Transport & airports
IBM Maximo for transport, rail and airports
Rail, metro and airport estates are only ever available in gaps. Maximo has to answer whether an asset is fit to run inside that gap, and prove it to the ORR or the CAA a year later.
The clock the estate runs to
Three windows in one day, none of which extends
Each is where an awkward form produces a worse record, not a slower one.
What operations is holding
What the record has to carry
05:20
Airfield inspection, closing when the first arrival is on approach.
An edge light defect raised from the vehicle, located precisely enough for the crew and the aerodrome manual.
11:05
A pushback tractor fails on stand with a turnaround being held.
Unit, symptom and a photograph in under a minute, in hearing protection. It goes unserviceable and dispatch stops allocating it.
01:40
A night possession that hands back on time whether or not the work is finished.
Condition recorded against the segment during the work, held offline and synced on the way out.
Who keeps score
Six scorekeepers, and the evidence each one turns down
Different bodies, one shared expectation: the inspection happened, a competent person did it, and the record proves both.
| Ref | Scorekeeper | Asks for | Will not accept |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | The Office of Rail and Road, under the Railways and Other Guided Transport Systems (Safety) Regulations | Inspections to interval, defects closed out, competence held by the person who did the work. | A completed work order with no competency behind the name on it. |
| T2 | The Rail Accident Investigation Branch, with the duty to act on the operator | The recommendation, the change made to the maintenance regime, and evidence the changed regime is running. | A closed action with no trace into the PM library. |
| T3 | The Civil Aviation Authority for UK aerodromes, with EASA rules for European operations | Airfield inspection recorded in line with the aerodrome manual. | An inspection logged without the asset it was performed against. |
| T4 | The Health and Safety Executive, under LOLER 1998 and PUWER 1998 | Thorough examination at interval for jet bridges, hi-lifts and workshop plant. | A certificate filed centrally with no link to the asset record. |
| T5 | The Health and Safety Executive, under RIDDOR 2013 | An incident traced to the equipment involved and its maintenance history on that date. | A history that cannot be reconstructed for that date because the record was rewritten, not versioned. |
| T6 | The operator itself, audited internally and by its regulator | Airside driving and equipment authorisations enforced at the point of assignment. | Authorisation held in a separate spreadsheet. If the planner can assign the job, the control has failed. |
Codes are stable. T2 and T6 are the rows most often failed on an otherwise well-run estate.
In conversation with Bill
Bill Hulbert
Head of Solutions · 30+ years in EAM and IBM Maximo
Bill on designing a form for the gap it gets filled in
- You rolled Maximo Mobile out to 450 engineers at Heathrow. What did that settle?
-
That the form is designed by whoever has the least time. A technician who cannot finish a screen inside the gap they were given finds a way round it, and the way round is worse than a shorter form. So I design from the window backwards: how many seconds are there on stand, and what can be answered honestly.
- Why one platform across the airfield, the terminal and the fleet?
-
A duty manager holding a stand does not care which register the answer lives in. IBM Maximo models a linear asset, a fleet unit with its own meters and position-tracked components, and a building zone in one hierarchy. Two tools give two answers, and the day they disagree people stop trusting both.
- What do you find first when you walk an estate?
-
Terminal assets managed properly, and ground support equipment in a workshop spreadsheet with its own numbering and its own idea of serviceable. The cost appears on the bad morning, when a fact the estate holds takes four calls to establish.
- What will you not promise an airport?
-
That the disruption dashboard ends the phone call. When the decision matters the duty manager rings the workshop. I will also not move a fleet onto condition-based regimes while its meters are unreliable.
Bill led the SAP to Maximo migration for London Overground at Transport for London and managed Maximo at Gatwick through its separation from BAA.
Ground support equipment
The fleet, in flat terms
What a unit carries
- Meters
- Odometer, hours, cycles, fuel burn and charge cycles, running in parallel.
- PM triggers
- Date, distance, hours, fuel consumed or cycles, in combination.
- Components
- Tracked by position, so a refurbished engine or battery pack keeps its history and warranty.
- Campaigns
- Raised against the identified build range and tracked to a defensible closure rate.
Where the boundary sits
- Maximo publishes
- The serviceability figure operations and the workshop both read.
- Telematics supplies
- Meters, fault events and position. It owns real time; Maximo owns the record.
- Fuel systems supply
- Transactions, arriving as consumption against the unit.
- Dispatch consumes
- Serviceability, rather than deciding it.
The Transportation industry solution ships as part of MAS Manage.
What the window costs
No window on this estate gets longer. What changes is how much of the record survives it.
Segmentation precise enough for the aerodrome manual, meters that trigger the regime, authorisations enforced at planning. Each is decided at design time and paid for at 05:20.
Scope and boundaries
Four boundaries we set in the first conversation
Each costs more in month six.
Maximo holds the asset record, dispatch holds the movement
Real-time position, geofencing and stand allocation stay with the platforms built for them, across a boundary agreed at the start.
One asset model is an organisational decision
One register across airfield, terminal, baggage and ground support equipment is the largest gain here, and it asks departments to give up their own numbering. The decision is yours.
Condition-based maintenance arrives third
Telematics moves a fleet off calendar regimes once the register, the meters and baseline maintenance are stable. Running all three at once is why fleet programmes land short.
The disruption view changes what the phone call is for
A duty manager will still ring the workshop when the answer matters. The screen shortens that call rather than ending it, which is a smaller change than a demo suggests.
Maximo for transport and airports, frequently asked questions
- Can one Maximo model hold airside, terminal and fleet assets?
- Yes, when the hierarchy is designed once rather than extended as each department arrives. Linear assets such as taxiways, fleet assets such as ground support equipment and building assets such as terminals each behave on their own terms inside a single register.
- How do you stop work being assigned to someone who is not authorised?
- Crafts, qualifications, airside driving permits and equipment authorisations sit against person records and are checked when the planner assigns, so a lapsed authorisation blocks the assignment. That assignment record then forms part of the evidence trail (T6).
- Can Maximo run a mixed-energy GSE fleet, diesel and electric side by side?
- Yes. Preventive maintenance triggers on date, distance, hours, fuel consumed or cycles, and combinations are configuration rather than written code. A diesel tractor on hours and a battery-electric belt loader on charge cycles share one register and one serviceability figure.
- Does Maximo sit alongside our depot management system or take it over?
- Either. Some operators consolidate into Maximo; others keep a specialist depot system for shop-floor execution and run Maximo as the system of record. We have implemented both and recommend whichever lowers operational risk on your estate.
Bring one bad morning and one GSE class.
A disruption you actually had, with the timeline you reconstructed, and the equipment class that causes most trouble. We run both through the model we would build.
Bring this to the first call
- The reconstructed timeline of one recent disruption
- The asset list and PM regime for one GSE or rolling-stock class
- Your current register of competencies and airside authorisations
- The systems that claim to know whether a unit is serviceable