Corrective Action Program Best Practice 26 – Follow the Process, Not Just Your Memory, From Screening to Resolution

A condition report comes in regarding a pump seal with a slow leak. It’s minor-looking, and the screener has seen dozens like it. Confident this is routine, he/she waves it through without assigning a trend code, without checking whether the same seal issue has shown up elsewhere in the plant or fleet, and without flagging it for the condition review the procedure actually requires for this type of finding. It feels efficient. Six months later, three more pump seal leak reports surface on the same pump family. Only then does anyone connect them — and by that time, what would have been caught as an emerging pattern after the first report becomes a full root cause investigation with a scope four times the size that a timely trend with organizational notification would have driven months earlier.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives is President and CEO of StrategyDriven, and serves as an executive at a nuclear and energy AI software company, where his role has grown to encompass COO-level functions and AI solution design. A former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine officer and NRC-licensed Senior Reactor Operator, he brings over 30 years of experience spanning nuclear operations, Big 4 consulting, and enterprise leadership across nine countries. He holds an MBA from Kennesaw State University and a B.S. in Physics from the U.S. Naval Academy, and serves as Executive Director and Board Member of the PanAmerican College Fund.

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