Customer Success Story
LONDON UNDERGROUND
BT Infonet Provides Rapid Communications for "Underground's" Future
The scale of the London Underground organisation, with sizeable offices located in different locations across London, including Westminster, Kensington and Docklands, presents a challenge of coordination and communication. So the use of a sophisticated form of internal e-mail has boomed as users recognise its potential for instantaneous dialogue, transfer of documents and personal time management.
Using BT Infonet's Messenger WorkPlace and Messenger 400 software, e-mail can readily be exchanged between London Underground users and third parties outside the organisation.
A key advantage of e-mail in an organisation that depends so heavily on specialist civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, is that complex drawings and documents can be transmitted rapidly. Engineering plans and other large and complex documents are now being sent as e-mail attachments, eliminating the time and uncertainty of having urgent drawings physically carried across London.
Fax technology simply cannot provide high enough accuracy and resolution for details of complex designs to be clearly reviewed. But an e-mail attachment provides the recipient with the same document as the sender, whether printed out or reviewed on the PC screen. Although fax and couriers are still used, e-mail has been found to be much more cost-effective, particularly because of the intensive exchange of complex information that is needed.
As with any large organisation, London Underground's IT development has to be flexible, to marry existing assets in inherited 'legacy' systems with new additions to maintain efficiency. Among early users of IT within the organisation were (not surprisingly) some of its engineering groups, which are based at Canary Wharf in London's Docklands, and use a Unix computer system. With the rest of London Underground now using a Microsoft e-mail system, one major benefit that the BT Infonet software has enabled is for e-mail to flow easily between the separate Unix and MSMail systems.
The system is now permanently live, using London Underground's internal communications network. Conversion of messages between international business standard and Internet standard is carried out via BT Infonet's Messenger X400 and Workplace for NT software. It also offers compatibility for communication outside the London Underground organisation, but maintains high security standards to keep the information where it should be, and nowhere else. Only registered users can pass through the 'Gate Guardian.' This protection is even possible within specified departments for particularly sensitive data. The system carries out automatic scanning for viruses, a must for a large IT network, especially with external e-mail and Internet links.
The ability for third-party communication offers clear potential for the Underground's forthcoming reorganisation in partnership with private industry: easy information flows to and from the new private-sector partners. Prior to the implementation, "shadow" companies are to be set up within London Underground to manage train operations and infrastructure, which already require good communication capabilities.
The ability for dialogue outside the organisation via London Underground's e-mail system has already helped its efficiency. For supply management, it has speeded-up ordering, confirmation and monitoring of orders by offering instantaneous delivery, where postal or fax transmissions have built-in delays.
A much more specialised transport-industry benefit is to help to integrate the availability of train-service information between the separate Railtrack and London Underground networks. The Internet interface provided by the BT Infonet software has been used to give London Underground operators and engineers access to Railtrack's database of information about temporary track closures during engineering work - that is important, as the two rail networks share track and facilities, and need to coordinate their infrastructure work to keep its availability high despite the need for maintenance and renewal. Then, drawing on that resource, the ability to offer accurate information to travellers on the whole London rail network of both Underground and main line services is a key benefit. All London Underground staff can access the Railtrack information via the e-mail system.
From that point, it is a small step to realising that the biggest benefits of electronic communication could lie away from the office environments of those planning, designing and buying for the London Underground. The company's reputation and future are overwhelmingly coloured by the quality of customer service in real-time, every-day railway operation. But paradoxically for a service which is valued as an easily comprehensible and inter-linked transport network, the people who deliver it are dispersed across hundreds of stations and train depots.
Added to that are the difficulties of communication in stations below ground via conventional methods such as mobile phone or pager. So e-mail, with its built-in ability to reach individuals or groups of staff in any or all locations, has clear potential in providing a communications network alongside the Tube network.
There was a time when railways, as pioneers in the use of the telegraph and telephone, were at the cutting edge of communications technology. Now that congestion and environmental pressures are fuelling demands for a bigger role for railways, communication inside railway organisations, with new business partners, and with the all-important travelling customer, again has to reach those historic high standards.