How they reduced costs and duration of outages

Challenge

Susquehanna Nuclear faced significant hurdles in optimizing their annual maintenance and refueling outage process. Their outage team needed better efficiency, communication, and accountability to manage thousands of tasks while ensuring smooth coordination across departments. However, several key challenges impeded their efforts: 

• Delays in data entry & data integrity issues – Without real-time updates, workers had to recall and manually enter schedule changes from memory at the end of their shifts, increasing errors and limiting effective schedule adjustments.
• Limited communication across teams – The absence of a centralized scheduling system led to information silos, making it difficult for teams to stay informed about completed and ongoing tasks. Critical disruptions often went unnoticed until the next scheduled review.
• Time-consuming, paper-based scheduling updates – Shift turnovers required lengthy, manual reviews of printed schedules, taking time away from resolving urgent issues and slowing decision-making. 

Solutions

To overcome these challenges, Susquehanna Nuclear partnered with Prometheus Group to implement STO Execution and Maxavera, fully integrating their scheduling process with Primavera (P6) and their EAM system. These solutions provided: 

• Real-time schedule updates from the field, eliminating reliance on memory-based reporting and paper schedules.
• Seamless, web-based integration between scheduling and execution systems, ensuring data accuracy and accessibility.
• Enhanced visibility and communication, allowing all teams to work from a single, up-to-date source of truth.
• A user-friendly interface and quick training sessions to drive adoption and improve schedule ownership across all levels.
• Customizable scheduling filters, enabling departments to manage their specific activities while contributing to the overall station schedule. 

Results

The implementation of STO Execution and Maxavera had an immediate and significant impact on Susquehanna Nuclear’s outage management. By replacing manual, paper-based processes with real-time digital scheduling, teams were able to make faster, data-driven decisions, improving overall efficiency. Enhanced communication and visibility ensured that all outage personnel—from supervisors to field workers—had access to up-to-date schedules, reducing errors and improving coordination. The ability to track task progress in real time enabled better prioritization, streamlined shift turnovers, and minimized scheduling conflicts. As a result, Susquehanna achieved: 

• 13% reduction in outage duration (5 days saved), leading to significant cost savings.
• 1-hour decrease in shift turnover time, allowing teams to focus on critical tasks.
• 50% fewer OCC/MOCC meetings, saving approximately 700 person-hours over the course of the outage.
• Real-time data accessibility, improving scheduling accuracy and reducing miscommunication.
• Faster conflict resolution, preventing delays and improving schedule efficiency.
• Greater accountability and ownership of schedules, fostering a proactive outage culture.