Key Responsibilities

1. Engineering & Maintenance Strategy & Planning

•           Develop, implement and continuously improve a standardised group engineering and maintenance strategy for the tile factories, aligned with production plans, product quality, customer service and business objectives.

•           Lead the transition from reactive maintenance to preventive, predictive and condition-based maintenance across all five factories.

•           Oversee annual maintenance plans, planned kiln and line stoppages, statutory inspections and capital replacement programmes, coordinating closely with the Factory Managers.

•           Lead the roll-out of the Pragma On Key maintenance system to all five factories: own the roll-out plan and go-live schedule, and set the group standards for asset hierarchy, criticality, master data (asset register, bills of materials, maintenance task lists), work-order workflow, spares, user roles and KPI reporting.

•           Support the Site Maintenance Managers with each factory implementation, including data build and verification, user training, go-live and post-go-live stabilisation.

•           Drive continuous improvement of the maintenance system after go-live, through user feedback, data-quality audits, report development and configuration changes, and coordinate with Pragma and IT on licensing, support and upgrades.

•           Set group engineering standards for equipment and spares specifications, maintenance procedures, isolation and lockout, and management of change (MOC) for plant modifications.

2. Legal Appointment & Statutory Compliance

•           Act as the designated GMR 2(1) competent person for machinery at the group’s tile factories, in terms of the General Machinery Regulations (or successor regulations) under the OHS Act.

•           Support the Section 16(2) appointee in discharging OHS Act duties relating to machinery, engineering and maintenance.

•           Recommend the written designation of the Site Maintenance Managers as GMR 2(7) competent persons at each factory, define their duties in the letters of appointment, and keep appointment letters, competence records and required notifications to the Department of Employment and Labour current.

•           Maintain a group register of statutory inspections and certification (pressure equipment such as air receivers and gas installations, lifting machinery, electrical installations and certificates of compliance) with 100% on-time completion.

•           Audit machinery safety and statutory compliance at each factory at least quarterly, and track corrective actions to closure.

•           Promote a zero-harm culture through risk assessments, lockout and isolation controls, permit-to-work systems, toolbox talks, audits, incident investigations and near-miss learning.

•           Ensure engineering controls support occupational health and environmental compliance, including dust extraction and filtration (respirable silica), noise control, and any atmospheric emission licence conditions for kilns and dryers.

•           Support site compliance with applicable quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety management systems.

3. Plant Reliability & Asset Management

•           Maximise availability and Overall Equipment Effectiveness across the tile factories, including body preparation (ball mills, slip handling, spray dryers), presses and extrusion, dryers, glazing lines and digital printers, kilns, sorting, packing, rectification and polishing, and utility systems.

•           Apply asset lifecycle management from equipment specification and commissioning through maintenance, refurbishment, replacement and decommissioning.

•           Track repeat-failure trends and the worst-performing equipment across the factories, and lead group actions to eliminate them.

•           Lead structured root-cause analysis for critical failures and recurring defects, ensuring sustainable corrective and preventive actions.

•           Ensure critical kiln protection is in place and tested, including emergency roller drives, UPS and standby power, and safe shutdown procedures for power and gas interruptions.

4. HV, MV & LV Electrical Systems

•           Accountable for the maintenance, safe operation and reliability of the 88 kV substation and MV/LV distribution at the factories, including power transformers, HV and MV switchgear, protection systems, earthing and lightning protection, DC systems and batteries, cables, power factor correction and standby generation.

•           Maintain and enforce an HV operating regulation (such as ORHVS), with written authorisation of competent HV/MV operators, switching programmes, isolation and earthing procedures, and permits to work.

•           Ensure compliance with the Electrical Machinery Regulations (including work on disconnected electrical machinery and switchgear and transformer premises) and the Electrical Installation Regulations (certificates of compliance).

•           Run a planned electrical testing programme: transformer oil and dissolved gas analysis, protection relay testing and setting coordination, circuit-breaker maintenance and timing, insulation and earth resistance testing, and thermographic surveys.

•           Keep single-line diagrams, protection settings and fault-level and arc-flash studies current, and ensure substations and switch rooms are secured, signed and access-controlled.

•           Liaise with Eskom or the supply authority on the supply agreement, notified maximum demand, planned outages, point-of-supply protection and fault response.

•           Hold an HV contingency plan, including strategic spares (e.g. transformer and switchgear spares or mobile substation options) and emergency response for HV and MV faults.

•           Manage specialist HV contractors and OEMs for substation testing, maintenance and repairs.

5. Capital Projects & Engineering Change

•           Build and maintain a rolling five-year group CAPEX plan for replacement, safety, utility, energy and capacity projects, prioritised by risk and return.

•           Develop or review technically and financially sound CAPEX motivations using the group CAPEX motivation template, and run post-investment reviews to confirm that motivated benefits are achieved.

•           Lead project management for new and modified equipment — specification, OEM selection, installation, pre-start checks, commissioning and handover to production — including kiln and line commissioning.

•           Ensure plant modifications follow management of change, with risk assessments, drawings, procedures and On Key records updated.

6. Energy & Utilities

•           Own the group energy and utilities strategy: electricity supply capacity and maximum demand, gas supply security (including coal gas supply where applicable), compressed air, water and dust-extraction systems.

•           Plan capacity changes, such as additional kilns or lines, against available electrical and gas supply, and develop options where supply limits output.

•           Track energy intensity (kWh/m² and GJ/m²) by factory and lead energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects.

7. Team Leadership & Development

•           Lead, coach and develop the Site Maintenance Managers (dotted line) and group engineering staff, and take part in recruiting and reviewing the performance of Site Maintenance Managers with the Factory Managers.

•           Ensure each factory has an effective maintenance structure, including:

◦           Tilewrights, Instrumentation Technicians and Technical Specialists

◦           Maintenance Planner & Coordinator (On Key)

◦           Stores and spares control

•           Build scarce technical capability through individual development plans, apprenticeships and artisan development, GCC development for engineers, succession planning, coaching and knowledge transfer.

•           Chair a monthly group maintenance forum with the Site Maintenance Managers to share performance, lessons learned and standards.

•           Ensure effective shift and on-call coverage for continuous operations and clear escalation protocols for major breakdowns.

8. Budget & Cost Management

•           Consolidate and oversee the group maintenance OPEX budget with the Factory Managers, balancing cost control with asset reliability, statutory compliance, quality and production continuity.

•           Reduce total maintenance cost through standardised specifications, spares optimisation, repair-versus-replace decisions, contractor rationalisation and energy efficiency.

•           Report monthly on budget versus actual expenditure, committed costs, forecasts, variances, savings and corrective actions.

9. Contractor & OEM Management

•           Manage OEMs, specialist contractors and service providers supporting ceramic manufacturing equipment, utilities, electrical systems, mechanical systems, civil works and automation, including group service agreements with kiln, press, printer and extrusion OEMs.

•           Establish fit-for-purpose service agreements with measurable safety, response-time, quality, cost and reliability expectations.

•           Ensure contractor prequalification, induction, permits, supervision, quality control and site safety compliance, including Construction Regulations requirements for project and shutdown work.

10. Spares & Inventory Management

•           Develop a group critical-spares strategy based on equipment criticality, lead time, obsolescence risk and production impact.

•           Maintain min/max levels, reorder points, bills of materials and accurate spares usage through On Key and stores processes.

•           Standardise interchangeable components, pool critical spares across factories, and consolidate demand to improve availability and procurement leverage.

11. Reporting & Continuous Improvement

•           Deliver clear weekly and monthly engineering dashboards to the Operations Manager, Factory Managers and executive stakeholders, highlighting performance, risks, trends and recovery actions.

•           Embed Total Productive Maintenance, Lean, Six Sigma, operator care and disciplined problem-solving in partnership with production and quality teams.

•           Lead improvement projects targeting downtime, throughput constraints, product-quality losses, maintenance cost, energy use and utility reliability.

•           Benchmark performance across the factories and against relevant industrial best practices, then replicate proven improvements.

12. Maintenance KPIs & Performance Management

•           Set the group maintenance KPI framework, with standard definitions, calculation methods and data rules so that all five factories measure the same way, covering:

◦           Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

◦           Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

◦           Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP)

◦           Preventive Maintenance Compliance (PMC)

◦           Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), agreed with production

◦           Maintenance backlog (weeks of work)

◦           Reactive maintenance percentage

◦           Maintenance cost per m² produced and critical-spares availability

•           Set up On Key to calculate and report these KPIs consistently, and build factory and group dashboards, linking production and downtime data for OEE.

•           Support the Site Maintenance Managers in developing and improving their factory KPIs, including accurate data capture at source: downtime by cause and asset, failure codes, actual repair times, and planned versus reactive classification.

•           Agree annual KPI targets per factory and critical asset class with the Factory Managers and the Operations Manager, and review performance monthly with each Site Maintenance Manager.

•           Consolidate and benchmark KPIs across the factories, identify the largest losses and the best practices, and lead group improvement actions.

•           Review and refine the KPI set as the maintenance system matures.