Review of TVA's Outage Scheduling Risk

As part of a series of reviews to evaluate the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) actions to address key risks, we evaluated TVA's outage scheduling risk. The objective of this review was to evaluate TVA's outage scheduling risk to identify opportunities to improve mitigation strategies and assess whether mitigation strategies were designed appropriately to address the identified risk. Outage Scheduling was identified as a top five strategic business unit risk in the Internal Process and Procedures Risk category in FY 2011. The risk refers to failure in coordination of the outage schedule for TVA. Adherence to Standard Programs and Processes (SPP) 33.4, Outage and Derate Concurrence Process (Outage Concurrence Process), will ensure a formal outage change request process is followed by asset organizations requesting outage changes, and concurrence with outage schedules is given by all impacted organizations. This mitigation is currently ongoing.While mitigation strategy for addressing TVA's outage scheduling risk is designed appropriately and has reduced risk, opportunities exist to improve the outage scheduling process. We found (1) the control overseeing the Outage Concurrence Process is manual and time consuming; (2) the control in place over quality checks is not being completed; and (3) the Outage Concurrence Process does not align with SPP-30.004, TVA Chief Operating Officer Approved Method to Optimize TVA Asset Availability (Asset Availability Optimization Process), in regard to the use of Asset Availability in entering outages.We recommended the Vice President, System Planning, (1) work in conjunction with the Asset Availability owners to determine if a control can be added to Asset Availability to prevent outages from being entered without first completing the Outage Concurrence Process; (2) take steps to make sure that quality checks are performed as prescribed in the Outage Concurrence Process; and (3) work in collaboration with the owner for the Asset Availability Optimization Process to address conflict between the Outage Concurrence Process and the Asset Availability Optimization Process to align the process for entering outages into Asset Availability. TVA management agreed with the recommendations.