"Free Dave" Day 1: Surveillance History

Shoutout to every nuclear “Dave” out there. You’re proud of your knowledge, but you’re itching to be less ... annoyingly indispensable.

For the next two weeks, I’m going to show what it looks like to really #freedave.

New engineer Lena wants to know why the containment isolation valve surveillance frequency is every 92 days. Of course, she asks Dave.

𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐞'𝐬 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐲: He sure remembers the amendment, the fight with the NRC, what the page markup looked like. But he has to go find it for Lena. He digs through ADAMS and EDMS and skims through 40 pages to pull out the two sentences that matter. Then he writes her a long, long email (and wonders if it’ll really be appreciated). 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬.

𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧: One question lets Gordian root around and finds those documents. The artifact explains the history, not just for their plant but for the industry. Citations included. 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬.

Dave still reviews the output. Then he sends Lena his Gordian chat thread on Teams and spends 15 minutes at her desk explaining why the frequency matters and what failure mode it protects against. That's the part that requires his 37 years of experience. It’s also the part that sticks with Lena.

That traceability now lives in Gordian. When Dave isn't there, the answer is still there. No phone call to the beach house required.

Dave saved three hours and left at 4:30. 𝐇𝐞'𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.