Using benchmarking to promote efficient metro asset maintenance: case study from London underground

In common with most infrastructure organisations, London Underground is under significant pressure to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations and to deliver more for less. Asset management has a major role to play in achieving this. London Underground has been monitoring the unit costs of asset maintenance for almost 10 years. This has provided a rich data set that has enabled asset managers to identify variations in reliability and cost efficiency between the various metro lines. Using signalling maintenance as an example, this case study describes how London Underground has developed data systems developed to track unit cost trends, how these have been compared to other best practice organisations and the lessons learned for other organisations wishing to develop similar capability.