PG&E 2008 Annual Report Download - page 5

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Known as the Cornerstone Improvement Program, this
initiative aims to signi cantly cut the number and duration of
outages that customers experience.
Investments in electric transmission lines continued last
year, helping to increase reliability by relieving grid congestion,
interconnecting new supplies, and optimizing power  ows.
We also moved forward on longer-term transmission initiatives
designed to increase access to renewable power supplies.
On the power generation side, our state-of-the-art Gateway
Generating Station recently came on line a month ahead of
schedule. Construction is under way today on two other impor-
tant additions to our generating portfolio as well: Humboldt
Bay on the North Coast and Colusa Generating Station north of
Sacramento. Within our existing  eet, the watershed steam
generator replacement project at the Diablo Canyon Power
Plant is helping to solidify that facility’s place as a mainstay of
California’s energy supply for years to come.
Operating With Excellence
If reliability is anchored  rst in the integrity and capacity of our
system, it is also tightly moored to the quality and consistency
of our people and practices.
Last year, e orts to drive operational excellence — safety,
reliability, productivity, on-budget and on-time performance —
were infused with a new urgency. In part, this grew out of a
standing commitment to continuous improvement. But it also
re ected a recognition that to realize our goals, we had to
accelerate progress in some key areas.
Nowhere has this been more critical than on safety. In
2008, we signi cantly improved benchmarks for lost workdays,
OSHA recordables, and motor vehicle incidents. In fact, for the
latter two measures, the gains beat our goals for the year.
Sadly, any glow associated with these results was dimmed
by the loss of two employees and a contractor on the job.
In the wake of these and other tragic accidents, we are now
implementing safety policies and practices that we believe
are the most exacting ever at PG&E.
Although we will not achieve it overnight, our sights are set
on a goal of zero injuries.  is is, above all, the right thing for
our people. But it is also right for the business — excellent safety
results are a leading indicator of overall operational excellence.
In the area of reliability, increased rigor and smart changes
to outage prevention and power restoration practices last
year paid impressive dividends, reducing the system-average
frequency and duration of electric outages to among their
lowest levels in the past several years, a solid accomplishment
by any standard, but even more so considering that Mother
Nature worked unusually hard against us.
On the natural gas side of the business, we took signi cant
steps in 2008 to revamp and improve processes and training,
with a goal to dramatically improve the quality of  eld surveys
to verify the integrity of PG&E’s natural gas system.
Other key operational highlights included the world-class
power restoration following mammoth winter storms that
knocked out power to millions of our customers; the textbook
execution of the  rst phase of the complex steam generator
replacement at Diablo Canyon; and the remarkably safe and
smooth construction of the Gateway plant.
Our satisfaction with these results is balanced, however, by
an awareness that we still have far to go in order to lead the
industry, even in areas where we have gained signi cant ground.
Taking Care of Our Customers
We achieved high scores for customer satisfaction again in
2008, building on the positive momentum of the past few years.
For the  rst time, PG&E ranked in the top 25 percent of
the industry in all four annual customer satisfaction surveys
conducted by J.D. Power and Associates, covering gas and electric