Working with London’s transport network to improve maintenance performance
Saving costs from and improving the performance of the maintenance operations of London’s underground system will help to safeguard the future service provision.
Key information
- Location:
- London, UK
- Date started:
- 2018
- Completion date:
- 2020
- Client type:
- Infrastructure - Advisory
- Main services:
- Advisory – operational excellence
Front line focus
UK transport local government body, Transport for London’s (TfL) maintenance modernisation programme was established in 2017 to set-up and optimise the asset operations directorate, which performs most of London Underground’s maintenance.
With a focus on operational excellence, we were engaged in 2018 as the lean delivery partner to help transform TfL’s front-line maintenance activities – improving productivity and cost performance by building improvement capability and removing inefficiencies in resources and time.
Encouraging action
Delivering business transformation services, we bought ‘lean thinking’ to life by engaging all levels and providing hands-on support, as well as being pragmatic in helping the teams in pinpointing opportunities and keeping a relentless focus on benefits.
Our specialist coaches helped the front-line maintenance teams using lean methodologies to develop their own improvement capabilities – using visualisation, process mapping and five-step problem-solving to identify opportunities to exceed savings targets; upskilling through lean leadership training for managers and running several lessons learned workshops; coaching to embed improvement mind-sets and operating systems, and supporting project teams to move swiftly to solving problems and action.
Our aim was to leave TfL with the capability in place for their teams to go further without our continued involvement, and with less reliance on consultancies in the future.
Significant savings
We helped the front-line maintenance teams deliver multi-million-pound repeatable year-on-year savings against their targets. In addition, we have upskilled more than 80 managers through our lean leadership training linked to individual improvement projects typically expected to deliver between £100,000 and £150,000 of benefits each.