On 21st March 2025, Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport was brought to a standstill due to a power outage caused by a fire at a National Grid substation, resulting in thousands of cancelled flights, stranded passengers, and widespread disruption.
According to the BBC News report ‘Heathrow considering legal action against National Grid over fire’ , the airlines based at Heathrow estimated the financial impact of the shutdown to be between £80 million and £100 million.
Additionally, the BBC News report ‘Five things we now know about the fire that shut Heathrow down’ , revealed that “moisture inside an electrical insulator” at the substation was identified as the cause of the fire, an issue that had reportedly been flagged as early as 2018.
The importance of asset management and maintenance
Events like the Heathrow shutdown are a powerful reminder of the critical importance of proactive asset management and maintenance strategies.
At Progressive TSL, we work with organisations to prevent these kinds of incidents through effective asset management. In partnership with Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence, we deliver Enterprise Asset Management (HxGN EAM) and Asset Performance Management (HxGN APM) solutions designed to detect failure risks early, trigger preventative actions, and reduce unplanned downtime.
What could have been done differently?
- Early Detection of Moisture Could Have Prevented the Fire
The root cause of the fire was moisture in an electrical insulator, a condition that HxGN APM could have identified in advance. With real-time condition monitoring and failure mode prediction, moisture levels could have been continuously tracked via sensor data. Once thresholds were approached, this system would have triggered automatic alerts and escalated actions, potentially preventing the fire entirely. - Deferred Maintenance Was a Known Risk
According to BBC reporting, the issue had been known since 2018. This delay in action is a textbook case for the value of condition-based maintenance. Once moisture levels exceeded a safe limit, HxGN EAM could have automatically generated a work order, prioritised by severity, ensuring maintenance was scheduled before failure occurred. - Unplanned Downtime Is Always More Expensive
Planned maintenance is always cheaper than emergency work. Organisations tend to see reliability improvement as an unnecessary cost, while they bleed money from their unavoidable failures. It is always important to remember preventive measures and reliability ultimately save money and improve your bottom line.
See how Progressive’s client Jersey Electricity, a vertically integrated power utility dealing in the importation, generation, transmission, and distribution of sustainable, low–carbon energy, benefits from our asset management cloud solution here.
Don’t wait for the next disruption to expose gaps in your maintenance strategy. Let us help you build a smarter, more resilient asset management system today. Contact us now.
