Electric Power Research Institute

Synth-Bank® collaborated on the design and implementation of a software application system used to integrate a nuclear power plant's legal and technical documentation requirements and automate the process of managing them.

The Electric Power Research Institute is a research and development organization funded by all the electric power utilities to provide advanced technology initiatives to the power industry. Synth-Bank® teamed up with Duke Engineering (a division of Duke Power) and ABB Sweden, Matrix One, and ATS Technologies to provide the Institute with a working prototype of a comprehensive system capable of managing the documents used within a nuclear power plant.

• Successful integration of a nuclear power plant's licensing, legal documentation, maintenance drawings, and construction drawings into a single repository

• Automatic handling of regulatory issues that surround every document change

• Creation of a comprehensive knowledge management system that enables components to be managed at a sub-systems level

A systems architecture was created based on Synth-Bank's® "3 Ring Circus" knowledge management architecture to enable a comprehensive knowledge management system that was abstracted down to the parts level. This enabled the legal requirements of components, systems, and sub-systems to be abstracted and used to manage the system's configuration documentation.

Matrix One's PBM system was chosen to manage the large assemblies of parts. ABB Sweden, a large manufacturer of power plants, was also a partner in the project, and contributed many drawings of its intellectual properties. Together, the team built an integrated system using Synth-Bank's® knowledge management architecture, Matrix One's PBM system, and a patented CCM context-sensitive search engine from ATS Technology.

The preliminary research on the project began in June, 1999, and the primary work was completed between October, 1999 to February, 2000. The final report was issued by EPR in June, 2000.