Ever Wonder Why Metro Breaks so Much?

According to an audit report released today, a key component of Metro's $2.6 million dollar MAXIMO computer system, which tracks work, labor and materials, is not being used properly, leading to waste, lack of accountability and safety concerns across huge parts of the authority.

The report focused on the work order part of the system, which it said was not being used correctly

We found that some work orders in MAXIMO did not contain essential maintenance information, such as failure codes, labor hours, status, description, and type of work.

The failure to have accurate and complete maintenance information could result in inefficient maintenance management processes, skewed report data and inaccurate statistics relating to labor hours incurred, materials used and services provided. This condition could also allow errors and irregularities to go undetected and unreported, as we as omit critical repair information necessary for the Work Orders Module to function as designed.

One big problem is that work orders aren't being closed properly.

The failure to properly review, approve and close out completed work orders in the MAXIMO system makes it difficult to determine whether corrective and/or preventive maintenance work was actually initiated and/or completed.

A random sample of 256 work orders revealed 75 (29 percent) had not been closed an average of 113 days after supposed completion of the work.

For example, ELES [Elevators and Escalators] work order number 7256221, initiated on July 30, 2009, indicated that the work was completed on the same date but remained open in MAXIMO as of November 10, 2010 (468 calendar days later). In addition, we could not determine who performed the work. The fields in the WORKORDER table used to capture information on the supervisor who reviewed and/or approved the completed work, were not completed.

The report went on to say that this "created an opportunity to manipulate the work order after the maintenance tasks had presumably been completed."

So they can't say who did the work, but there's more. They often don't know what the problem is.

In the audit's review of two departments, Bus Maintenance and ELES, 38 of 67, or 56 percent of the work orders did not have the proper failure or problem codes entered.

Failure to used the correct codes "hinders WMATA's ability to accurately track the history of asset failures, its ability to analyze trends and patterns of failures to prevent and reduce future failures."

The bright side of the report: Metro management appears to have agreed with the findings.