MFlamme OGL 481 Mod.

1 : Choosing an Organization and Situation 15JAN23

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet
Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and situation.

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Describe your organization.

The organization I chose to describe is one of a maintenance function its primary function is to
keep the public who interact with our systems safe from harm. With that intent, different facets
of maintenance have to be performed to ensure reliability which provides uptime and availability
of our systems to the public. The more available our systems are to the public the more potential
revenue our organization is capable of earning. The many facets of maintenance include
preventative, corrective, and predictive analysis to find the issue before they fail or drive
downtime. Our business is a cost center to the greater organization and does come with limits of
required labor, tools, and schedule which can affect decisions we have to make to support
availability and capacity limits on our systems at times. The more our organization spends to
maintain, the more our company’s profit centers have to perform to protect the bottom line for
the organization overall. Our work is to provide a service to those who operate the systems for
the public that come to enjoy them. Because our systems function with the public, we are
regulated by the state of California to ensure the public’s safety.

2) Describe how your role in the organization (it can be internal or external).
My role in the organization is to operate as the senior leader of our maintenance program. Our
team is devised of several frontline management, hundreds of unionized technicians, planning
support specialists, and engineers. My role is to lead our team to work in a compliant manner
that ensures we are performing as we say we will according to our internal requirements and
instructions for our systems to operate safely. This includes ensuring we are completing all
required work on time and documenting our work for public record. For anything that we do to
change the documented design, we have to provide engineering direction to make sure we are not
negatively affecting the system design that can cause harm to an individual. This role also has to
manage the maintenance budget, partner with the union officials on collective bargaining
agreements for labor, and maintain a healthy work, an inclusive work environment that allows
everyone to feel valued and has a safe working environment.

1
MFlamme OGL 481 Mod.1 : Choosing an Organization and Situation 15JAN23

3) Describe the situation. (see the Canvas instructions for details, especially about how
your situation will be analyzed from five different perspectives over the next five modules)

The situation within our organization is how our maintenance technicians properly document
their work, corrective actions, labor times, and overall utilization of their work to ensure the
maintenance team is performing as we require to keep the public safe and our system functioning
properly and safely. We require all compliance-type work to be performed and completed before
our systems are turnover for our Operations team to run the systems for the public. The problem
is how do we guarantee that all requirements are completed and documented properly before our
management team declares it is safe to do so? What tools do we have to mitigate risk and ensure
compliance?

With union delineations on what work can be performed by certain technicians, we run the risk
of making sure we have scheduled all the required work with enough of the correctly aligned
union craft. This drives additional full-time employees and increased costs. We have to segregate
which required tasks can be performed by certain crafts and how we still work efficiently. Can
we work together and collectively perform tasks? Does it drive more time? What are my limits in
our collective bargaining agreement? There are many layers in which my role has to
continuously stay attentive to and ensure relationships amongst craft technicians and
management is of a one-team mindset and to keep the focus that we are here to perform work
that keeps people safe. If we do not maintain our systems to behave as they are designed, we
could cause serious injury or potential death to those that choose to use our systems.