Energy Safety

This company was a pioneer in the nuclear power industry. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, the company has grown and changed over the decades. Today, the French government owns a majority share with minority stakes held by private companies. Work focuses on France’s 58 nuclear facilities, as well as many international customers.

Challenge

Fourteen thousand employees perform their work in one of six business units. Every plant the company brings online is accompanied by no fewer than three million supporting documents.

Each unit is critical to the safe operation of nuclear power plants around the globe, and any mistake can result in millions of dollars in delays and penalties. Knowledge retention and quick access to expert information is crucial. However, the company’s existing search platform didn’t always deliver.

Alternative energy sources are winning hearts and minds, and nuclear energy is being left behind. As a result, experts in the field are retiring, taking their knowledge with them. Losing the competencies of these highly skilled individuals is costly: Quality must be unimpeachable to pass regulatory requirements, and mistakes add up to billions in penalties and delays.

Solution

• Knowledge storage that structures information so it, and the experts that created it, can be easily identified and retrieved.
• Knowledge transfer that reduces the cost of retaining and transmitting knowledge to the next generation of employees.
• Collaboration and knowledge-sharing which facilitates knowledge flow between professionals.
• Lessons learned which streamlines the process of turning personal experiences in the field to company-owned and user-centric reference material.

Future Annual Results

The Sinequa solution included identifying and quantifying the benefit of solving Energy specific business issues. The following results are projected annual benefit:

• Saving at least a portion of the estimated €6 billion in penalties and delays by avoiding mistakes – one avoided mistake per year would save €3m
• 80% of searches today are queries from the 7K field employees solving technical issues, enabling information to be found and projects to be delivered without error
• Simplified the process of turning data into information inside the 3M total documents delivered with each plant that is turned over to a customer
• Rediscovered lost information from acquired and merged companies