AI at work: Southern Nuclear's Copilot agents move the fleet forward
Southern Nuclear is putting AI to work where it matters: maintenance, operations, safety, and performance. Employee-built Copilot agents are now embedded across the fleet, with thousands of real uses logged and measurable gains in efficiency, risk awareness, and decision quality.
The focus is simple-get the right information to the right person at the right time. Maintenance leaders, planners, schedulers, engineers, and technicians now have a faster path from data to action.
Why operations teams care
Maintenance prep is heavy on data, documents, and handoffs. These agents cut that overhead by centralizing sources and surfacing the best available guidance in seconds.
The result: tighter schedules, fewer surprises during execution, and more consistent adherence to standards across sites.
The agents making a difference
Fleet Operating Experience (OE)
The OE agent puts internal operating experience at workers' fingertips. It streamlines work package prep, troubleshooting, and craft work readiness by pulling from a large set of fleet data and past lessons learned.
Deployed in June 2025, it's now a standard tool for issue response teams who need answers fast.
- Searches internal OE in minutes, not hours
- Improves equipment reliability through better-informed fixes
- Supports repeatable, high-quality work packages
Safety Advisor Copilot
This agent gives instant access to safety procedures and OSHA guidance. Work planners use it to bring the right safety content into packages, and technicians can pull it up on demand in the field.
Plant Vogtle safety lead Rich Merjuste put it plainly: "These agents create the ability to have the knowledge of the subject matter expert by your side through any job, which only enhances our ability to put safety first."
- Faster, more consistent safety references in pre-job briefs
- Reduced time hunting for procedures and controls
- Stronger line-of-sight from planning to execution
Organizational Effectiveness & Performance Improvement (OR/PI)
The OR/PI agent helps teams build clear, high-quality improvement plans and communicate root issues without noise. It's used fleetwide to lift precision, craftsmanship, and maintenance effectiveness.
- Structures improvement plans with crisp problem statements and actions
- Improves accountability through consistent language and metrics
- Shortens cycle time from issue identification to closure
Real people, real use
Fleet organizational effectiveness director Melissa Moran and fleet performance improvement manager Jake Olivier use the OR/PI agent to review plant performance metrics and drive follow-through. Maintenance I&C technicians Jonathan Cox and Anthony Glover prep work faster using OE agent prompts and context.
On the safety side, Merjuste and Plant Vogtle safety coordinator Brian Vallee use Safety Advisor Copilot during walkdowns to verify controls and align teams before work starts.
How they made it scalable
Southern Nuclear's AI Working Group partners closely with Southern Company's AI Center of Excellence to build, test, and roll out agents. Project manager Roy Berryman credits cross-functional collaboration for moving fast while maintaining standards.
Maintenance supervisor Jacob Walker adds the frontline view: involving end users ensures the tools solve the right problems at the point of execution. Maintenance leaders now package key performance data into clear briefs without extra software overhead.
The adoption speaks for itself: more than 850 active Copilot users across the company and a growing portfolio of custom agents built for daily operations.
What operations leaders can copy now
- Start with high-friction workflows: work package prep, troubleshooting, and pre-job briefs.
- Centralize safety and OE sources so agents return consistent answers every time.
- Create a small working group (maintenance, safety, engineering, IT) to iterate weekly.
- Measure outcomes that matter: schedule adherence, rework, safety observations, and mean time to resolution.
- Train supervisors and planners first; they set the tone and standard for usage.
Tooling note
Southern Nuclear's agents run on Microsoft technology. If you're evaluating the ecosystem, start here: Microsoft Copilot.
Upskill your ops team
If you're formalizing AI skills by role-planner, supervisor, engineer-this resource can help: AI courses by job.
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