Home: April - May 2010 › Bringing ideas to life

Bringing ideas to life

Bringing ideas to life

30/04/2010 | Channel: Infrastructure, Business Improvement, New Products & Services

JO LOERNS tells Railway Strategies how Tube Lines is delivering improvements to the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines through innovation

Over the past seven years, we have invested over £4 billion in major upgrade work and day-to-day maintenance of our lines to enhance capacity, bring the infrastructure up to date and substantially improve asset condition. The return on that investment is significant; day-to-day performance across the three lines has improved with 50 per cent fewer delays to passenger journeys today compared with our first year of operation. We have also finished all but one of our major projects on time, and to date a total of 85 stations have been upgraded, 100km of track replaced and over 140 escalator interventions carried out, of which 50 were major refurbishments. Eight stations have been made step free, Jubilee line trains are one carriage longer than when we inherited them thereby increasing capacity by 17 per cent and we have completed a number of other flagship projects, such as the enlargement of Wembley Park station.

We are now edging closer to completing the full upgrade of the Jubilee line, which involves installing a completely new signalling system. When this project is completed it will be the most significant improvement on the London Underground since 1999, enabling the line’s 600,000 daily users to benefit from shorter waiting times for trains and an average journey time reduction of 22 per cent. Capacity will increase by 25 per cent – potentially space for an additional 5000 passengers an hour.
Delivering work on time, however, is only half the story. Under the PPP contract, we are required to find more efficient ways of working to ensure our work is delivered in a way that represents good value for money.

Driving down costs
Headline figures give us great confidence that we are meeting this requirement. For example, since we took over responsibility for the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines back in 2003 we have cut the costs of modernising stations by 50 per cent and for track maintenance our costs are 55 per cent below the average spent on maintaining tracks on other lines.

Employee innovation has been key to identifying and implementing better ways of working, shortening timescales for completing work and reducing the overall project costs. For example, escalators used to be routinely refurbished in a 26-week cycle. This is now down to an average of 10-12 weeks and sometimes as little as eight weeks. Station upgrade timescales have been cut by 30 per cent, from an average 12 months to nine months and the unit cost per metre square of a recent station upgrade is 54 per cent less than the unit cost of the first ten stations upgraded by Tube Lines. There has also been a four-fold increase in productivity in sleeper repair work using a new method (Spikefast) which cut the 2009 budget for these works by 20 per cent.

Fostering an innovation-driven workplace culture
Rather than create a dedicated research and development team to identify better ways of working, Tube Lines wanted to use the expertise of people who work on the frontline We sought to create a culture of change and innovation throughout the company, making idea generation and implementation everyone’s responsibility, not just one team’s. That way each success could create a ripple effect and multiply achievements.

A competition which rewarded employees who had not only identified a way to improve the way we do things, but had actually gone ahead and implemented the change, was identified as an excellent way of helping drive improvements so the Change Challenge Cup was born.

The competition offers prizes of up to £1000 each quarter and for the best idea annually, encouraging employees to participate and innovate. It also offers recognition – winners and runners-up are awarded prizes in front of 100 senior managers and videos shown about their innovations. Publicity via internal communication channels celebrates success stories, teams and individuals. With recognition flagged up in employee surveys as a crucial motivator, this helps boost morale.

The Change Challenge Cup has led to employees inventing new equipment – sometimes in their garden sheds – or modifying existing products so they can do the job better. Others have even gone to the marketplace, in search of products that will help them carry out their work more cost effectively.

Ideas that generate results
Over the last 12 months numerous cost initiatives have been developed, trialled, successfully implemented and recognised by the judges of the Change Challenge Cup. One of the most successful is Spikefast, a fast-drying polymer compound that is injected into sleepers to extend their lifespan and has helped reduce costs by 20 per cent. Track lowering works, which often involve replacing aged wooden sleepers and track chairs, puts extra wear and tear on sleepers. Replacing them is expensive, time consuming, labour intensive – and not always necessary. Breaking out a sleeper set in concrete and replacing it can take a team of nine around two hours to complete, and is usually done during weekend closures. However an injection of Spikefast sets in just 20 minutes, allowing the sleepers to be re-drilled as new, which means that several sleepers can be repaired in the four hours the Tube Lines team has on track each night. We estimate that around 30 per cent have had their lifespan extended using Spikefast.

The well-known saying, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ doesn’t really apply to Tube Lines because we are always challenging traditional working practices and thinking about how we can achieve the same or improved levels of safety and reliability in a more efficient way. If innovation wasn’t so high on the agenda, we probably would never have found Spikefast. When you see results in terms of safer working conditions, speedier working and lower project costs, it spurs employees on to go out and find the next improvement.

Another one of our innovations was so well received that London Underground is now using it on the nine lines it manages and its use may also be extended to the national rail network. Two master-minds from the Northern line track team were the brains behind a new design of track inspection gauge, an industry tool that helps check track condition and calculates the rail wear. Their new gadget effectively amalgamates six gauges into one and, because fewer gauges are needed, costs have been slashed by over £10,000. The new gauge also locks onto the rail so it not only gives more accurate readings but it is also safer for the inspectors.

Another money saving idea came up during the course of repairing 110km of drainage pipes. Track drainage is formed from a network of pipes with holes in them to allow water to seep through and prevent flooding. One method used to repair the pipes was feeding a liner into the pipe, inflating the lining and running ultra-violet light through to harden it. Holes would then be drilled in each metre of pipe, taking three night shifts to do each 30 metres section of pipe. The idea of cutting a single slot –
rather than drilling 15 holes every metre – along the pipe, reduces the time it takes to do this by 40 per cent.

Tube Lines also introduced ultrasonic inspection on previously welded joints. Using a combination of techniques already in place, an employee put into place a new process for testing rail integrity. Of the 362 joints tested using the new method, three defects were found, enabling remedial works to be carried out as soon as possible and saving Tube Lines £51,000 in repair costs.

Another idea – using recycled excavated material in gabion baskets rather than traditional stone – has generated £19,000 worth of saving at three sites and identified a further £21,000 savings for another two. As there is no longer a need to transport materials to site, 140 tonnes of carbon savings have also been banked.

Tru-Stone, a method of tile repair, was introduced to our stations upgrade programme. Tru-Stone is a solvent-free, epoxy resin that can be used to repair damaged tiles without having to remove them from the wall. It was used initially at Green Park, where 1100 tiles were fixed at just under half the cost of using traditional methods.

Continuing to innovate
Since the Change Challenge Cup was launched in 2008, 64 new and improved ideas have been put into practice, saving Tube Lines £13 million. By putting improvement ideas into place, employees have successfully challenged previously accepted standards, improved safety and made financial savings, as well as introducing smarter ways of working.

As we look forward to the next work programme, the task ahead is no less challenging. Major improvements to the Tube network are planned for 2010-2017, including the upgrade of around 81km of track, provision of a new fleet of trains for the Piccadilly line, and completion of the upgrades to the Northern line and Piccadilly lines which will increase capacity by 20 per cent and 28 per cent respectively and reduce journey times by 18 per cent and factory22 per cent, respectively.

The time and cost-efficiency gains we have made so far will of course be vital to completing this work. However, our drive for innovating does not stop here – all Tube Lines employees, from those on the track to the executive, will continue to adopt new methods and introduce new technologies.

')";>
Jo Loerns is Tube Lines’ innovation co-ordinator
Web: www.tubelines.com