Design of Technical Change Management System for Nuclear Power Projects

With the vigorous development of nuclear power, nuclear power projects are increasing. How to manage nuclear power projects, especially design change management, is particularly important. The quality of design change management has become one of the important factors that determine the success or failure of nuclear power project management. The relevant standards for nuclear power such as HAF003 also explicitly states that “The technical impact of the changes must be carefully considered and the required measures must be documented. The relevant change information must be sent to all relevant personnel and units in a timely manner. Our technical change management system is based on an in-depth understanding of the requirements of nuclear power related standards, combined with the actual situation of the company, based on the mature commercial software CQ custom development.

1 purpose change management is an important part of configuration management. There are two important uses of change management. One is to control changes and ensure project control. The other is change metric analysis to help organizations improve their development capabilities. The purpose of technology change control is to identify design changes, analyze change risks, and analyze changes to quality. Impacts such as progress and schedules ensure that the risks of the changes are controlled, and at the same time, relevant stakeholders identify and share the risks together, and ensure that the changes have been approved before implementation. Ensure the feasibility, effectiveness and traceability of the changes.

Nuclear power projects are very demanding on safety and reliability. The requirements on change control are more stringent. Therefore, it is necessary to implement technological changes through electronic platforms to meet the above requirements.

2 Scope In nuclear power projects, the technical change system covers the entire life cycle of product development, from the demand phase to the maintenance phase. The products developed by Beijing Guangli Nuclear System Engineering Co., Ltd. include hardware products, software products, structural products, and system products. There will be different baselines at different stages of product R&D, such as demand baselines, design baselines, implementation baselines, and product baselines. The technical change system management scope includes all baseline technical changes related to software products, hardware products, structural products, and system products.

The R&D product technology change system is applicable to the change control of the released baseline and the change control of the official version of the product that has been released, and is limited to changes in the safety grade products and non-safety grade production technology. If it is a security-level product, fully consider security-related requirements in the stages of submitting changes, evaluating changes, and approving changes.

3 The process design depends on nuclear power related standards and related standards for configuration management. Combined with the actual operation of our company's nuclear power project, when there is a need for change (including user change requirements), a complete change process needs to be performed. The complete change process should consist of six stages, namely, submitting the change phase, evaluating the change phase, approving the change phase, executing the change phase, verifying the change phase, and closing the change phase. As shown in Figure 1. The defined activities are performed by defined roles for each phase. The technology change management system realizes the electronic control of the change of the R&D product technology baseline, and at the same time effectively controls the change and the measurement analysis of the change.


3.1 Submitting Changes By changing the author to trigger a change, the change applicant is generally the product owner or the designated person. In the process of submitting changes, when the applicant submits the change, it should determine the reason for the change, the scope of the change, the type of change baseline, the level of change, the type of change, and the initial evaluation of the change in color. If it is a security product, consider the security related content and reflect it in the change request.

3.2 Assessing Changes In the assessment change phase, the change assessors will receive comprehensive data. To assess the impact of changes on schedule, cost, quality, safety, procurement, production, and other dimensions, CCB must be provided with accurate quantification. Information support decision making. According to the different levels of change, different assessment levels are used, and the most important thing is to go through three levels of assessment. If it is a security-grade product, the CCB evaluator will evaluate the security-related content accordingly.

3.3 Approval Changes In the approval change phase, the CCB (Change Control Committee) approves the opinions of the appraisers and approves the changes of the project based on the consideration of safety. Changes not approved by the CCB (change control board) cannot be implemented. Depending on the level of change, different levels of approval are used, and the highest level of approval is three levels.

3.4 Execution Changes In the implementation change phase, the change scope that the executor approves is passed. The executor of the change may be the proposer of the change, or the executor of other work triggered by the change. The change executive records the technical change implementation to the CQ system. If it is found to be inconsistent with the expected goals during the execution process, it should be reported to the change assessor and re-enter the assessment process if necessary.

3.5 Verification of Changes In the verification change phase, the verifier confirms the final result of the change. The change verification activities include checking the scope of the implementation changes, confirming that the implementation is approved and passed, and all approved contents are implemented; verify the deliverables and confirm the completeness and correctness of the baseline. The verifier will enter the verification result for the technical change into the CQ system as a basis for the closure of the back-end change.

3.6 Closing changes In the closing change phase, the configuration administrator reviews the integrity of the baseline and publishes a new baseline. The change results are notified to all project stakeholders via email and other tools.

In addition, all the activities required to change the process are recorded in the CQ. The completion of each step in the change, including notification of the result of the change, is automatically notified to all relevant stakeholders through the mail system. In addition, the status of the technical change is required through CQ. Relevant Statistics 4 Electronic Realization On the basis of clarifying the technical changes in the electronic flow design, we have selected mature commercial software CQ. We have developed a technical change management system based on custom development.

The system can record detailed change-related information such as change triggers and change scope, change baseline type, change level, change type, change to progress, cost, quality, procurement, production, and other dimensions, change control committee ( CCB) Approval comments on change, change execution and change verification and closure of changes, support for classification and inquiry of changes related information; can automatically record changes in the problems that occur in each link; realize automatic statistics on change related information, and file release Integrated use of the system, file and project related information can be shared in the technology change system and the file distribution system; and the mail system Outlook integration, providing email notification capabilities. Can fully meet the requirements of the electrical project change process related requirements and nuclear power related standards.

The specific development is done in CQDesigner. The approximate steps of development are as follows:

(1) First define the type of record required, including "change", "change technical point" and "change task",

(2) Define the fields that can store data and the behavior of these fields respectively for these record types (3) Define the state in the state transition matrix for each record type,

(4) Define operations for each state transition matrix,

(5) Set the form, divided into Submit form and formal form:

(6) Customize fields and operations by adding various hooks.

5 Results Application 5.1 Operational situation The technical change system has been running for 7 months so far and has been applied to more than 20 projects. During the operation of the system, the operation is stable, and the functions and performance meet the expected requirements. This effectively achieves the purpose of controlling changes, that is, ensuring the feasibility and effectiveness of the changes, ensuring consistency of product versions, traceability, and changing contents and changes. Relevant personnel are notified of the impact on product quality, schedule, and other issues.
5.2 Statistical function The technology change system can not only control the entire life cycle of the change, but also a very powerful statistical analysis function. According to the change data collected in the system, the corresponding analysis report is formed to change the measurement analysis and help. Organizations improve their development capabilities. The specific statistics include statistics on the status of changes, the total number of monthly changes, and the total number of weekly changes, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 4.