Real-time reviews and approvals through digital workflows
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Customer Success Story
Drax Completes Maintenance Inspections
up to 2x Faster
Before
After
“Fluix makes things over 2 times faster, saving us weeks of time over the course of a year.”
Matthew Hobbs, Central EC&I Systems Team Manager
Background
Drax Group is a renewable energy company engaged in renewable power generation, the production of sustainable biomass, and the sale of renewable electricity to businesses.
The Group employs approximately 3,000 people in the UK and North America across a portfolio of sustainable biomass, hydro-electric and pumped hydro storage assets, as well as a global bioenergy supply business supplying compressed wood pellets for its own use and for customers in Europe and Asia.
Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire is the UK’s largest renewable power station, providing 8% of the UK’s renewable power. 4 teams at the power station currently use Fluix to optimize their daily work. The core of their work centers around the plant’s 4 turbo-generator units, each of which undergoes a 10-12 week planned outage every 4 years for essential maintenance and related inspections.
Planned outages involve the complete shutdown of one of the plant’s 4 turbo-generator units, as well as its boiler and most of the auxiliary plant. Popular use cases for Fluix during planned outages include daily safety checks, digital inventory of plant items and loan tools, parts maintenance checks, electrical system checks, point-of-work risk assessments, and quality assurance data capture.
- 90 users across 4 teams: Turbine Plant Area Engineering, Central EC&I Systems, Steam Generation, and Fuel Storage & Supply
- 16,300+ documents completed
Challenges
Drax Power Station has been in existence for over 40 years. As such, vast amounts of historic maintenance records and related documents in paper format are stored across various areas of the plant. Planned maintenance outage timelines are strictly controlled, so Drax needed to find a solution that could help them to consolidate and distribute vital maintenance data as efficiently as possible. They also needed to forge a new, digitized path ahead for all future maintenance work and related records.
- Historic maintenance records and related documents only existed in paper format, or at best in restricted access Excel sheets, with no centralized storage.
- No real-time submission or approval of inspection reports. In-person follow-ups with individual team members were required for updates or amendments.
- No comprehensive overview of the flow of documents or work in-progress, and no easy access to valuable data that could inform preventive maintenance plans.
“Previously we used to do all of our quality documentation on paper, and we had to print thousands of documents and put them into folders. It used to take a month. Now I can do all of it in three hours.”
Stephen Wilkinson, Lead Mechanical Engineer
Workflow Solutions Implemented
‘Required’ form fields and sample photos for each stage of the measurement and installation process assure that job photos are correctly captured and attached to each form before it is submitted. Introducing this process resulted in a 50% reduction in customer revisits and associated fuel and labor costs.
Each form/checklist in Fluix represents a key part of the process in a scheduled outage. Fluix allows managers at Drax to distribute maintenance forms/checklists to teams, who can then send completed forms back for approval, all in real-time. Data that flows into Fluix from forms/checklists can be cross-referenced with historic maintenance records to bring greater clarity to each individual process. This allows teams to plan their scope of work with the pin-point accuracy each scheduled outage requires.
Digitized Maintenance Records & Workflows
Easy-to-use forms and checklists are distributed via workflows in Fluix, providing teams with an efficient way to complete their daily work. Efficiency progression across processes maximizes the time the turbine maintenance teams have on the plant. Time and cost savings made are reinvested into ensuring that each planned outage is completed as efficiently and safely as possible.
“It’s critical that we capture all key information at the right points during a project. Fluix helps us to do that, which speeds up our workflow dynamic during tight deadlines. Using Fluix helps us to get the job done well and right, first time.”
James Ainsley, Turbine Quality Assurance Engineer
Instant Access to Reliable Data
Fluix helps Drax to centralize all plant data, ready to be exported to PowerBI and/or backed up on SharePoint. Data collected via forms can be used to create detailed reports and visualizations to help management to make key operational decisions for the power plant.
“We use Datasets in Fluix to help with operational inspections on the biomass plant. We check the condition of all of the conveyors, and record findings using drop-downs and simple answers in a form in Fluix. Fluix then sends the data over to PowerBI, where we can build reports and identify trends.”
Matthew Hobbs, Central EC&I Systems Team Manager
Centralised, Secure Digital Storage
Workflows in Fluix route completed documents to secure storage, backed-up in Drax’s SharePoint account. Drax now has a database of digitized maintenance records that can be instantly accessed for reference at any point in time – no need to search through vast amounts of physical documents, and no need to allocate more physical storage space for documents onsite.
“The efficiency you gain in time by not having to find the hard copy of a document is incredible. Previously, we needed to scan all documents into SharePoint – there is nothing I can do with that data, as it’s just a picture. Fluix makes things twice as fast, or more. When you finish a task, everything is there with an automatic file name.”
Matthew Hobbs, Central EC&I Systems Team Manager
Digitalization Across the Plant
Drax began their digitalization journey with Fluix with just one team, but they quickly scaled the software across three additional teams when it became clear that the solution could deliver the process improvements needed. One of the reasons for the stress-free, no curve scaling of Fluix is product simplicity.
“Fluix supports my role really well. It’s always reliable, it does what I need it to do, and the support is fantastic. It is also easily cascadable down to other users, and very easy to use with basic training.”
James Ainsley, Turbine Quality Assurance Engineer
Results
- Accountability and compliance
Teams at Drax complete straightforward inspection forms in Fluix and submit them back via Fluix for approval in real-time. Forms are then securely stored in Drax’s SharePoint drive for future reference. There is a digital record of every interaction with each form, making each step of every process fully trackable. Lost, damaged, or inaccurate paperwork is no longer a risk factor. - Instant form distribution and access to vital maintenance data
Historic data from Excel sheets can be uploaded to Fluix and instantly distributed to teams, along with routine forms and checklists. Data captured in forms can be used to prepare for essential maintenance work during future planned outages. Introducing digital forms via Fluix has optimized several processes and tasks at Drax, including saving the Quality team 5+ hours per-worker, per-day on inspection report completion time. - 2x faster flow of work during planned outages
Digitizing their inspection documents in Fluix has directly contributed to Drax’s turbine maintenance team meeting deadlines during planned outages. Managers have a detailed overview of all tasks in-progress in Fluix, ensuring optimal efficiency across all projects. - Costs saved on paper and time saved on collaboration
Fluix supports cross-team collaboration within several key teams at Drax. Engineers and their colleagues can access and share required information very quickly, without the need to manually search for or reprint paper documents. Stakeholders are kept up-to-date on work progression across various plant areas, with immediate task status reports available on demand.
“I wouldn’t like to think how much paper we would use in an outage without Fluix. I’d imagine with a paper system I’d have to chase up information and folders, and sheets might go missing. Fluix relieves that burden.”
James Ainsley, Turbine Quality Assurance Engineer
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