Operations & Maintenance Support Services

Our experienced teams can guide you to improved reliability, operating costs, and performance.

Operations & Maintenance Support Services

The demands of today’s power market include continuous improvements in asset management, costs, reliability, availability, and performance. Our steady focus on operating plants throughout our history provides us with the know-how to assist you in meeting those demands.

Our experienced teams can assist you with improvements at power plants and power-related facilities:

  • Operating nuclear and fossil power plants
  • New-generation nuclear and fossil power plants
  • Transmission and substation facilities

Services to Improve Your Competitive Edge

Sargent & Lundy provides complete operations & maintenance (O&M) and plant engineering support services for new-generation and operating power plants and transmission and substation facilities. Our professionals have backgrounds in engineering, operations, maintenance, and testing. Our team members also serve on industry code committees and regularly attend and participate in industry users’ group meetings.

In support of the Nuclear Energy Institute Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiatives our senior management is collaborating with NEI, EPRI, INPO, and utility staff in planning and developing industry guidance documents. Senior staff members are contributing members of the engineering and preventive maintenance process (PMP) working group teams. An example of our approach to drive down maintenance costs and reduce outage scope is our enhanced maintenance optimization service (EMO). More About EMO

We can assist you with development of operating/maintenance/test procedures, plant engineering program support, valve technical support services, maintenance optimization/equipment reliability, life-cycle management, outage support, equipment condition assessments, spares program support, root cause analysis, and troubleshooting to improve your competitive edge.

Featured Services

  • Maintenance Optimization
  • Operation, Maintenance, and Test Procedures
  • Valve Technical Support Services
  • Condition Assessment
  • Spares Program
    We provide an optimized spare parts inventory control program to reduce inventory costs and improve the availability of critical spares to meet the goals and needs of your plant. Inventory optimization for appropriate stocking levels, spares location, and ordering lead times can reduce costs and improve plant availability.
  • Root Cause Analysis
    Frequent equipment failures may be the result of deficiencies in maintenance, equipment selection, operating conditions, or abnormal events. Using our pool of company specialists and a systematic approach, we determine fundamental causes of events and recommend cost-effective solutions.
  • Computerized Maintenance Management Systems
    We can help assess your needs for automating your processes and link them with the appropriate CMMS tools in a cost-effective, functional work management system.
  • In-Service Inspection (ISI) and In-Service Testing (IST)
    Staff experienced in ASME and other industry codes are available to manage periodic in-service inspection and testing of systems, components, and structures. We can develop 10-year ISI and IST program updates, acceptance criteria, and implementation procedures, and help you integrate program results into an overall maintenance strategy.
  • Outage and Plant Support Services
    Our staff is experienced in support of modification implementation, startup testing, outage support, maintenance engineering, component assessments, maintenance rule programs, and valve technical services on either a managed task or staff augmentation basis. We deploy staff onsite as part of your team on short- and long-term assignments. We also perform plant program assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses in the plant programs that directly affect plant availability and costs. We assess the diverse aspects of the plant programs, encompassing people, work processes, technologies, and management.
  • Life Cycle Management (LCM) / End of Life (EoL) Planning
    LCM/EoL planning optimizes the operating life of components and systems and plans for refurbishment/replacement. Sargent & Lundy has the broad expertise to support the development and implementation of LCM/EoL plans at nuclear and fossil power plants.

Maintenance Optimization

Maintenance optimization means performing the right maintenance at the right time. We develop integrated predictive/preventive maintenance (PdM/PM) programs so that maintenance can be performed in a planned rather than a reactive mode. Integrating predictive technologies with optimized PM requirements reduces overall O&M costs while improving reliability.

Read More About Maintenance Optimization

We apply our proprietary approach, engineering knowledge, and extensive library/databases to determine optimal maintenance tasks and frequencies.

Sargent & Lundy’s preventive maintenance optimization service using our enhanced maintenance optimization process goes beyond the current template-driven or other maintenance optimization approaches typically used in the industry. EMO integrates engineering know-how and addresses aging management to improve equipment reliability while reducing outage scope and overall maintenance burden.

Sargent & Lundy’s EMO process is unique because it’s not a “cookie-cutter” approach. EMO is based on analytical engineering evaluations that consider operational, aging, and obsolescence issues, leveraging our extensive library of component material aging test data to perform preventive maintenance optimization evaluations.

Enhanced Maintenance Optimization (EMO): Our innovative EMO process goes beyond the template-driven or similar types of preventive maintenance optimization approaches typically used in the industry. EMO is an advanced method that integrates multi-discipline engineering know-how and addresses component aging to improve equipment reliability while reducing outage scope and maintenance costs.  More About EMO

Operation, Maintenance, and Test Procedures

For more than 20 years Sargent & Lundy has been developing/updating operating, maintenance, test, and other technical procedures to support operating and new-generation nuclear power plant projects. The Sargent & Lundy team has worked on thousands of procedures in support of our nuclear power customers, encompassing a variety of nuclear power plant vintages.

Our highly experienced staff offers backgrounds in engineering, operations, maintenance, testing, procedures, and plant programs. Some individuals are former utility staff members and previously licensed senior reactor operators (SROs). More about nuclear plant procedures support.

Valve Technical Support Services

Effective valve programs are key to the efficient and reliable operation of a power plant or facility. Valve programs improve reliability and control O&M costs. Our specialists work closely with clients to provide valve technical support services and innovative solutions for safe and reliable plant operation. Services include specification development, valve and actuator data sheets for valve set-up and diagnostic testing, valve maintenance optimization programs, maintenance and test procedures, and onsite technical support.

Read More About Valve Technical Support Services
For Motor Operated Valves (MOV), Air Operated Valves (AOV), Solenoid Operated Valves (SOV), and Check Valves, we can provide the following engineering and maintenance related support services:

  • Engineering studies, application reviews, and assessments to support power operated valve modifications
  • Formal calculations in accordance with industry and regulatory guidance, station procedures, and QA requirements
  • Review of vendor submittals, including drawings, calculations, valve/actuator data sheets, etc.
  • Vendor functional testing review and acceptance support
  • Factory acceptance testing (FAT) support
  • Vendor functional and post modification testing and acceptance
  • Diagnostic test trace interpretation and onsite technical field support
  • Training support

Condition Assessment

Sargent & Lundy was a pioneer in condition assessment for the power industry, leading the development of EPRI’s condition assessment guidelines for power plants and substations. Since that time, we have completed condition assessment assignments for more than 200 facilities. We review facility data, interview plant personnel, perform walkdowns, and apply extensive equipment and industry reliability knowledge to provide recommendations on maintenance, repair, and refurbishment or replacement. We also provide long-range testing and inspection plans for continued monitoring and planning.

Read More About Condition Assessment
Our experienced staff reviews operating and maintenance work histories, plant availability information, past refurbishments and modifications and test data (such as vibration, thermography, and oil condition). Operating parameters are compared to original equipment specifications to determine degrees of degradation. Additional tests such as vibration monitoring, acoustic monitoring, oil analysis, thermography, motor circuit evaluation, boroscopy, and ultrasonic testing may be recommended and results analyzed. Refurbishments, repairs, or replacements are recommended, along with estimated costs and implementation schedules.