Energy Companies Use Plateau 4 LMS to Align Learning With New Regulations and Manage Industry Consolidation

Plateau's qualification management schema proves a key asset at pipelines, power plants and reactors, where trainers must comply with stringent DOT, EPA, NRC and OSHA rules

ARLINGTON, VA SEPTEMBER 26, 2002 - Plateau Systems, a provider of enterprise-class software that manages all of an organization's learning and knowledge, today announced that more than a dozen energy companies have successfully implemented the Plateau Learning Management System (LMS) to consolidate merged companies on one enterprise learning platform and comply with detailed regulations relating to the qualification of their workers, as required by federal orders such as the Pipeline Safety Act.

Under these Department of Transportation regulations which will be enforced starting Oct. 28, 2002 energy transmission and utility companies have to prove that employees who work on pipelines are fully qualified to perform thousands of specific tasks. These covered tasks are laid out in more than 700 pages of DOT's new Operator Qualifications guidelines. They create a considerable and ongoing training challenge for companies with employees dispersed across multiple locations.

Plateau LMS is uniquely designed to meet these rigorous training demands. It is being used at Xcel Energy, the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. and 12 other energy corporations to manage enterprise learning and provide secure, in-depth audit trails of all training records to regulators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and DOT.

The LMS has a Qualification Management schema that automatically assigns tasks, requirements and deadlines to thousands of individual employees based on their job position. These qualifications can be grouped to meet any job-related or peripheral procedure an employee or contractor needs to know, from the operation of a specific valve to the mandated response to spills and emergencies. Plateau 4 LMS manages all Web-based and classroom training related to these tasks. It automatically alerts affected workers by email when new training is due or procedures change, and provides a time-stamped audit trail for every training event, so that regulators can be given a comprehensive view of the training.

At Alyeska we have an excellent start on the new OQ rules. The qualifications for most of the covered tasks have already been programmed into our LMS in the form of in-person performance checklists, said Tim Harvey, Alyeska Pipeline's Training Director. And since our Plateau training system is already organized around an elaborate matrix of qualifications, getting our workforce up to speed on the OQ regulations and demonstrating that compliance to federal inspectors will be much easier than before.

From a strategic perspective, Plateau 4 LMS has created a substantial Return on Investment (ROI) for energy companies that have merged or consolidated. At one of Plateau's consolidated pipeline customers, created by the merger of two companies, Plateau 4 LMS manages learning for 14,000 employees at more than 40 plants. In just three months, Plateau consolidated data from several legacy training and compliance efforts into one system, and integrated the LMS with the company's PeopleSoft human resources software. Plateau 4 LMS already has more than paid for itself at the company by providing a single learning platform that reduces total training costs, travel expenses and contract instructor fees.

Plateau and WebEx will host a Web seminar on training challenges in the energy industry on Wednesday, Oct. 2, at 1 p.m EDT. The seminar will include a presentation by Plateau customer Southern Co. To register, go to WebEx OnStage Events at: http://webexevents.webex.com. Look for the Plateau seminar and click Enroll.

About Plateau: Plateau's enterprise-class software manages all of an organization's learning and knowledge on one scalable platform. Plateau 4 Learning Management System (LMS) is built on Web-based J2EE/EJB architecture, and is the engine behind the largest e-Learning initiatives in the corporate, non-profit and government markets. Plateau 4 LMS automates the management and delivery of online and classroom learning, organizational knowledge and competencies for clients including the American Red Cross, Motorola, Union Pacific and the U.S. Air Force. Plateau is listed as a leader in LMS evaluations from Gartner Inc. and META Group. The company is headquartered in Arlington, VA. For more information, please visit www.plateau.com.

###