Bill C., et. al.,
It seems to me that the labels may be getting in the way of the communication.
The objective of effective corrective action programs is to first prevent undesired conditions and outcomes (let me label these as "problems" for discussion purposes), next to detect problems as early as possible and then to correct the identified problems in a way that addresses the immediate concern, implements interim actions to prevent a repeat of the problem or other similar problems and then implements cost-effective, long-lasting measures to prevent similar and related problems.
The PI&R process is intended to identify and resolve problems. The NRC performs periodic focused PI&R inspections and also addresses PI&R as part of the regular inspection process. In addition, INPO/WANO performs focused evaluations of the plant PI&R/corrective action program effectiveness.
Since proving future problems were prevented is difficult, the process mainly focuses on a look at a snapshot in time to see how well the plant did on identifying problems before they resulted in significant conditions adverse to quality or had a large impact on plant risk. The ones that the plant identified as part of scheduled surveillance, maintenance and inspection activities or as an extent review from a problem investigation are typically characterized as "licensee-identified". Others, such as plant scrams, external leaks, failure in service, etc. are typically characterized as "self-revealing".
The way I used to phrase it with our folks to help them get the idea is to ask the question, "Did we find it, or did it find us?".
The ratio of:
- we found it / it found us
told us a lot about how good we were at problem identification.
The ratio of:
- new problem / repeat problem
told us a lot about how good we were at problem resolution.
We can argue forever about what gets put into each bucket (and there are people who will always want to "cook the books" to show they are better than they actually are), but the idea was to go back to these first principles to evaluate the effectiveness of our PI&R capability.
Terry Herrmann
--- On Tue, 7/7/09, William R. Corcoran, Ph.D.,P.E. <William.R.Corcoran@...> wrote:
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