Mark Wilkins – Maintenance Team Leader

I’ve been a gate maintenance engineer in the rail industry for 25 years – mostly for London Underground, but I’ve spent the past 8 years at Cubic. So, you could say I’ve seen the industry from both sides of the track.

I manage a Preventative Maintenance team of 11 engineers – split into 3 teams – which cover most gates in tube and railway stations inside the M25 Boundary. Each team has an assignment of stations, which they proactively service for potential faults.

The most challenging part is keeping the teams motivated – by its very nature, preventative maintenance can be repetitive and mundane. And working in stations late at night requires a bit of physical robustness! It’s invariably cold, and tired commuters sometimes step on us – in fact, the going can get quite tough. But we’re a strong team, and working the night shifts really bonds us together.

My shift always starts at Park Royal in North West London, where the teams arrive to discuss the night’s work. I catch up with paperwork and emails, and generally check all is well with my team, before we all head out to our home stations.

Typically, each engineer services between 5 and 6 devices per shift. Periodically, the team meets up at an assigned station to carry out an ‘en masse’ device service, which also gives us the opportunity to discuss any issues that as a team we need to be aware of.