Maintenance Manager

In charge of all the facilities and technology within a factory, maintenance managers ensure their company’s industrial facilities and equipment are always well maintained and in perfect working order. They need to anticipate and overcome any technical difficulties the company may face at any moment. Their role involves maintaining physical infrastructure as well as looking after the safety of their teams, working as a tight unit on the factory floor.

The life of a maintenance manager...

Preventative action

The number one responsibility of a maintenance manager is to organise the workload of their team of technicians, following up on a range of preventative maintenance across the site. Every inch of a factory usually comes with a list of preventative actions that need to be regularly carried out to ensure facilities work properly, including regularly changing parts and, where necessary, completely replacing certain machines and devices. Maintenance managers therefore need to ensure a range of preventative maintenance is carried out effectively in line with their company’s maintenance budget.

Corrective measures

In the event part of a factory’s production line suddenly fails, maintenance engineers will be called out and must correct any issues as quickly as possible to ensure production can swiftly continue. In emergencies, managers call in their teams of engineers, ask for affected production lines to be shut down and head to the site of the breakdown, managing repairs as quickly as issues can be identified. Once the fault has been corrected, their role is to lead an investigation to help understand what went wrong and why something failed, outlining new maintenance procedures where possible to prevent such failures happening again in future.

Required skills

A solid technical background with a thirst for working on the shop floor, candidates need to be proactive, happy working with others and always highly reactive.

Typical educational background

Vocational training with a general engineering or technical background.