Anti-graffiti project makes its mark on London Underground
December 1st 2004

Up to 600 Tags removed in four hour time window every night. London Underground’s demand for graffiti-free trains has set new challenges for Blue Diamond Services, the specialist commercial cleaning and facilities management company, and its customer Metronet Rail, has met its targets

What set out initially as an ambitious joint project has become the blueprint for finding new ways to effectively deal with this growing form of vandalism.Metronet Rail has taken over responsibility for upgrading, replacing and maintaining nine of the twelve lines on the entire network and will spend £17 billion during its 30-year contract.Metronet made a commitment to London Underground to remove all graffiti from its sub-surface rolling stock by the end of March this year.This was a major challenge as Metronet has 180 trains in its sub-surface fleet, this equates to 1200 carriages.And if this were not already a big enough task,Metronet also committed to keep the trains graffiti free, inside and out.

Metronet and Blue Diamond have worked closely together for a number of years on a variety of train cleaning operations and Metronet was aware of Blue Diamond's experience in this area and its previous graffiti removal operations on Northern line trains, stations and depots.

Metronet approached Blue Diamond with the concept and developed a two stage strategy that was able to produce the desired results: graffiti free trains: Stage one was to conduct an initial blitz to remove all existing graffiti on the trains within the tight deadline set. Stage two was to put together a flexible maintenance programme that would ensure it stays graffiti free.

Stage one was a huge task in its own right. Individual deadlines for Metronet's sub-surface lines three lines were set to be completed by the end of March and the scale of each operation was immense. On the Metropolitan Line alone, the 56 trains carried an estimated 16 000 tags, all of were removed in a five-week period.These one-off cleans were carried out in depots using mains power and the specially developed polishing with abrasive cream technique previously employed to such good effect on the Northern Line - a technique borrowed from the motor industry and adapted to meet the special problems posed by tags applied with a number of permanent materials and markers.

Stage two, however, was an even greater challenge and required a radical rethink about tactics because unlike its work on the Northern Line,Metronet’s sub-surface trains do not return to the same depot every night.They are stabled in sidings and spread all over London at 14 different sites.Moreover,many of these sites do not have ready access to mains electricity, so the conventional power tools required to do the job could not be used.The two companies thus had to design and co-ordinate a new operation that could meet the unique requirements of the task.

Metronet developed a sophisticated logistics plan that would ensure the correct number of people from Blue Diamond's 80-strong graffiti team were on hand to deal with any number of trains arriving at each of the 14 locations.

This requires close liaison between both sets of managers and close communication about train movements.

The programming is further complicated by the fact that the trains operate for 20 hours in every 24-houl period, so Blue Diamond only has four hours a day to actually do the work.

And not only do men and equipment have to be brought to each site, the jot does not finish when they have cleaned the trains.The machines used have to be recharged, checked and relocated to ensure they are ready in sufficient numbers for the next shift.

The new operation applies to the cleaning of all internal graffiti on carriages. A separate programme exists to clean external graffiti, which requires the use of different cleaning processes and equipment.

External train cleaning is carried out at depots in a 48-hour schedule that uses chemicals and jet washing techniques.

What you don't see is the hidden logistics chain that is essential to maintain the schedule and the flexibility that needs to be applied constantly to ensure we get the job done, says Chris Howard, Blue Diamond’s managing director.

Metro net outlined the concept and with a lot of joint hard work and innovation we have been able to deliver, putting together a system that now runs like clockwork and has been able to successfully meet the objectives for stages one and two of this challenging task.We have done the initial clean, built up a cohesive and experienced team to conduct the daily maintenance programme, and now we need to integrate the whole operation into a normal management process that will hopefully reveal other areas where efficiencies of scale can be applied to the benefit of both Metronet and ourselves.

What started out as a unique challenge to deal with what can only be called sophisticated vandalism is already starting to provide positive results.The amount of graffiti on Metronet trains seems to have stabilised, suggesting our joint operation is effective. Every train goes back into service each day with no graffiti, but by the end of that day each fleet will carry anything from 150 to 600 new tags, so the process begins all over again.

Nevertheless,Metronet is pleased with progress and has been able to uphold its commitment to London Underground on graffiti. It sees this as a worthwhile ongoing initiative that it plans to continue and which we are delighted to support.

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