So you’re a new maintenance manager?

October 23, 2025 Don Armstrong No Comment 8 Views

Congratulations! I think – the job you have is full of challenges and will keep you busy and probably awake at least some nights.

I’ve been the maintenance manager in four large pulp and paper mills and if I were to start again I would do things a little differently.

Its easy to quickly get buried in meetings, budget preparation, safety programmes and so on, but don’t forget that your main objective is to keep the plant running reliably within your budget while following all the company’s safety, environmental and other rules.

When I retired from industry and set up my consulting business, my first project was to audit the maintenance management practices at a large operation. My contact, their maintenance manager, was having trouble scheduling my visit because so many of his maintenance supervisors were away on sick leave.

I had spent some time as a first-line maintenance supervisor some years earlier, so I suggested that I could help by relieving one of his supervisors at the same time as I conducted the audit, so that is what I did.

What I discovered during my two-week visit, is that I learned more about the company’s systems, their people and their challenges in my role as a maintenance supervisor than I did from my audit process, a process that I’d developed over the years and I thought was very thorough and objective.

So my suggestions for any new maintenance manager are these:

Let the person who is currently acting as maintenance manager continue in that role for a month or two, depending on the size of the operation.
Spend a few days with each and every front-line maintenance supervisor, or, better still, do their job for at least a few days. Get to know the tradespeople, their strengths and weaknesses and the obstacles that prevent them from being the best they can be.
Make a note of all the opportunities you see for improving systems, training, motivation, etc, and use this information to develop a plan to use when you step in to the maintenance manager’s shoes.

If you can do this, you will quickly amaze the other managers with your knowledge of the operation and they’ll wonder how you knew so much so quickly.