Outage planning in nuclear power plants. A paradigm shift from an external towards an integrated project planning tool

In nuclear power plants it is common to carry out the technical planning of the annual outage work orders in an Enterprise Application Management (EAM) system and to schedule the outage tasks in a project planning tool. The reason for this is historical: Former EAM systems did not (or just to some extend) offer the necessary functionalities to realise the scheduling of the outage; graphical support for the planning was not provided at all. Consequently, scheduling the annual outage was performed in a separate planning tool. Modern Enterprise Application Management (EAM) software builds on established project planning tools with respect to the functionalities and timing of work orders. As a standard they provide editable charts as well as a lot of functionalities which are required for scheduling the annual outage. The functional gap between the demanded planning functionalities and the functionalities provided by the EAM system has been significantly reduced. Depending on the deployed software itself it is possible to extend the EAM system with little effort (in comparison to the promising advantages) so that external project timing planning tools are not required any more. By shifting towards an integrated planning tool, efficiency in planning an outage as well as the quality of communication of the current planning status increases. Furthermore, the basis of information for work orders by the control room staff and therefore safety can be enhanced. (orig.)