Case Study: Govia Thameslink Railway achieves continuity of essential rail services during COVID-19 with Microsoft Power BI

How do you keep the trains running through a global pandemic

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) faced the urgent challenge of keeping essential rail services running and making rapid operational decisions as the COVID‑19 crisis unfolded. To meet extensive reporting and performance‑measurement needs, GTR built a DataHub on Azure and adopted Microsoft Power BI alongside Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft 365 to create a single source of truth for real‑time KPI and operational reporting.

Using Microsoft Power BI to power live dashboards from the DataHub, and Microsoft Power Apps to roll out apps for absence reporting, social‑distancing checks, sanitisation logs, desk booking and a driver phonebook, GTR automated around 90% of its performance reporting and gave managers self‑service access to live data. The Microsoft solutions were deployed in days, supported rapid scaling of remote access (Always On VPN from ~300 to 2,000 seats), and coincided with Microsoft Teams usage jumping from ~200 to 1,000+ participants (messages rising from ~200 to 10,000/day), enabling GTR to maintain services for key workers and rapidly retune timetables as passenger numbers fell 97% during lockdown.

Govia Thameslink Railway

Aidan Shanahan

Head of Information Technology