British Energy plc
owns and operates eight nuclear power stations across England and Scotland.
Their need was for a solution for storage, retrieval and
modification of the controlled documents describing the configuration, the day-to-day
maintenance of nuclear power plants. Such effort helps ensure the safe ongoing
operation
of the stations and the compliance with regulation from the Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate (NII - the UK government regulatory organization who can impose penalty fines
or even plant closure). |
| A pilot "company-wide"
electronic document management system was installed at Hinkley Point B power station, in
South West England, to achieve these benefits. This database was then replicated on a
second Cimage system at British Energy's Gloucestershire office, 80 miles from Hinkley
Point B, providing an identical set of information to the engineering staff involved in
the design and modification of the power plant. This arrangement provided the additional
advantage of a back-up system for Hinkley Point B via a Wide Area Network and limits the
need for duplication at the power plant. Any changes to documents in one database are
automatically replicated to the other using the Cimage Remote Database Manager. A similar
mechanism is used to maintain consistency of data held in the Document Manager and in
Hinkley Point B's maintenance management system Indus Passport.
Frequent users of the systems prefer to use the power of Document Manager Desktop
whilst many plant engineers prefer the simpler capabilities for searching, viewing, and
printing from a Web browser.
"We now have a system which provides controlled documentation directly to the
desks of anyone who needs it, saving time in access and distribution whilst helping to
ensure with minimum effort that we are all working with up to date information,"
comments Chris Davies, Station Director, Hinkley Point B Power Station. |
