Nexus streamlines maintenance of Newcastle’s public transport infrastructure

Nexus is the UK government’s Passenger Transport Executive for Tyne and Wear, and is responsible for the provision, planning and promotion of public transport in the region. The organisation runs the Tyne and Wear Metro, which carries more than 40 million passengers a year to more than 60 stations in Newcastle, Sunderland and the surrounding area. It also provides a number of early morning, late night and weekend bus services, monitors commercial bus operators, and operates the Shields Ferry crossing.

One of Nexus’ most important responsibilities is to maintain the transport infrastructure and ensure that all services are kept running as reliably as possible. With such a complex and diverse infrastructure, the maintenance workload is split between 13 specialist engineering sections, each focusing on a specific area of expertise: the metro cars, the locomotives, the stations and facilities, the overhead power lines, the track and signals, the bus interchanges and bus stops, and so on.

Breaching the information silos
“Historically, each engineering section operated independently, so they all had their own systems and processes,” explains Robert Fish, Asset Knowledge Manager at Nexus. “Some were using paper-based systems, some used spreadsheets, and others had databases that they had developed themselves.

“If we wanted to get an overall view of operations, we had to go to each team in turn – and when they created reports, it was difficult to ensure that the data was consistent and comparable between sections. As a result, we didn’t have much visibility of costs, and we weren’t easily able to identify opportunities to streamline processes or improve service levels.”

The lack of standardisation also created other problems. For example, if an engineer moved from one section to another, they had to learn an entirely new set of systems and processes. Equally, the use of multiple IT systems inflated hardware and licensing costs, and meant that each section required its own IT experts.

Standardising maintenance processes
“We decided to create a new, standardised set of maintenance processes that would be adopted by all sections,” explains Fish. “To support this initiative, we needed to find a maintenance management system capable of maintaining a comprehensive asset database for the entire infrastructure. We also wanted to improve reporting and analytics, and to have the option of extending the solution with technologies like GIS and mobile devices in the future.

“We drew up a detailed specification and conducted a strict tendering process. We soon had a shortlist of two solutions, and we invited the vendors to run some workshops using our own data to demonstrate the capabilities of their software. Of the two options, we believed that IBM Maximo Asset Management was the superior solution for our needs.”

Proving the capabilities of Maximo
The next step was a pilot project to help the company understand the capabilities of the Maximo software and map the business processes of the different departments into a coherent set of standard processes.

“The technical aspects of the project were important, but the biggest challenge was the change in mindset that it required from the engineers,” explains Fish. “Even little things, like standardising the terminology and making sure everyone was speaking the same language, were important hurdles. Fortunately, when people realised the possibilities of the IBM Maximo solution and started to think about the benefits, even the doubters began to come around. By the time we completed the pilot, the project had won a lot of support from managers and engineers across the organisation.”

Expert support
To help with the full implementation and roll-out of the IBM Maximo solution, Nexus chose to work with Vetasi, an IBM Business Partner that specialises in asset management and maintenance solutions.

“Vetasi were recommended by one of our other partners, and we were impressed by their credentials in the transport sector,” comments Fish. “They were fantastic throughout the initial implementation, and were prepared to be very flexible during the rollout. Their expertise with IBM Maximo was vital to the success of the project, and we hope to continue working with them to exploit additional features of Maximo in the future.”

Full functionality
The current version of the solution provides work order management, preventive and reactive maintenance, and service request management functionalities. It is also integrated with Nexus’ purchasing system to provide basic data on the cost of materials; the organisation plans to extend this functionality in the near future to support end-to-end control of procurement and inventory.

“The service request management module is very useful, especially for the Metro,” explains Fish. “When someone reports a problem to the network control room – a signal failure for example – they can log it as a service request and a work order is generated in Maximo automatically. We can then monitor the problem and measure how quickly it gets resolved – giving us a useful metric for performance management.”

A more intelligent approach
The new solution has also enabled Nexus to take a more intelligent approach to planned maintenance scheduling. As one example, train cars used to be serviced on a fixed schedule, regardless of how heavily they had been used. Now, Maximo calculates the distance that each carriage travels, and schedules maintenance as soon as they pass a predefined threshold. As a result of this and other innovations, Nexus expects to see fewer breakdowns and to be able to provide a more reliable service to its customers.

Moving away from specific examples and taking a higher-level view, the Maximo solution is helping to change the working culture within Nexus by eliminating manual processes and information silos, and providing a single, coherent and reliable source of maintenance-related data and processes. Engineers from all sections now have a single way of working, and the IT team has just one system to support.

“Above all, the IBM Maximo solution gives us better visibility across all our maintenance processes, which is vital for continuous improvement,” says Fish. “If you can see what you are doing, you can identify the gaps – and once you can measure something, you can start to improve it. Maximo gives us insight into numerous aspects of our operations and helps us demonstrate our efficiency compared to other transport organisations – which helps us prove that we are delivering good value for taxpayers’ money.”