Veleda Services was established in 2004 to provide consulting and training services to maintenance departments in industrial plants and institutions.
We help our clients to identify and implement maintenance improvements that go straight to the bottom line, based on a logical, structured approach. Our focus is to ensure that tradespeople are always assigned to the highest-value work and execute it in a way that results in a reliable, low-cost operation, and that contractors are equally well managed. Unlike many maintenance “improvements”, we ensure that any changes pass the critical test of being recognized and appreciated by tradespeople and their supervisors as helping them to do a better job of supporting the organization.
For details of the services we offer, click here.
Experience
Our President, Don Armstrong, is a Professional Engineer whose experience includes direct line responsibility as maintenance and engineering manager for over 5,000 man-years of safe trades effort in three large pulp and paper mills in Canada (Powell River, Crofton and Nanaimo) and one in New Zealand, complemented by eighteen years of consulting in many different industries and institutions, world-wide.
He has managed maintenance departments with up to 700 employees and annual budgets of up to CAN$100 million.
In addition to successfully eliminating restrictive practices, improving safety performance and substantially reducing downtime, he has introduced and documented new planning and scheduling processes, prepared standards for maintenance and set up teams to successfully share best maintenance practices across multiple operations. He was actively involved in plant safety programmes and there were no serious accidents in his departments.
Other initiatives include mill surveys to assess the level of preservation of mill assets, maintenance computer system selection and implementation and the development of a unique process for measuring maintenance performance against a world-class standard.
He is the author of IDCON Inc’s textbooks and training programmes on Maintenance Planning and Scheduling (available in English, Swedish and Russian) and Maintenance Storeroom Management. The books can be viewed and purchased from IDCON’s web site (click here).
Don has a 1st class honours degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Business Administration Diploma, both from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
We have provided maintenance training and consulting services to the following organizations. Click here for a map of these jobsites. When we have been in competition for consulting services (with firms such as Aladay, Deloitte, Marshall Institute, Centerprise, etc) we have always been the successful bidder.
– The University of Michigan
– Carbon Engineering – Squamish, BC
– Paper Excellence. – Chetwynd, Howe Sound and Skookumchuck operations
– British Columbia Ferry Corporation
– Catalyst Paper, BC – Powell River, Crofton and Port Alberni operations
– Rogers Sugar – Vancouver
– Areva (nuclear fuel assembly plant) – Richland, Washington
– BC Hydro
– Harmac Pulp (Nanaimo)
– Tembec – BC, Ontario, Quebec
– Norske Skog – Australia, NZ
– Norbord – Ontario, UK, Belgium, US
– Tamko Building Products – Missouri, Texas
– Temple-Inland – Georgia, Louisiana
– Georgia Pacific – Alabama
– Resolute Paper – Alabama
– Glanbia Foods – Idaho
– Fresh Express – Texas
– Weyerhaeuser – Washington, Alabama
– Alpart (ex Kaiser Aluminum) – Jamaica
– Domtar – Ontario
– Engineers and Geoscientists BC
– IDCON Inc – North Carolina
Don Armstrong, P. Eng President