New directions and challenges for the O ampersand M committee

In the second half of the decade of the nineties, the imperative of finding new ways to improve efficiency while maintaining safety is taking on a new urgency. The looming deregulation of the electric industry and the expected competition in the power production business fuels this urgency. The recently completed ASME research in the area of Risk-Based Inservice Testing offers the Operations and Maintenance (O ampersand M) Committee an opportunity to meet this challenge. This opportunity, however, offers its own challenges. New ways of thinking about inservice testing and new technical skills will be needed to successfully incorporate this technology into Code documents. It will not be adequate to rely solely on incorporation of risk-based methods into the Code to meet this challenge. A thorough self assessment of what O ampersand M does, how it is done, and the value added will help assure that the directions which are pursued do, indeed, meet the challenge ahead