Maintenance Manager

Key Responsibilities:

Maintenance strategy and reliability

• Determine asset criticality and set the maintenance approach accordingly, balancing scheduled, condition-based and corrective work.
  
• Develop the department from reactive repair into a planned maintenance operation, evidenced in performance data.
  
• Analyse recurring and high-consequence failures to root cause and implement lasting corrections.
  
• Set reliability targets by asset class and track performance against them.
  

Planning and work management

• Maintain a rolling preventive maintenance programme across all trades, driven by running hours and scheduled around peak production.
  
• Operate a single work-order system from request to close-out, so all work is recorded, prioritised, assigned and visible.
  
• Batch work by area, trade and shutdown window so each visit and each outage delivers maximum useful work.
  
• Reserve capacity for breakdown response while keeping the planned programme on schedule.
  

Asset management and lifecycle

• Participate actively with ERP personnel to build and maintain a complete asset register in ERPNext, each asset uniquely identified with its cost, history and downtime recorded against it.
  
• Weigh continued repair against replacement on cumulative cost, remaining life, downtime consequence, parts availability and residual value.
  
• Work with Finance on depreciation, book value and disposal so the asset ledger reflects the condition of the fleet.
  
• Identify assets nearing end of economic life in time for planned capital replacement, and prepare hire-versus-purchase analysis
  

Budget, cost and procurement

• Own and control the maintenance budget across labour, spares, consumables, contractors and capital, and report variance with explanation.
  
• Manage total cost of ownership, accounting for the production cost of downtime alongside direct repair cost.
  
• Assess best-value-for-money form Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) items on quality, price, lead time, warranty and support.
  
• Set spares and critical-stock policy against lead times and criticality, and determine the balance between in-house and contracted work.
  

Leadership and accountability

• Establish a clear departmental structure in which every member of staff reports to a named supervisor and every trade has an accountable lead.
  
• Delegate defined authority covering work approval, release of equipment to service and expenditure within set limits.
  
• Maintain clear communication with production and support functions, including notice of planned shutdowns, reliable recovery estimates and defined escalation thresholds.
  
• Assign ownership of every asset, closure of every work order and conclusion of every incident investigation.
  
• Formalise resources shared with Construction in writing, covering direction of work, funding and accountability.
  
• Assess capability against requirement, recruit and train to close gaps, build cover across trades and conduct performance reviews.
  

Facilities, safety and reporting

• Establish and equip trade workshops, control tools and protective equipment, and organise stores so stock is traceable and charged to the correct work order.
  
• Own safety within maintenance operations, including permit-to-work, isolation and lock-out discipline, and verification of competence before assigning hazardous work.
  
• Maintain statutory inspection and certification for lifting equipment, pressure systems and regulated plant, and meet Kenyan regulatory and environmental requirements.
  
• Report monthly on availability, unplanned downtime, schedule completion, repair time, time between failures and cost, using measured data.
  
• Represent maintenance in operations forums, advise management on emerging risk and the cost of deferral, and contribute engineering input to capital projects.
  

Qualifications & Requirements:

• Required: A degree (or equivalent) in engineering from a recognised university and recognised by Kenyan certifications and mandatory regulations.
  
• Advantageous: Registration with the Engineers Board of Kenya as a Professional Engineer, or as a Graduate Engineer working towards it.
  
• Advantageous: Maintenance or reliability certification (CMRP, RCM, TPM); project management certification; a recognised safety qualification; a master’s degree in engineering, engineering management.
  
• Minimum 8 years post-qualification in engineering and maintenance within industrial, agro-industrial or estate operations, including at least 4 years leading a multi-trade department of 20 or more staff.
  
• Responsibility for a site that runs continuously, where breakdowns translate directly into lost production. Aquaculture, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, food processing and agro-processing all qualify.
  
• Assets spread across distance rather than concentrated in a single plant, and supply lines long enough that spares must be planned rather than bought on demand.
  
• A preventive maintenance programme built and delivered: asset register established, schedules set, spares policy defined, and a measurable reduction in unplanned downtime achieved.
  
• Direct accountability for a maintenance budget, covering forecasting, variance reporting and supplier negotiation.
  
• Kenyan operating experience, or the demonstrated ability to work within Kenyan regulatory, labour and supply conditions.
  

Knowledge & Skills

Engineering knowledge

Breadth across the following, with the judgement to reason about unfamiliar systems, evaluate proposed solutions and direct trade specialists:

• Power generation and electrical distribution: prime and standby generation, load management, protection and fault-finding.
  
• Pumping and water systems: pump selection and duty, reticulation, filtration and drainage.
  
• Refrigeration and cold chain: refrigeration principles, cold room and transport performance, temperature control for food safety.
  
• Mechanical plant and fleet: diesel engines, hydraulics, transmissions and lifting equipment.
  
• Welding, fabrication and structural repair.
  
• Marine assets: the ability to lead a specialist marine team and acquire the domain quickly.
  

Systems and organisational skills

• ERP: ERPNext or a comparable ERP or CMMS — asset master data, work orders, requisitions, stock and maintenance history — configured around departmental practice.
  
• Projects: Planning and resourcing multi-stage work, delivering installations and upgrades to time and budget, and coordinating with Construction and external contractors.
  
• Measurement: Command of how availability, repair time, failure intervals and cost per asset are derived from primary data, and the discipline to report only figures that reconcile.
  
• Budgeting: lifecycle costing, depreciation and payback, with the ability to make a capital case in financial terms.