ScottMadden, Inc., one of North America’s leading management consulting firms specializing in energy, has released a new case study focused on delivering significant and sustainable cost-reduction opportunities for the nuclear generation sector.
With the advent of lower natural gas prices in North America, the nuclear generation industry in the United States has been under significant and continuing cost pressure. Across the industry, every effort is being made to identify and capture opportunities for sustainable cost reduction, focusing specifically on the reduction of non-fuel O&M costs across the enterprise.
A large nuclear generation company responsible for operating multiple nuclear generation stations in North America sought ScottMadden’s help to address this need. ScottMadden proposed establishing an innovation team, who would operate outside of the normal business environment to allow consideration of more radical changes to the way O&M activities have traditionally been performed. The innovation team collaborated with ScottMadden to examine key organizational, process, and policy changes that had the potential to result in significant cost savings.
A range of strategic initiatives were approved to achieve non-fuel O&M cost-savings target within a desired 24-month implementation window. These initiatives, in combination with those brought forward by a detailed bottom-up workload analysis, were estimated to result in total non-fuel O&M cost savings nearly twice the original target.
“This process brought forward new ideas and helped advance ideas that were ‘stuck’ in the organization. It stretched the thinking of those involved, including the leaders,” explains Ed Baker, partner at ScottMadden.
“Built into the process was an opportunity for the innovation team to present initial recommendations, which helped build alignment on the level of transformation the leadership team was willing to take on. It also reduced the workload of the design team by not forcing them to spend their time developing a number of initiatives that may never be implemented,” adds Sean Lawrie, partner at ScottMadden.
The implementation of our recommendations is currently underway. If you are interested in learning more about the innovative cost-reduction process, please contact us.
About ScottMadden’s Energy Practice
We know energy from the ground up. Since 1983, we have served as energy consultants for hundreds of utilities, large and small, including all top 20 energy utilities. We have helped our clients develop strategies, improve operations, reorganize companies, and implement initiatives. Our broad and deep energy utility expertise is not theoretical—it is experience based.