Running a PPM Schedule Across 80+ Stations at First Rail London

Marianne Martin has spent over a decade in facilities management (FM) across some of the most demanding environments in the country, from Wembley Stadium to rail depots. Today she is PPM and Statutory Compliance Manager at First Rail London, responsible for planned preventive maintenance (PPM) and statutory compliance across more than 80 London Overground stations, sidings and depots.

That portfolio is the definition of mission-critical. Stations stay open to the public for most of the day, which shapes when work can happen and how it has to be planned. So how do you keep the discipline behind a working PPM schedule intact across dozens of live sites? We asked Marianne to walk us through it.

What a Monday Morning Looks Like Across 80+ Stations

Marianne starts every week the same way: with a single view of what is open, what is done, and what is slipping. The system does the first pass for her.

“I’ve programmed into the system, so it sends me a weekly breakdown,” she explains. “On a Monday, it shows me all of the jobs that are open, all of the PPMs that are open, which ones have been completed, and the statutory ones that are open. That’s my first gaze into what’s going on. Then I go into the system and get more of a deep dive on the jobs that are showing as overdue, or the statutory compliance jobs.”

The review does not end on screen. The next step is a conversation, and Marianne is quick to point out that the problem is not always on the contractor’s side.

“Once I go through the jobs, my next stage is to speak to the contractor to find out whether they’re aware. They usually are,” she says. “Then it’s: what are we going to do to get back on track, and what do they need from us? Because sometimes it’s an us problem. People forget as well.”

The volume is significant, and it varies site by site. “It’s across 80 stations,” Marianne notes. “Even one or two PPMs is a lot, so it’s probably hundreds. There might be a site with a boiler, there might be a site that doesn’t have a boiler, and those two are going to have slightly different PPMs.”

What makes this role different from her depot background is the public. “This time they are using the facilities that me and my colleagues are managing,” she says. “There are certain things you can’t do in the day. You might have to come back and do it in the night, or on a weekend, because it’s a fully functioning station. You can’t do an emergency light test that shuts off all the lights in the station while people are using it.”

What Gets Maintained, and How Often

The cadence of PPM tasks is driven by the asset and the standard it sits under. Emergency lighting shows how a single asset type can carry more than one schedule:

• Monthly: a quick functional check, known as a fish-key test. “It’s literally a flick, just to ensure they’re functioning,” Marianne says.
• Annually: a deeper test. “The annual test includes the flick, but also a drain-down of the battery, because they’re not connected to the system. It’s usually a one-to-three-hour drain-down, where you drain the system to see, in the event of a fire, is it all going to work functionally on the battery.”

Behind these tasks sits a recognised industry standard. “Currently our contractor follows SFG20,” Marianne explains. “SFG20 shows you all the stages you’re supposed to do when you’re completing a job. When you’re doing a gas safety, it tells you that you’ve got to do it every six months, and you’ve got to do this stage, this stage, this stage to complete the task. So we do have guidance, and the contractor uses that to plan how they do the PPMs.”

Why the Asset Register Is the Foundation of a PPM Schedule

When we asked Marianne what makes a PPM strategy actually work, she returned, repeatedly, to the same answer: the asset register. Get the assets right and everything downstream follows. Get them wrong and the schedule inherits the error.

“One of the most important things in managing the system is to ensure the assets have been inputted correctly,” she says. “That tells you whether you need to add PPMs in, or whether sites have had PPMs added that aren’t required because someone’s done an asset check.”

The cost of a missing asset is rarely just a missing line in a database. “Things can be missed, because they’re not caught until you’ve been there a month or a few weeks and you notice there’s an asset in a room that’s not on the asset list, and it requires three PPMs a year,” Marianne continues. “That’s an additional cost for the contractor and the client, because that wasn’t costed in. I always see cost as not just money, but time and effort.”

She has managed this hands-on. In higher education, she used a CAFM (Computer-Aided Facilities Management) system called Concept Evolution. “Faculties would swap rooms, essentially assets, and it would be up to me to swap the responsibility and ownership on the system,” she recalls. “Ensuring they’re in the right place was really helpful for the managers and the head of FM when reporting on ownership.”

Keeping the Planner Accurate Enough to Trust

A schedule is only useful if people believe what it tells them. To guard against drift, Marianne keeps a separate register alongside the contractor-managed CAFM software, where the contractor controls the system of record but she keeps an independent view.

“Separate to the CAFM system, I have a register,” she says. “I populate all the latest dates for the PPMs, and I have a red, amber, green (RAG) status. So when I see some overdue in the CAFM system, I can have a quick review. If they’re coming up red, I know it’s showing accurately, and I know I need to contact the contractor.”

The register also acts as a fast reference and a check on the system. “It’s a big sheet,” Marianne notes. “It’s got over 80 stations and over 20 PPMs, with a line for each site. Emergency lighting is done everywhere, but a gas service is maybe done at fewer than 10 sites, so it’s very varied. It takes a long time to populate and make sure it’s accurate.” Many FM teams still lean on spreadsheets to track maintenance in exactly this way, as a backup and a quick-answer tool.

Crucially, the register lets her hold the planner to the evidence. “If the register says June but the CAFM system says July, we can go back to them and say the last job sheet was June, so it needs to be done in June,” she explains. “There’s no point in having a planner if people look on the system and it’s not accurate, because then it can’t do what it’s supposed to do, which is give you peace of mind that things are planned in and either done or going to be done.”

She also values being able to correct the system directly. “You can do it manually, and that’s quite important in a CAFM system,” Marianne says. “I’d say to whoever manages it, this PPM is in the wrong frequency, it’s showing every three months, it should be every six, can we swap that round? From some of the systems I’ve used, you can go into the back end and make those changes.”

Matching Maintenance Frequency to How Hard an Asset Works

If you are building or reshaping a schedule, Marianne’s advice is to start with the asset list and the environment around it, not the calendar. The same asset can need very different treatment depending on where it sits and how hard it runs.

“You need to know what you’re going to be maintaining for the year,” she says. “What contractors do you need to source? Which of your own engineers can complete the work? And you have to understand the asset and where it is. At GTR (Govia Thameslink Railway), doing the gas heaters in a shed wasn’t as easy as in a ticket office, because I’d have to speak to the production team, and they’d say, Marianne, we can’t move these trains, they need to go out for service.”

Usage should drive frequency. “If you’re in a 24/7 building, you can’t run the maintenance like a building that shuts down at five, because it’s never stopping,” Marianne explains. “You might say, we usually do this every six months, but let’s do it every three months, to see if that helps with the maintenance and lowers the cost of the reactives. Because if you’re getting recurring reactives, sometimes the issue is that it’s not being maintained enough for the amount of time it’s being used.”

She has seen this work in practice. “At GTR we had a PPM done three times a year, and because of how the asset was running, it seemed better to include two more visits,” she says. “There were recurring calls and feedback from staff on site that it was causing an issue. You’re doing above what’s required, which no one’s going to complain about, but again it’s a cost, and I see cost as not just money, but time and effort.”

Making the Case to Replace Ageing Assets

Reducing reactive maintenance is a core measure of success, and that means knowing when an asset has reached the end of its useful life. Marianne uses the data in the system to spot the pattern early.

“At London Underground, if an asset was repeatedly having reactives, I’d email the facilities team and say, we’ve noticed this asset is recurringly failing, I’ve had an engineer check it, and they believe it’s approaching end of life. Would you like a quote for a replacement?” she says. “I’d look at the CAFM system data and see the amount of recurring jobs coming up.”

Making the case to replace, rather than repair, comes down to lifecycle analysis and an honest cost conversation. “I’d sit down with my manager and show the recurring reactive issues, the complaints from staff, and explain that ultimately the reactives are costing you more than a replacement would,” Marianne explains. “Sometimes parts are obsolete, and you’re going to recurringly have a reactive. It makes more sense to upgrade, because you’re improving your assets for the future and reducing the reactive call-outs.”

That long-term view is the point. “If you do the upgrade in the advised and specialist way, it’s going to reduce the reactives, reduce the complaints, and make the environment a better place for the staff within it,” she adds.

Underpinning all of it is a habit of understanding the work, not just the asset list. “I don’t come from a technical background, but I’ve always been very interested in it. I’d go out with the engineers and see how they did things,” Marianne says. “As much as I don’t know everything, I like to understand: what do you do here, how does this work? So I can react better in the event of downtime, or when I’m planning PPMs.”

Managing Split Responsibilities Across Network Rail and TfL

One complexity in Marianne’s portfolio is that maintenance responsibility is split. Some tasks sit with her team, some with Network Rail, and some with Transport for London (TfL). The schedule has to reflect those boundaries.

“The PPMs done by our contractor tend to be the ones in the planner, and you can add the Network Rail ones in if you want to,” she explains. “At GTR we had a very good relationship with Network Rail, so we’d have meetings and they’d let us know if any PPMs were going to be completed by their contractor. Where I am now, not a lot is completed by Network Rail. A lot of it is done by ourselves.”

Her approach to blurred ownership is relationship-led. “As someone who’s worked in many places where there’s a blur in responsibility, it’s about understanding and building that relationship with the landlords,” Marianne says. “Understanding what they do, whether they do vegetation or drainage, and understanding it for your site in particular.”

What to Look for in a CAFM System

For facilities managers running PPM at scale, a good CAFM system comes down to a few practical things. Marianne has worked with several systems, on both the client and contractor sides, and her shortlist is short:

• Visibility of assets and asset age, so you can plan and forecast.
• The flexibility to edit data in the back end, so frequencies and ownership stay accurate.
• Reliable, accurate data, because the planner is only as trustworthy as what sits behind it.

“A good CAFM system is really important for me,” she says. “I like one that can show me the assets, the asset age, and one that gives you the flexibility to go in and make changes so you can have accurate data.”

But the system is not the foundation. The register is. “The most important thing is the asset register, because it gives you the understanding of what you need to maintain and what PPMs to put in place,” Marianne explains. “It gives everybody, the contractor, your colleagues, and the FM team, that understanding of what we’re required to maintain, how often, and how we plan work in at different sites.”

The One Thing to Get Right First

Asked for the single thing a facilities manager should get right first, whether they manage five sites or fifty, Marianne does not hesitate. The asset register is what lets you see the work, cost it, and plan ahead.

“Your asset register gives you a whole load of information. It tells you what’s out there, what you’re required to maintain, and the assets approaching end of life or recently installed,” she says. “So the heads of department can project the asset costs for the future. If you don’t have that, it’s really difficult, because you can’t accurately see into the future.”

She has felt that frustration from both sides of the contract. “I’m saying that as a client and as someone who’s worked on FM contracts,” Marianne reflects. “They want to do their best in maintaining the stations, but if they have limited information, that’s really difficult. It’s a frustration on both sides.”

In a 24/7 environment, the stakes never pause. “I’ve had issues at buildings at 11:30 at night, and floods on a Sunday at six o’clock, sitting down for dinner,” she says. “People want to be able to cook, they want their toilets to work, they want their lights to work, so they can do their shift. You can’t just think, it’s six o’clock, it doesn’t matter. Because someone always needs it.”

Get the asset register right, and the rest of the schedule has something solid to stand on.