During an Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) evaluation DAEC received an Area For Improvement (AFI) finding on our system monitoring process. We didn’t have a consistent process for all engineers to follow. In 1997 we became a pilot plant for an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) product called SysMon (System Monitoring). SysMon assists the engineer in determining what to trend, but that is where it stopped. We wanted to create a database that would show the trends. We created SMART to do just that. SMART is an MSAccess database that ties to SysMon and pulls data from several other databases and PI. PI data and graphs are shown within the SMART database.
The engineers can monitor their systems from their computer and track changes in specific components that could lead to a system failure, and ultimately create a System Health for their systems. During our last INPO evaluation in March 2001 DAEC retained it’s Excellent rating and SMART was listed as a strength for system monitoring. Bob and I have since assisted 3 other NMC sites in implementing SMART at their facility. EPRI has used our SMART to create a version that they are making available to the rest of the nuclear industry.