At the end of the day TFW should've been maintaining them properly and someone at TFW should've been responsible for ensuring that this was done and kept on top of them.
I think it certainly didn't help when they took Alstom out of Chester Traincare depot and got CAF in - it's no coincidence that all the issues with them increased after that! CAF should be paying all the bills for getting them back in returnable condition in my opinion but certainly TFW need to take responsibility for not overseeing this maintenance - arguably they should have kept Chester Traincare run by Alstom until they were actually ready to return all the units to Angel.
Unfortunately it seems to be par for the course these days where nobody oversees or ensures anything is being done properly and then just complains about it afterwards!
When You say oversee, would you mean like someone who is in charge of the operation and ensures that things run smoothly ? They would also entrust the people doing the work to do their job ? Because that already happens.
Or do you mean, quite literally have a person to hover over each employee as they do their job to check their doing it correctly ? That’s obviously not feasible.
Ultimately, the contract for maintenance depot at Chester had to switch over to CAF because as part of having purchased the new 197’s, maintenance and support was to be provided by CAF.
Further to that, we will never know if CAF deliberately cut corners on 175’s to allow them more time for 197’s or if the step put into place under Alstom to perform engine bay checks for debris was poorly documented and didn’t get properly passed along to CAF.
I worked in engineering for about 4 years prior to the railway, and it’s really not Uncommon for things to be poorly documented and then someone leaves and some vital piece of information is lost and has to be rediscovered or figured out again.