Tube Lines launches competition for staff with money-saving ideas

Tube Lines has called on its employees to help improve the way it operates after one idea stands to save the company £1.3m.

Tube Lines – responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the London Underground infrastructure – has launched a Dragons' Den-style competition in which employees pitch money-saving ideas to a panel of judges in return for financial prizes.

Judges will choose one best entry and two runners-up each quarter. At the end of the year, one overall annual winner will receive £2,000 worth of vouchers.

The winners of the first quarter competition this year include Steve Judd, an environment asset manager, whose plan to clean iron filings from trackside train position detectors using industrial wipes has the potential to save the company £1.3m a year in avoided train delays.

Tube Lines' chief executive Terry Morgan said: "There are a lot of smart people in this business who have great ideas that can deliver real change. We want to encourage and reward good ideas and improvements, not stifle them.

"Tube Lines can only continue to move forward and improve the way it works if employees are encouraged to challenge the way we work and come up with better ways of working."