Tranzaura Driving Digital Transformation Among London Red Bus Operations with 55% Market Share

Tranzaura have worked with the London Bus Market since 2015 to unlock the potential of technology in their engineering functions. Seven years on, 55% of the London Red Bus market use the Tranzaura App instead of paper for unplanned maintenance.

Around 3.4 million individual items are now inspected every 30 days in London (113,000 everyday) by bus drivers using an intuitive App from Tranzaura. This ensures a thorough safety check to pre-determined standards is done by walking around the vehicle, whilst recording items on a smart phone with a digital audit trail. Benefits include improved vehicle reliability, real time defect report and improved communciations between drivers and engineers.

The obvious start point on the digital transformation journey for the bus sector was to digitize the pre-use inspection process and get in control of unplanned maintenance, in a way that engages the end users and reduces defect reporting times. However, now that has been achieved, the fast moving company are not stopping there and have moved onto solving the next challenge for the industry – centrally managing planned and unplanned maintenance on one integrated digital platform.

Tranzaura, with its extensive experience and understanding of how a bus operation runs, has now fully developed all the end user (management, drivers, engineers, administrators) decision support tools in one central system. Bus operations anywhere in the world can now manage driver defect reporting and planned & unplanned maintenance in a connected and efficient way and also with enhanced security due to being built on Microsoft Azure.

This new enhanced product will improve visibility of maintenance schedules, communications between drivers and engineers and lower cost of repairs. Other benefits include live defect reporting, photo audit trails, parts and inventory management and full asset lifetime cost management. Owner operated workshops in the bus industry can now quickly and easily integrate the Tranzaura App into their operation with no on premise install, to ensure increased efficiency, better vehicle reliability, high quality reporting and more informed decision making.

We are so proud to be a crucial part of digital transformation in the London Red Bus market and also across the UK. One thing I want to highlight to the industry about this, is the significant financial savings of a digitised system, which comes from the reduction in the number of spare buses fleets have to keep on hand. We talk about operational gains, taking paper out of the system, communications etc. They’re all amazing, they all contribute, they all have incremental gains. But there’s nothing as mind-blowing as actually being able to remove a bus from the spare bus fleet.” says Shane Mann, CEO at Tranzaura.

We were first introduced to the London bus market in 2013 by Metroline as part of an initial feasibility project initiated by them. From there, many versions were tried, tested and development progressed with GoAhead London, who were the first to deploy the platform in 2019. It’s the collaboration and joined up innovative thinking from these pioneering operators that has made this industry proven solution a success.

GoAhead London, Metroline and RATP Dev Transit London are current users of this solution in London. It is also being used outside of London by award winning operators such as Nottingham City Transport, Transdev Blazefield Ltd and Newport Buses.

“In 2017, we embarked with Tranzaura on a strategy designed to achieve workplace digitisation and the elimination of unnecessary paper use.  We focused in two areas – the all-important daily pre-service vehicle check and any potential vehicle defects during the remainder of the working day.  Previously recorded manually via a pen and paper, Tranzaura worked with Go-Ahead London to create an intuitive app that, via a smart device, guides our 6,000 drivers around all of the key vehicle checkpoints.  The subsequent record is digitally uploaded onto a bespoke database and is accessible to the engineering teams at all 17 Go-Ahead London garages.  Crucially, the database analyses trends and identifies repeat faults.  The digitisation process was quickly adopted by colleagues and it enables the company to demonstrate, and measure, compliance.  One of its many benefits is that it allows Go-Ahead London to engage with suppliers from a greater position of accuracy and knowledge.” says Chris McKeown, Chief Engineer at GoAhead London.

“The Tranzaura App doesn’t just bring us day to day operational benefits, we have strategic long-term benefits from using this system as well,” says RATP Dev Transit London Technical Manager Seb Harrington. “The planning and engineering are much tighter, because we get all of the defects ahead of time,” he says. “We can also go back and interrogate the data to see any defects from any time, as opposed to the paper system where you have to go rifling through thousands – if not millions – of pieces just to find one thing.”