. We are working on several approaches to encourage adoption, including enhancements to the platform (e.g., passwordless login) and tracking usage of the system (e.g., shift scoring).
What are the expectations of Live Outage?
There are different expectations depending on the position (e.g., craft mechanic, superintendent, or field engineer). Simply put, the expectation is that the team uses it at the point of work to guide their work.
Is Live Outage consistent across all users? Do customers have different experiences with this program?
The platform is consistent across all users, sites, and regions. However, usage varies. The changes we are implementing will enable us to measure compliance and usage, allowing comparisons against a common standard.
Jeremiah Smedra
General Manager, Value Stream Programs
GE Vernova’s Gas Power
One Field Services
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