Tube Lines' long journey ahead

Connolly: Tube Lines’ challenge is to do with the information, not technology

Tube Lines has started a major data management overhaul to increase passenger security and improve efficiency in response to mounting pressure to cut costs.

In January 2003, the maintenance firm won a 30-year contract from London Underground (LU) for the maintenance, renewal and upgrade of infrastructure, including track, trains, signals and stations on the capital’s Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. The first review of the contract is due in June 2010.

The current economic conditions are likely to mean even more stringent performance targets from LU to reduce costs, and improving the use of information plays a critical role in delivering results, said John Connolly, director of information at Tube Lines.

“We made a few decisions to have reliable systems in areas such as finance, project and asset management a couple of years ago. Then we discovered that the systems were broadly OK, but we hadn’t made them part of the way of doing business – ­ they were not at the very heart of how work is done,” he told Computing.

“We realised that there is a lot of unstructured asset data. In short, our challenge is to do with the information, not technology.”

Connolly’s role was created last year to change the way the business handles information. Since taking the job in October 2007, his remit has expanded to include responsibility for innovation, change and expanding use of Six Sigma, a methodology used to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in business processes.

Tube Lines uses IBM’s Maximo asset management system, which is accessed by a number of “super users” managing different projects across the three underground lines. However, the business faced problems created by a lack of knowledge sharing and that had to be addressed as a priority.

“We had people developing their own view on how we do things rather than doing them in a structured way. While we had a number of super users, others struggled as we had forgotten the need for institutional competence,” said Connolly.

To help solve the problem, Tube Lines is working on process improvement projects related to the way knowledge is used, said Connolly. It is aimed at optimising use of the system, as inconsistent ways of working often led to ambiguous data.

Other ongoing work includes improvements to systems supporting the firm’s project management documentation in areas such as station refurbishment and signalling. “My goal is to get asset performance information to a level where we can respond to an ever-increasing demand for fewer failures as penalties will be considerably higher every time that happens,” said Connolly.

“There are several ways of going about cost reduction, such as renegotiating with suppliers and contractors. But ultimately, you get to a point where you have already done all that and you have to start getting intelligent about cost management, which is intimately linked with a thorough view of assets.”

Connolly said the changes made in information management have improved data quality and changed business attitudes. As a result, the company has halved delays on the underground lines it operates and reduced the likelihood of commuter injuries tenfold.

“We want to end up at a point where this information culture is ingrained in the business so that it is not negotiable to have data that is less than optimum. But there is a lot of work to be done and this will be a journey of many years,” he said.

Tube travellers call for better service information

London Underground (LU) is facing increasing commuter pressure to improve service information but has admitted it will be several years before the situation improves.

During a live question and answer session with LU executives last week, passengers grilled director of strategy and service development Richard Parry and chief operating officer Howard Collins on how the public could be better i nformed.

Customers complained that information shown on platform displays is often wrong, causing them to board the wrong train. LU’s answer was that upgrades to affected lines will improve customer service information as well as replacing the fleet of trains and upgrading the signalling system, but this will take 10 years.

Travellers also requested that recorded announcements at Northern Line stations be amended so the destination of the train is given earlier in the sequence – often, sections of the recording are not heard before the train doors close.

The executives said the system on the Northern Line is “pre-set and gives out information in a structured way that is very difficult to amend”, so passengers will have to look out for the relevant information on the platforms and trains.