Windows 8 Tablets Speed Up London Underground Maintenance

Engineers on the London Underground claim that using Windows tablets to report on track faults and respond to emergencies is making it easier and quicker to resolve problems on London’s subterranean railway network and making it safer for passengers.

Tube Lines, a subsidiary of London Transport, is responsible for maintaining and upgrading 320km of track, 255 trains and 100 stations on the Northern, Jubilee and Piccadilly lines and has 3,000 employees.

Previously, paper was used to report faults, while members of Tube Lines’ Emergency Response Unit (ERU) regularly used to print thousands of pages from more than 450 safety documents. Not only was this expensive – apparently £1,000 to distribute just three of these documents to the team – it was also slow and impractical.

Windows 8 tube

“Our task is daunting: the London Underground has been running for more than 150 years and some of the infrastructure is that old,” says Adrian Davey, Head of IT for Tube Lines. “To keep the system running on time, our crews require the latest technology to access the information that they need to prevent passenger delays. However, information exchange primarily occurred on paper. It could take up to 10 days to identify a system fault and fix it.”

Tube Lines’ response was to create an iPad application for ERU workers, but it says this required the use of third party software to provide secure access to the corporate system and to manage the devices – features which are built into Windows 8.

The company teamed up with Microsoft Services Consulting to repurpose the application for Windows 8 tablets manufactured by HP and Lenovo and allow Tube Lines’ IT department to remotely manage devices with Microsoft System Center 2012, secure data with BitLocker drive encryption and access network resources without the need for a VPN.

Keep London moving

ERU workers now have vests with pockets designed for the tablets and can access updated versions of the safety documents both online and offline. They are also able to take pictures and videos of suspected track faults to send back to the main office, which can then issue a response immediately.

“Whether we are attending a derailment or a medical emergency, our response to incidents could mean the difference between life and death,” adds Gary Burnham, ERU Training Competence and Performance Manager at Tube Lines. “Working in wind and rain and stressful circumstances while trying to read paper and make phone calls for information makes it challenging to solve problems quickly.”

Windows 8 is the first version of Microsoft’s operating system designed to be used on both PCs and tablets, but it has endured a difficult start to life since it debuted in October 2012, with many business chosing to stick with Windows 7 or even the ten year-old Windows XP. However XP will no longer be updated after April, and a recent major update, Windows 8.1, has been better received, and its market share has increased to ten percent since the start of 2014.

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