Purpose of the position
- Ensure that all the sites in responsibility operate safely, without harming people & environment, at required reliability with minimum cost of ownership.
- Form, lead, grow and develop the operations teams in the area.
- Drive continuous improvement of assets, work processes and people capabilities to maximize business profitability.
- Plan and own the cluster repair for maintenance as well as personal budget.
Principal responsibilities
Geographical area of responsibility
- All assigned sites ( mostly northern area plants )
Functional area of responsibility
All assets, staff & work processes.
Leadership
- Champion Safety, provide visible leadership and create a zero-incident culture.
- Recruiting, training, development & deployment of area operations team.
- Coaching & mentoring of operations leadership team.
- Adjust remuneration to balance people cost and competence.
- Identify and develop high potentials for assignments (including outside the area of responsibility).
- Provide development opportunities to high potentials from outside the area of responsibility.
- Ensure a sufficient pool of personnel to cope with attrition without adverse effect on the business.
- Create a culture of openness, willingness to contribute, mutual learning, continuous improvement and innovation across functions / organization boundaries to achieve competitive advantage in the market.
- Empower the site staff to take appropriate & immediate decision in emergency.
- Foster/ drive collaboration across functions and organization boundaries
Functional responsibilities
Operations
General:
- Drive, monitor and enforce compliance to all relevant internal and external regulations, standards and work processes.
- Ensure implementation of the corrective actions from the audits, Root Cause Analysis, Alerts & Directives.
- Anticipate future product demand and ensure adequate budget, assets, manpower & utilities are available to meet the demand (immediate, short term and long term).
- Ensure availability and use all adequate means (e.g., Personal Protective Equipment, hand tools, software, instructions etc) to perform safely & effectively.
Safety:
- Ensure adequate training/instruction to everybody at site (including internal & external visitors/ contractors) with respect to hazards & safe behaviour.
- Ensure adequate investigation of any safety incidents, root cause analysis and implementation of the corrective actions to prevent recurrence.
- Ensure availability of emergency response plans at all sites.
- Drive and lead continuous proactive identification or risks (e.g., site walks, toolbox meetings)
- Ensure severe risks are eliminated or mitigated immediately.
- Ensure that any other risks are eliminated/ mitigated in an adequate time frame.
Reliability:
- Analyse asset & supply reliability, determine gaps and drive improvements.
Efficiency:
- Support the ROC to optimise of the use of existing assets to meet the customer demand and maximize profit.
Profit:
- Support ROC and On-Site Ops Planning to adapt production to maximise profit (utilisation of tonnage contracts, liquid production)
Quality:
- Ensure quality assurance systems are available and functional to monitor the quality or product & services.
- Ensure adequate processes are in place to address off-spec quality and any failure of monitoring system.
Maintenance:
- Ensure the assets are maintained in a way that they live! heir intended lifetime
- Ensure that the assets have a replacement strategy in place to take care of any obsolescence
- Determine the timing, duration, and principal scope of turnaround.
- Set up & control budget for the turnaround and lead & coordinate the planning and execution.
- Set up & control the budget for Repair & Maintenance and ensure implementation of agreed regime on sites.
- Harmonize and bundle service providers and suppliers across the sites
- Ensure availability and effective use of maintenance planning tools (e.g., SAP PM) and resources
Project/Modifications:
- Initiate projects to add / modify assets to meet the market demand in the most profitable way and ensure that the intended results are delivered.
- Lead operational due diligence of potential acquisitions.
- Provide operational data Er requirements (e.g., ambient conditions, utility availability, customer consumption & demand pattern, staffing, local scope Er associated cost etc) 101 new projects.
- For local project scope, ensure delivery at desired quality, cost and lime.
- Ensure adequate operations stalling with defined responsibilities for project execution, construction, commissioning and operations.
Troubleshooting:
- Ensure adequate contingencies are in place to respond to any unplanned breakdown/incident. Lead the local crisis management team during operations related crisis
- Ensure that adequate root cause failure analysis is done for every incident and that learning are implemented in area of responsibility and shared across areas.
Reporting/performance management:
Ensure reporting of
- all hazards, incidents and near misses
- all reliability events & all supply failures
- daily production & utility consumption
- corrective action from Audits, Directives, alerts etc
- programs & initiatives implementation status (e.g., global, regional etc)
- inventory stock count.
Key interfaces
External
- Customer· Develop relationship, understand needs, address issues, anticipate business potential, identify areas of mutual benefit, crisis communication.
- Emergency services· Coordinate crisis response
- Government bodies· Ensure compliance to local regulations and necessary approvals/licenses Suppliers· Ensure selection of suitable suppliers
- Contractors· Ensure qualification of contractors
- Utility Supplier· Ensure supply reliability and adherence to terms of contract.
Internal
- Health Safety Er Environment· Incident reporting, investigation and follow up
- Platforms - Adopt and disseminate the best practices and new technologies. Feedback local learning.
- Remote Operating Centre· Monitor Remote Operating centre performance, determine gaps and
- initiate/drive improvements
- On-Site Ops Planning: Coordinate production planning (production capacity, plant availability, turnarounds, utility availability)
- Procurement · Develop procurement strategies for services and materials
- Finance - Budgeting, financial planning and reporting
- Human Resources - HR topics about the operations team
- Information Services· IT infrastructure topics
- country Management· Align strategy and update on operational mailers
- Business Development· Cooperate on new projects
- Project Execution· Cooperate on projects
Required key soft Skills
- Ability to form, grow, develop and lead a large cross functional and distributed team across multiple layers of hierarchy.
- Ability to handle pressure in crisis situations
- Ability to take right decision (with a potential impact on life & health of people) under pressure
- Ability to influence/convince cross functional teams including superiors
- Good negotiation & conflict management skills
- Ability to rationalize, strategize and plan in uncertain & volatile environment
- Ability to innovate
- High competence in change management
- Good oral and written communication skills in English and preferably local language
Required key functional skills
- Strong analytical and communications skills.
- Good interpersonal skills -the ability to influence all levels of the organization is critical.
- Good background in safety management with knowledge of hazards involved in operation and maintenance of process plants.
- Knowledge of ASU and HYCO plants including the associated hazards .
- Familiarity with Linde and relevant National & international codes and standards.
- Familiarity with local statutory regulations (e.g., operating licensing, labour laws etc)
- Broad understanding of mechanical, electrical, instruments and Process Control subjects. Setting up & implementation of work processes
- Business Acumen
- Understanding of financial processes (budgeting, investment planning, accounting etc)
Required qualifications/experience
- Bachelors/master’s in engineering
- At least 10 years’ experience in operations and maintenance of continuous process plants
- At least 3 years’ experience as plant manager of a continuous process plant.
- Experience as project team member of a new plant installation and commissioning.