A Plan for Everything

The alarm sound­ing loud­ly at RWE’s head­quar­ters in Essen star­tles every­one on the tele­con­fer­ence, whether they’re at the site them­selves or con­nect­ed from other loca­tions. “That came right on cue,” remarks Dr. Cord-Hen­rich Lefhalm, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer and physi­cist who has just been describ­ing the util­i­ty company’s emer­gency plans, includ­ing those for the corona­virus pan­dem­ic. As divi­sion head of decom­mis­sion­ing and dis­man­tling for RWE Nuclear GmbH, he is super­vis­ing the over­all process of dis­man­tling RWE’s five nuclear power sta­tions by the mid-2030s. That task is based on a deci­sion in 2011 by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to phase out the country’s nuclear power facil­i­ties. When the corona­virus pan­dem­ic broke out, Lefhalm became the head of RWE Nuclear’s cri­sis man­age­ment team and there­fore also a mem­ber of the cri­sis team for the entire RWE Group.

The company’s four subsidiaries—RWE Renew­ables, RWE Gen­er­a­tion, RWE Power (to which RWE Nuclear belongs) and RWE Sup­ply & Trading—provide around forty-three gigawatts of elec­tric­i­ty to house­holds in Ger­many, Europe, and the US. In the fall of 2019, RWE entered an agree­ment with the Ger­man ener­gy group E.ON to take over the latter’s entire port­fo­lio of renew­able ener­gies, which made it one of Europe’s three largest providers in the field. RWE is also num­ber two in the world in the off­shore wind ener­gy sec­tor. The RWE Group expects to become cli­mate-neu­tral by 2040. It employs a total of around 20,000 peo­ple and is one of the crit­i­cal com­pa­nies as defined by Germany’s Fed­er­al Office for Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty (BSI). “Our top pri­or­i­ty is to main­tain the power sup­ply under any and all cir­cum­stances,” says ener­gy spe­cial­ist Lefhalm.

There are many dan­gers that might have trig­gered the alarm at RWE head­quar­ters, but Lefhalm and the other par­tic­i­pants in the tele­con­fer­ence respond calm­ly. The cri­sis man­ag­er keeps the con­fer­ence going on his smart­phone as he walks rapid­ly out of the build­ing. The alarm soon turns out to be a rel­a­tive­ly harm­less inter­lude. An emer­gency fire door had been opened improp­er­ly, and the employ­ees are now return­ing to their offices. Han­dling all prob­lems promptly—there’s noth­ing hap­haz­ard about that at RWE Nuclear. Instead, the abil­i­ty is the result of con­stant prac­tice and sophis­ti­cat­ed plan­ning. “Our man­u­als con­tain pre­cise instruc­tions for emer­gen­cies and they’re avail­able both elec­tron­i­cal­ly and as tra­di­tion­al paper binders,” says Lefhalm. That is espe­cial­ly true for his own area of respon­si­bil­i­ty, nuclear ener­gy. Every nuclear power sta­tion has a decen­tral­ized cri­sis man­age­ment team in addi­tion to the cen­tral cri­sis man­age­ment team at Group head­quar­ters. All sites have shel­ters for the employ­ees, who in extreme cases can shut them­selves into the power sta­tion and main­tain operations.

Cri­sis man­age­ment at RWE involves employ­ees from all lev­els of the hier­ar­chy, and is made up of dif­fer­ent teams. It is impor­tant for every­one to receive detailed infor­ma­tion and be able to respond rapid­ly, says Lefhalm. “We plan for spe­cif­ic nuclear power-relat­ed sce­nar­ios and use sim­u­la­tors to prac­tice dif­fer­ent emer­gen­cies sev­er­al times a year. Reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies are also includ­ed in these mea­sures.” They cover every­thing from minor dis­tur­bances like doors left open by mis­take to the worst pos­si­ble acci­dents. But the lat­ter are essen­tial­ly out of the ques­tion. The plans also spec­i­fy how infor­ma­tion flows from staff mem­bers all the way up to board mem­bers. “The rel­e­vant board mem­bers are informed about any inci­dents with­in an hour at most and can decide on what steps to take,” Lefhalm explains. “A com­put­er­ized sys­tem makes sure the infor­ma­tion moves quick­ly, and auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­venes the cen­tral cri­sis man­age­ment team.”

Good plan­ning and effi­cient imple­men­ta­tion are the key com­po­nents of cri­sis man­age­ment. This view is shared by experts in orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy such as Gian­piero Petriglieri, a psy­chi­a­trist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­ior at INSEAD Busi­ness School, whose main cam­pus is in Fontainebleau near Paris. Accord­ing to Petriglieri, real lead­er­ship is not pri­mar­i­ly a mat­ter of vision. While a vision can inspire, moti­vate, and fos­ter hope among employ­ees, it is less impor­tant than a prac­tice known to psy­chol­o­gists as “hold­ing.” The abil­i­ty of lead­er­ship per­son­nel to “hold” includes accept­ing employ­ees’ emo­tions, con­vey­ing a sense of real­i­ty, and guid­ing them to take appro­pri­ate action. With­out prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning, it not pos­si­ble to take clear and struc­tured action in emer­gency situations—and there­fore also impos­si­ble to do a con­vinc­ing job of “hold­ing.”

That is espe­cial­ly applic­a­ble to pan­demics, which are invari­ably asso­ci­at­ed with a fear of con­ta­gion and its con­se­quences. RWE had also laid prepa­ra­tions for these types of sit­u­a­tions. It had updat­ed its plan­ning in con­nec­tion with the SARS epi­dem­ic of 2002 and 2003, dur­ing which a vari­ant of SARS-CoV was spread­ing pri­mar­i­ly in Asia. “Back then we were already deter­min­ing what we need­ed to safe­guard our employ­ees in a pan­dem­ic, espe­cial­ly with respect to face masks and dis­in­fec­tants,” says Lefhalm. As soon as infor­ma­tion about the dan­ger­ous new virus appeared in early 2020, the cri­sis man­age­ment teams at RWE Nuclear took orga­ni­za­tion­al pre­cau­tions to ensure both oper­a­tions and occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty. “That includes tem­per­a­ture checks at site entrances and strict self-quar­an­tine regulations.”

The pan­dem­ic has led to new knowl­edge. “We’ve learned how impor­tant it is to coor­di­nate our efforts on an inter­na­tion­al scale,” says Lefhalm. “The same chal­lenges keep aris­ing every­where in crises, espe­cial­ly our oblig­a­tions as employ­ers to take care of our work­ers while also sup­ply­ing our cus­tomers and pro­vid­ing the ener­gy that allows our econ­o­my to run smooth­ly. That only works on the basis of inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion. We have to share our expe­ri­ence and learn from each other.”

Com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures have enabled RWE Nuclear to remain free of any Covid-19 cases in the months fol­low­ing the out­break. “We work on closed premis­es with high safe­ty stan­dards, which makes the sit­u­a­tion some­what eas­i­er for us than other branch­es of indus­try,” observes Lefhalm. Despite that, many employ­ees have been indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic. Nuclear power plants have to under­go exten­sive inspec­tions every year. They are removed from the grid while thou­sands of indi­vid­ual com­po­nents such as pumps, fuel rods, valves, con­densers, and motors are checked. Only after all details of the audit are com­plet­ed and an audi­tor and the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry agency have given their approval may the plant go back on the grid. This is an enor­mous project that can bring a thou­sand addi­tion­al work­ers onto the site under nor­mal cir­cum­stances. “That’s not fea­si­ble with the corona­virus in play,” says Lefhalm. “So we had to com­plete­ly change our plans. That meant a lot of extra work, but our employ­ees didn’t hes­i­tate in the slight­est and were 100% on board.” The inspec­tion of the Ems­land nuclear power sta­tion that was suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed in May 2020 under strict safe­ty mea­sures is an impres­sive demon­stra­tion of pur­pose. For projects of that type to work, it is essen­tial to have a strong emer­gency cul­ture and for the employ­ees to appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of their roles. Some­thing like that can­not be intro­duced overnight—which is yet anoth­er rea­son why RWE Nuclear con­tin­ues to prac­tice how to han­dle every con­ceiv­able emer­gency situation.