Tube Lines, the organisation responsible for maintaining several London Underground lines, has invested £30m in enterprise IT systems as part of a £4.4bn project to improve performance and safety.

The company - which is modernising the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines - is replacing more than 500 disparate databases with eight core systems, aimed at enhancing management and asset tracking at the 100 stations it maintains.

These core systems will improve the way Tube Lines communicates with contractors, as well as enhancing working practices in areas such as human resources, project management, planning and finance.

IT services management software from FrontRange will also be used to speed up fault reporting, allowing repairs affecting passenger safety to be carried out faster.

'Historically there were limited funds available to invest in integrated technology and systems were largely built on an ad hoc basis,' said Diarmaid O'Tuathail, programme manager at Tube Lines. 'This prevented the best possible management of the Underground network.'

By linking the eight consolidated systems using Tibco software, Tube Lines plans to improve asset monitoring on everything from train parts to station fittings. The company has already migrated more than 2.5 million records into the new databases, cleaning inaccurate and duplicated data in the process.

More than 2,500 employees will be given varied access rights to the systems to carry out a range of tasks, from updating personal records through to modelling investment plans.

'There will be a whole host of efficiencies in terms of being able to access the right information, through to employee self-service and asset control,' said Alex Foulds, director of business planning at Tube Lines.

Oracle ERP systems, Maximo asset management software and Primavera project management tools will also help Tube Lines monitor contractors more closely, and ensure projects do not fall behind time or escalate in cost, says Foulds.

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