Don Armstrong is a retired Professional Engineer whose experience includes direct line responsibility as maintenance manager and supervisor for over 5,000 man-years of safe skilled trades effort in five large pulp and paper mills in Canada and New Zealand complemented by fifteen years of consulting in many different industries and institutions, world-wide. He managed maintenance and engineering departments at Tasman Pulp (New Zealand) and the BC pulp and paper mills at Nanaimo (Harmac), Powell River and Crofton.

In his consulting business when competing for training and other consulting services with other maintenance-management companies (including Aladay, Marshall Institute, Deloitte, Centerprise and others) he was, without exception, the successful bidder.

His departments employed up to 700 people, with annual budgets of up to CAN$100 million.

In addition to successfully eliminating restrictive practices, improving safety performance and substantially reducing downtime, he 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, often chairing joint union-management plant safety committees, and there were no serious accidents in his departments.

Other initiatives included mill surveys to assess the level of preservation of plant assets, maintenance computer system selection and implementation, a simple system for finding parts in Stores 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 and Maintenance Storeroom Management. These books can be viewed and purchased from IDCON’s web site.

Don has a 1st class honours degree in Mechanical Engineering and a post-graduate Business Administration Diploma, both from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Don is now retired but may still provide training in special circumstances. Contact us to inquire.