Achieving optimized funding through a value-based decision-making process
“The MCR team has been involved in building our value scoring acumen and helping us to standardize how we score projects across the fleet. Consequently, our engineers in nuclear score projects consistently and can explain variances to those scores.”
—Project Manager
Background
The nuclear division of a large southern utility was challenged with transitioning from subjective risk assessment to a value-based process for evaluating capital projects. The value-based process is supported with an industry-leading asset investment planning and management (AIPM) software solution, already implemented by other corporate divisions.
Every year, the corporate divisions competed for capital funding from an enterprise competition fund. However, this upcoming competition fund was to be awarded through the value-based framework under the new AIPM system. Our client had not implemented the system and was at a severe disadvantage in competing for nuclear project funding; they contacted MCR for help.
Solution
The MCR Nuclear Generation practice worked with our client’s business planning teams at both the corporate and site levels to rapidly implement the AIPM solution. We provided overall project management for the implementation, process mapped the current and future states and updated relevant long range planning processes and procedures. The MCR team configured the AIPM solution specific to nuclear industry needs and developed business cases for capital projects using the new value-based framework to compete for dollars from the enterprise competition fund.
Results
The project resulted in a successful implementation of the AIPM software, allowing for improved data-driven, value-based decisions in developing the overall project portfolio. In the first year of using the new software for the funding competition, the nuclear division successfully demonstrated the value of their projects which resulted in being awarded an additional $27M for their project portfolio from the competition fund.