Bill Free

Said the following about Carillion East London Line Maintenance:

“Opening Statement:

Carillion are responsible for the maintenance of the East London Line between Highbury and Islington, in the North, to New Cross in the South, covering fault response and failure rectification for Track, Signals, HV and LV power supplies, off track, facilities management, graffiti removal, litter clearance and general ambience.

The standard of operation on the line is class leading for the UK network. Indeed, we calculate that each of the trains run on the ELL has incurred on average only 0.6 seconds delay since the line came into operation.

Our role not only covers maintenance of the railway; our training initiatives have also brought new skills and talent onto the East London Line.

We liaise closely with all stakeholders locally to ensure smooth progress of the project.

Our teams have engaged in local charity work and continue to deliver sustainable solutions as part of their work with local stakeholders

We hold regular feedback sessions with our client and recently achieved a Client Satisfaction Score of 9 out of 10, an upwards movement of 1 from last year using an agreed TfL / Carillion customer satisfaction protocol.

This year, as a measure of the confidence which our customer has in us, we are taking on more assets in the form of the new Silwood Sidings, the recently refurbished Wembley C Sidings and Landlord FM duties on the West Anglia Stations (which have recently transferred to TfL).

We are by no means the biggest asset maintainer in the world, but we are the only non-Network Rail mainline infrastructure maintainer in the UK.

Contract Description

The East London Line (ELL) was reopened in 2010, following a three year reconstruction by a Carillion / Balfour Beatty joint venture. The route now forms part of the London Overground network, which circles London, mainline trains running from Highbury & Islington to New Cross, Croydon and Clapham pass over this section of the track.

The contract duration is 7 years (2010 to 2017) and Transport for London are our client. There is an option to extend by up to 3 years.

We work under a series of “Key Performance Indicators”:

• Actual Maintenance carried out vs Plan (PPM’s)

• Ambience: Graffiti Removal within 24 hrs of reporting

• Ambience: Litter Removal

• Possessions given up on time

• Safety Culture

• Rapid Response to incidents

• Train delays

All these KPIs are regularly matched and exceeded.

We have a large number of interfaces to deal with on our short length of railway. The main ones are:

• Transport for London (Client)

• LOROL (Train operator)

• Bombardier (Train maintainer)

• Network Rail (Signallers and boundary maintainer)

We maintain excellent relationships with all these bodies

We currently furnish our maintenance through two streams. We have a Permanent Way team, consisting of some 20 operatives, at varying stages of skill and development, dedicated to this contract. However, perhaps our main claim to fame is our Fault Maintenance Team (FMT), which a little while ago consisted of 8 teams of 3, but is building up to 10 teams of 4 due to an expanding and increasing workload. Our Fault Maintenance teams, we are very proud to say, are multi-disciplinary. Signals and Telecoms technicians have M&E competencies, and vice versa. And every team will have a mixture of those skills which means we can respond to, and repair just about any fault of any nature we are likely to encounter on our infrastructure….24/7. This differs from normal railway practise, where different single discipline gangs would be deployed. We have recently agreed a cross discipline skills development matrix for the teams and individuals within the teams. Each Technician can choose their own path, through a series of targeted competencies, to achieve a higher skills capacity which in turn attracts a greater financial reward.

Our infrastructure consists of 5.5km of ballasted track, 6km of slab track, 40 sets of points and 20 km of 3rd rail conductor rail. The line has 20km of boundary fencing and 10km of vegetation to keep trimmed. The signalling assets include 6 No SSI sections, 125 signals, axle counters, a Westcad Train control system and Points equipment. In addition to the operating telecoms there is a Customer information system.

As far as the mechanical & electrical systems are concerned there are 4 traction substations, 5 transformer rooms and a full SCADA system. Lower powered installations include Lifts, escalators, fire systems, air conditioning, and low voltage domestic electrical supplies. We are, additionally responsible for facilities management for the modern train care facility at New Cross Gate.

Structures and Stations are also our responsibility these include 600 civils structures (arches, tunnels, walls) 8 stations, 40 other buildings. 3km of noise barriers and 64 signal posts/gantries.

We are responsible for a relatively modern railway but, none the less, have introduced a number of innovative practises into our working. We have built our own “training span” with track, signalling, power etc to allow us to train staff on site (the facility is available for others to use as well). We have trialled the use of electric road vehicles and, following success, are in the process of arranging replacement of parts of our fleet. We have Remote Condition Monitoring of our point motors. Finally we have agreed a streamlined process for the delivery of instructed additional work, which demonstrates our ability to carry this out, on the back of our maintenance, at approximately half the price of obtaining new quotes every time such work is required. Our maintenance staff have also been trained to assist the Train Operator’s people in the event that a train needs to be evacuated on the track, avoiding the need to train & deploy additional staff for an extremely unlikely scenario.

Our teams and managers are also proud of the links we have forged with a local charity, called Pecan which provides a food bank service for local people, who are down on their luck. We have participated in collections from local Tesco outlets, gathering donations from the public. And we are about to embark on a project to renovate Pecan’s new premises as we have a multitude of skills to offer and the resource available through Carillion’s, 6 days per year, voluntary work ‘time off’ facility.

We are very proud of our maintenance contract, on the East London Line, and believe we have achieved a high level of performance, coupled with an innovative approach to contract delivery.

Transport for London has commended Carillion, saying:

‘We have a great working relationship with Carillion who maintain our great performing railway!

Carillion maximise remote monitoring equipment to the full identifying potential problems with assets before they become a failure! Carillion look at innovative ways to improve maintenance output maximising valuable time in usually short duration possessions.

Cross discipline training approach with their engineers ensuring the client is supplied with highly motivated, knowledgeable individuals across a wide sector of assets.’

-Mick Cooper, Principal Engineer (Transport for London)“