Tube Lines, the firm tasked with maintaining and upgrading the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee underground lines, is updating its asset management software to improve visibility.
The company is responsible for more than 200 miles of tracks, 255 trains, 100 stations, 2,395 bridges and structures, 71 lifts and 227 escalators.
It is extending its asset management software to its fault reporting centre, emergency response, transport and health and safety operations.
Asset systems technical manager Martyn Capes says when Tube Lines assumed responsibility of the underground lines, asset information was distributed across over 550 disparate databases and 1500 Excel spreadsheets.
‘We introduced Maximo 5.2 to track assets and provide a single source of information but it did not include some business,’ he said. ‘We have now deployed Maximo MXES to deliver a single view of allactivities across the network.’
He says it is essential to improve the efficiency of fault reporting, maintenance scheduling and health and safety reporting.
IBM subsidiary MRO Software provides Maximo, which has open application programming interfaces and connects with its enterprise resource planning (ERP), document management and project planning software.
It can now record detailed information on assets, enabling it to meet regulations and requirements around the inspection and condition of its assets.
‘Creating a single source of asset information has provided unprecedented visibility of asset performance,’ he said. ‘We also replaced five different software applications with one, saving licensing and support costs.’
Tube Lines has also introduced mobile devices to its maintenance staff linked to the Maximo software. This enables staff to complete tasks such as receiving work orders, sourcing parts and completing jobs without returning to the depot.
It is adding GPS to the devices to enable engineers to locate assets to within one metre, significantly reducing the duplicated reports of asset faults.
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