James N. Salapatas, PE, PMP

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Presents a SunCam continuing education series on the topic of:

Quality Management

Contact author at:
jnsalpts@comcast.net
Colorado Springs, Colorado

James N. Salapatas, PE, PMP, (Retired) Senior Partner, Quality Management Consulting is a consultant and trainer in project management and Industrial Engineering. He has over 50 years of experience, having held executive positions in utilities, consulting, computer integrated systems, manufacturing, and transportation. Formerly on the senior faculty at Keller Graduate School of Management, DeVry University, he has written several on-line courses at www.SunCam.com a professional engineering continuing education organization. Mr. Salapatas was a contributing author to The Implementation of Project Management Handbook by PMI® and the Industrial Engineering Handbook, third edition by Maynard and was chairman of the ANSI committee on Flow Charting Standards. He has a patent in the materials handling field is listed in Marquis “Who’s Who in America 2021- 22, Who’s Who in the South and Southwest 1973-74.” Mr. Salapatas was a member of the State of Florida Governor’s Commission on Management and Efficiency is a life member of the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers and a forty-year member of Project Management Institute. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering in 1955 from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, and a Master of Science degree in Management in 1979 from Florida International University, Miami, Florida.

Course Title Rating Hours Price

183-Quality Project Management

(4.6) 109 Reviews

4 $90.00

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Course Objectives: This continuing education course is written specifically for professional engineers with the objective of relating to and enhancing the practice of engineering.

Course Description:

This course is about improving the quality for managing project work in an organization whether you are an engineer, senior manager or professional project manager. In the ideal project world, project managers are well-trained professionals and assigned to a project at the beginning of the project. In the real project world, many projects are small and assigned to engineers and managers with less than professional project management training at any time in the life of the project.

For the engineer, senior manager or professional project manager the quality for managing project work should improve significantly by combining seven key tools with a basic feature from statistical process control, the control chart. The seven key tools, called The Seven Icons©, are presented in this course and will demonstrate how they can be used to improve planning and controlling project work.

The Seven Icons© are organized and connected in a structure that is easy to remember. The icon terms serve as a common language between managers, team members, and their bosses. This feature becomes most important when considering that practically everyone in an organization is involved in some kind of project work. Having an effective way of remembering and applying key tools to project work will improve communications throughout the organization and ultimately improve the quality for managing project work.

At the end of the course is a set of questions that highlights the take-aways for the reader to remember and use for improving the quality for managing projects in their organization.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) accepts this courses for category 4 credit

218-Managing Project Risk

(4.6) 43 Reviews

3 $67.50

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Course Objectives: This continuing education course is written specifically for professional engineers with the objective of relating to and enhancing the practice of engineering.

Course Description:

This course is about managing project risk in an organization whether you are an engineer, senior manager or professional project manager. In the project world, managing risk is critical because every decision, every action taken contains some element of risk. Risk cannot be eliminated. Risk can only be controlled and accepted if the decision or action needs to be made. Understanding this concept becomes important when considering that practically everyone in an organization is involved in some kind of project work and makes decisions involving risk.

In the ideal project world, project managers are trained in project risk management. ¹In the real project world, many projects are small and assigned to engineers and managers with less than formal risk management training. Managing risks become critical to achieving project cost and schedule targets. This course presents three basic principles for managing project risk, namely, identify, quantify, and control. However, managing project risk still depends on experience and skill of the engineer or manager to identify, quantify and control the risk in order to manage it.

At the end of the course is a set of questions that highlights the take-aways for the reader to remember and use for managing project risk in their organization.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) accepts this courses for category 4 credit

¹Project Management Institute, PMBOK — GUIDE Fifth Edition 2013 Project Risk Management, Chapter 11

356-Industrial and Systems Engineering - The Fundamentals

(5) 1 Review

4 $90.00

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Course Objectives: This continuing education course is written specifically for professional engineers with the objective of relating to and enhancing the practice of engineering.

Course Description:

This course presents principles and practices of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE) . The focus of IISE is Operations, namely; Operations Analysis and Design, Operations Control, and Continuous Improvement. IISE practices use science, mathematics, and engineering methods to analyze, design, and improve complex systems and operations. And, because these systems are so large and complex, IISE principles involve knowledge and skills in a wide variety of disciplines; require a broad systems perspective and the ability to work well with people.

A course about Industrial Engineering would not be complete without a brief description of why and how the profession began. The origins of Industrial Engineering began in the early 1900 as part of the scientific management movement. The definition of Industrial Engineering is:

Industrial Engineering is concerned with the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of people, material, information, equipment, and energy. It draws upon specialized knowledge and skills in the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering analysis and design to specify, predict and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems.

Accordingly, Industrial Engineering emerged as the foundation for connecting engineering methods and economics to set quality and cost standards for delivering goods and services in business and industry. Industrial Engineers apply their knowledge and skills to set operations process standards through the use of planning, design, statistical analysis, methods engineering, interpersonal communications, quality control, computer simulation, and problem solving. At the end of the course is a set of questions that highlights the take-aways for the reader to remember and use for solving operations and systems problems in their organization.

503-Managing a Nuclear Plant Project

(5) 2 Reviews

4 $90.00

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Course Objectives: This continuing education course is written specifically for professional engineers with the objective of relating to and enhancing the practice of engineering.

Course Description:

The United States of America had 55 operating nuclear plants in 2022 that provided 20% of the nation’s electric power. According to the World Nuclear Association to meet the goal of low carbon emissions, nuclear plants must be built and maintained more efficiently. Nuclear power plants undergo seasonal scheduled refueling outages that result in greater efficiency and reliability. When a unit shuts down for refueling, the outage could last up to two months. Reactor operators typically defer much of the non-critical maintenance work until a refueling outage. They conduct the maintenance in parallel with the refueling.

This is a case study about managing a nuclear plant project during a scheduled refueling outage. The project involves the replacement of two large valves which are part of the Drywell Shutdown Cooling System, a critical system in nuclear plant safety for boiling water reactor plants. The valves are in a radioactive area of the plant. The task of replacing two large valves, weighing almost two tons each, in a contaminated environment involves many complex activities and many people. It involves planning, scheduling, budgeting, coordination, communications, conflict resolution, problem solving, decision making, corrective action. An added challenge to performing work in a nuclear plant is managing and controlling the work in a contaminated environment. The term typically used to describe the process which embraces all these things is called Project Management. At one time or another most of the project management practices were present in this project, some effective some less effective.

This is an actual valve replacement project. Some of the project conditions have been changed for training purposes. A cast of characters has been created to illustrate the project conditions. Any similarity between people working in any nuclear plant and the characters in the case study is purely coincidental. The course is presented in five parts. PART 1 contains the economic analysis decision to replace the valves. PART 2 presents the key team members involved and describes a meeting that occurred during the plant refueling outage to solve unexpected problems. PART 3 contains two technical reports. PART 4 contains a Lessons Learned Overview, Outage Lessons Learned contributions to the Nuclear Industry data base and the project close-out report. PART 5 Appendix contains an overview of the US Nuclear Electricity Generation Industry, describes the US Nuclear Reactors, the nuclear workers who maintain the nuclear plants, and a Glossary of Terms and illustrations.