Completion of PowerPlant's Project/Portfolio Management Function

Because of the importance of successful capital project management, and in light of recent capital project cost overruns and schedule delays, we initiated a review of Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA's) capital project management. The objective of our work was to determine whether the Project/Portfolio Management (PPM) function of PowerPlant meets the needs of the strategic business units (SBU).PowerPlant replaced TVA's Project Justification System on March 7, 2011, at a cost of about $7 million. PowerPlant was implemented to replace the assets module within the Enterprise Financial Management System, while also providing the functionality to centralize project and portfolio management. TVA achieved some project and portfolio management capability with the new system, but considerable opportunity for improvement exists. Specifically, as a result of our review, we identified (1) the PowerPlant PPM tools do not currently meet all needs identified by the SBUs, (2) users feel they have not been adequately trained on some functions of the system, and (3) communication of defects that have been resolved would benefit users.We recommended management consider (1) implementing additional project management functionality available in the PowerPlant system or purchasing another system to provide a PPM tool to more efficiently and effectively manage TVA's capital projects, (2) completing additional PowerPlant training as planned, and (3) developing a strategy for communicating system changes, upgrades, and modifications.