A Deeper Dive Into Why Simulator Maintenance Agreements & Upgrades

Plant-specific simulators are the largest non-power-producing asset at the plant. The value of a custom simulator is that it represents your plant. Instructors have confidence in what they are presenting to operators, and operators believe they are running their plants. To keep your simulator and plant in sync requires effort, and often taxes an already busy staff.  A little pre-planning can make everyone’s life easier. That’s where a simulator maintenance agreement shines. Such agreements, when in place ahead of time, allow a smooth transition to the latest software upgrades or updates to reflect the latest plant changes.

Simulator Software Upgrades

The digital landscape is ever-changing with new operating systems, and concerns over cyber and intellectual property protection. Even if you don’t update plant models, you may need patches and upgrades to stay protected. If your simulator vendor employs good developers and a solid R&D strategy, you should expect the software to get new and improved features. GSE has added increased development support to our R&D process in the last few years. Adhering to the Agile software development process, we are committed to continually improving our software with regular releases.

Upgrading your simulator software provides:

• New capabilities to help you do your job more efficiently
• Peace of mind that your software will work well with other commonly used software, operating systems, and browsers

There are clear benefits to keeping up-to-date with the latest simulation software, but there have also been traditional downfalls. A standalone simulator software upgrade requires time for testing, and your team is already swamped with responsibilities. Instead of putting off the upgrade—and the benefits—use your service level agreement hours to ensure a timely and successful transition.

Service Level Agreement

Beyond the software updates and upgrades, maintenance plans include several support hours to meet the customer’s needs. Effective and efficient communication between GSE and the customer is achieved through our online support portal.

Part of this service level agreement is the guarantee of 24-hour emergency VPN support. In a recent case with one of our Midwest utility customers, a piece of hardware failed during critical training. GSE’s engineers responded with a backup of the as-delivered simulator and brought the training group back online.

Why should your THERMAL POWER PLANT be on a software maintenance agreement?

Does this sound familiar? The story goes like this – we purchased a simulator for training when our unit was built. Years later, our simulator is out of step with the plant design, and the software hasn’t been upgraded. The outdated models lead to less effective training, so the simulator is no longer used to its fullest extent.

Beyond delivering a world-class simulator, we want our customers to reap all its benefits. That’s why we’ve developed our simulator maintenance programs to enable higher-quality training, which equates to better operators, improved plant performance, and enhanced safety.

As part of the agreement, we’ll not only install and test the latest software version, but you’ll also be able to use the included support hours to keep your simulator in step with the plant changes. Before commissioning, an up-to-date simulator avoids negative training and can verify and validate (V&V) plant changes, such as a new DCS.

Why should your NUCLEAR POWER PLANT be on a software maintenance agreement?

As required by the NRC and other regulatory bodies, your plant reference simulator is up-to-date with plant changes, but you might not be using the latest software from the vendor. Perhaps you fear that updating the software requires extensive testing and validation that you don’t have the time to deal with, you’re worried that an update might negatively impact your load, and it’s just too difficult to put money into the budget when an upgrade rolls around.

By having a simulator maintenance agreement in place, you’re entitled to the latest upgrades as they become available without an additional PO to cut. Included installation and testing services take the burden off of your team while providing you with the latest product enhancements and bug fixes.

We spend much time developing our software releases to make your job easier. Let us bring our services full circle by providing end-to-end services for our releases as part of your maintenance agreement.

Simulators are a major investment in your plant and your people. It is important to make the most of your investment by keeping it up-to-date with the latest upgrades and enhancements. It’s easy to keep the status quo, but the status quo does not improve efficiency.

With a GSE simulator maintenance agreement, we take ownership of maintaining and testing the latest simulator upgrades at your plant. Our maintenance customers receive 10% off training services as an additional bonus. Agreements can be tailored to your plant’s specific needs.

Contact us today to learn more.