ECM – Entity in Charge of Maintenance

We can help you create and improve your maintenance rules. We ensure clear processes and legal certainty for amending maintenance specifications in line with European regulations and directives.

Important for the entity in charge of maintenance (ECM)

• The maintenance rules contain all specifications for maintaining the vehicles and infrastructure. They therefore have a significant impact on the operational safety, reliability and quality of assets on the one hand and on maintenance costs on the other.
• The ECMs are responsible for providing the maintenance rules for the vehicles.

What we offer you:

• Support with legally compliant maintenance
• Drafting and optimisation of your maintenance rules, including clear processes and legal certainty for introducing new maintenance methods and technologies (condition-based or predictive maintenance)
• Evaluation of existing maintenance management systems and identification of necessary change requests
• Drafting of a maintenance programme

The specific ECM services we offer you:

• Support in setting up an ECM maintenance management system
• Support in achieving ECM 2 (management systems)
• Performance of the full ECM 2 function and/or partial ECM services
• Support in preparing for and monitoring/following up on ECM certifications
• Drafting of ECM 2 specifications (manual/maintenance rules)

A simple explanation of ECM functions

(based on Article 14 of Directive (EU) 2016/798 on railway safety and on Regulation (EU) No 445/2011 on ECM)

The ECM pillars 1 to 4 refer to the subareas of overall responsibility for maintenance, which in practice is often distributed across multiple functions.

ECM 1 (the ECM management function) bears overall responsibility for the structure and effectiveness of the maintenance management system. This function is always the one in charge, so to speak, tasking and monitoring the other ECM functions.

ECM 2 (the ECM maintenance development function) defines the maintenance specifications. What needs to be inspected or maintained, how often, and with what result? Which regulations come into play? Which customised maintenance programme must be used, based on the specific operational purpose of the vehicle (mountain routes, high velocity, curves, loads)? ECM 2 is also responsible for monitoring rolling stock and continuously developing maintenance specifications based on this monitoring, hence the name "maintenance development function".

ECM 3 (the fleet maintenance management function) is responsible for ensuring that rolling stock is taken out of operation in good time and maintained. This function selects and commissions a suitable maintenance depot. In addition to the specific maintenance commissioned (e.g. mileage-based inspection 1 or 2), it also hands over the regulations to be applied. Once maintenance has been completed and confirmed, it hands the rolling stock back over to operations.

All that's missing now is the actual performance of maintenance – or in the words of the ECM regulation, the maintenance delivery function ECM 4. ECM 4 is the executive function: the maintenance depot itself. It is the entity that is responsible for delivering maintenance. At the depot, the maintenance order must be processed, documented and archived. From there, confirmation of completed maintenance work as well as notification of tasks that have not been completed must be sent to ECM 3.