Entity in Charge of Maintenance

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All rail vehicles within the European Community must have an assigned Entity in Charge of Maintenance (ECM) who is responsible for ensuring that the vehicle is safe to operate and that maintenance programmes abide with the specifications for interoperability.

As per the regulation 2019/779, the ECM certification system ensures there is documented and certified evidence of maintenance responsibility for each vehicle.

We offer two distinct service areas:

Assistance in preparing your organisation for certification by (EU) 2019/779
Performing ECM I and II activities

How we can help you

We help clients navigate the ECM process, ensuring they understand their requirements and compile the necessary evidence in full compliance with the regulation.

Our approach starts by developing bespoke guidance to ensure you and your team have a full understanding of both the requirements of the regulation (EU) 2019/779 - or the appropriate articles of your Safety Management System - and how to demonstrate compliance.

We will then review the management quality documentation to provide confidence to all parties that the product, system or process is likely to achieve certification.

This will usually be followed by an audit, inspection and witnessing of tests. Whenever possible, however, we will adapt our approach to accommodate existing evidence of compliance or certification.

The resulting audit and inspection report forms the basis for certification, with the entire process taking just a few weeks.

The benefits to you

Our approach is about guiding the client efficiently through the process, producing a final compliance report that provides increased confidence to customers about a product's ability to satisfy, or even exceed, requirements.

How we can help you

Based on your objectives, budgets, facilities and logistics requirements, we will help you develop new maintenance concepts and instructions - or adapt existing arrangements - that fully align with the requirements prescribed for an Entity in Charge of Maintenance.

This will include keeping up-to-date records of maintenance history, incidents and accidents, and also helping to investigate the causes of poor performance.

We will also conduct annual audits and reports to determine whether the maintenance rules still comply with Technical Specifications for Interoperability.

The benefits to you

As a supplier of ECM services, our priorities will centre around keeping your rolling stock in a safe condition.

However, in choosing Ricardo as your partner you will also benefit from direct access to our in-house engineering teams with extensive experience of developing maintenance instructions for all types of rolling stock and for a wide range of operational criteria.

Our experts will bring in-depth knowledge of the key industry regulations as well as insight into specialist areas such as drafting safety analysis (CSM-RA), RAMS and implementing cost controls.

Above all, by working in collaboration with your own maintenance teams, they will ensure that throughout your maintenance operations there is an long-term emphasis on understanding when safety levels have been adequately achieved.

See also: service pages for Digital Asset Monitoring and RAMS