Reliability and Maintenance Manager

Astron Energy South Africa (Pty) Ltd; Milnerton; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,700,000; Full time

Job summary

Astron Energy South Africa (Pty) Ltd is seeking a Senior Maintenance & Reliability leader to own maintenance strategy and drive a comprehensive reliability programme for the refinery. You will direct planning, execution, and optimisation of preventive and corrective maintenance, oversee turnarounds, and lead continuous improvement initiatives to maximise asset availability.

The role requires extensive refinery maintenance experience, strong leadership and deep knowledge of RCM, FMEA, RCA, and

Qualifications

• 15+ years in a manufacturing or refinery environment, with maintenance, operations and technical experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead maintenance planning and scheduling for refinery assets to optimise resource use and cost.
• Oversee turnaround and shutdown planning and execution within budget and schedule.
• Drive reliability improvements through RCM, FMEA, RCA and bad-actor elimination.
• Implement predictive/condition-based monitoring technologies to identify issues before failures.
• Manage maintenance budgets, inventory, and KPI performance; report monthly on Rolling Work Programme metrics.
• Collaborate with SHEQ teams to ensure safety, environmental and quality compliance.

Skills

Rotating & static equipment

RCM/FMEA/RCA

CMMS/SAP PM

Budgeting/Cost control

Leadership & team development

Safety & quality standards

Stakeholder engagement

Education

BEng or BSc in Mechanical Engineering

ECSA registration advantageous; CRE preferred

Tools

CMMS/SAP PM

Job description

Ensure the safe, reliable and cost-effective maintenance of refinery assets by owning the preventive, predictive and corrective maintenance strategies and the reliability programme that underpins them. The role directs maintenance planning and execution, leads turnaround and on-stream maintenance delivery, drives reliability improvement through RCM and bad-actor elimination, and oversees warehouse and maintenance inventory: sustaining equipment availability, ensuring spares and materials availability, and optimising maintenance cost across the refinery.

Strategic Implementation

Translate strategy into operational initiatives with measurable business outcomes and targets. Facilitate the development of best practice in operations and service excellence. Own the reliability strategy for the refinery, defining Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) scope and system selection for Preventative Maintenance (PM) analysis. Accountable for the RCM study — conduct Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), determine equipment criticality and select PM and Predictive Maintenance (PdM) task strategies.

Operational Effectiveness

Establish and manage a comprehensive Reliability Programme, including Root Cause Analysis (RCA), FMEA and RCM. Implement predictive and condition-based monitoring technologies to identify equipment issues before failures occur. Manage preventive and corrective maintenance for all refinery assets, ensuring minimal disruption to operations. Lead maintenance planning and scheduling to optimise resource utilisation, spare-parts management and cost control. Manage turnaround and shutdown planning and execution, ensuring safe and efficient delivery within budget and schedule. Add day-to-day delivery, running processes, monitoring performance, managing exceptions. Drive standardisation of maintenance procedures and ensure compliance with company and industry standards. Promote maintenance excellence through KPI monitoring, benchmarking and performance analysis. Own on-stream Turnaround delivery, including technical approval to proceed, equipment handover and reinstatement, and post-TA analysis with capture of lessons learned. Drive maintenance performance through monthly stewardship of Rolling Work Programme (RWP) metrics and structured resolution of chronic bad actors.

Financial Management

Manage budgets and monitor expenses ensuring expenditure is within approved budgets. Manage all direct maintenance and maintenance-overhead costs for the refinery, ensuring expenditure is within approved budgets. Monitor and report on refinery maintenance costs (direct and overhead), and prepare annual maintenance cost forecasts for the business plan cycle. Secure technical and budget approval for the Turnaround, and ensure maintenance inventory and spares holding are optimised against working-capital and carrying costs.

People Management

Provide direction and define objectives to be achieved in area of responsibility. Manage performance of direct reports ensuring agreement of annual goals and measuring performance against agreed goals and addressing non-performance issues. Deploy people management processes effectively, in line with Company policies, procedures and prevailing improvement initiatives. Drive operational excellence through area of supervision. Oversee resource deployment to ensure adequate cover and resilience in the team. Promote, support, and encourage team members to live the Company values. Drive a culture of high performance and accountability and encourage team members to live the Company values. Build reliability and maintenance capability across the team — superintendents, leads and engineers — through coaching, technical development and succession planning.

Safety, Health, Environment and Quality

Ensure compliance with all Safety, Health, Environmental and all other applicable regulatory statutes, and all other safety and quality processes for the area of responsibility/work. Steward OMS within Astron Energy to ensure continuous improvement. Collaborate with SHEQ teams to maintain compliance with environmental and safety standards. Ensure compliance with statutory inspection, certification and pressure-equipment regulations for maintainable assets. Accountable for contractor Occupational Health (OH) compliance across reliability and maintenance activities.

Stakeholder Relationship Management

Identify, build and nurture trust and collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders. Accountable for reliability input to capital planning — hand over to operations, commission and conduct pre-start reviews for new assets. Interface with the Technical Manager on fixed-equipment integrity, RBI/IMP outcomes and catalyst strategy that inform maintenance planning. Manage technical service providers and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) relationships to sustain reliability performance.

Professional Qualification and Certifications

• BEng or BSc in Mechanical Engineering (minimum); B-Tech Mechanical with additional experience considered.
• Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) registration advantageous; Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE) or equivalent preferred.

Work Experience

• 15+ years' experience in a manufacturing or refinery environment, the majority in maintenance, plus operational and technical experience.
• Proven experience in maintenance planning, reliability programmes and asset integrity management.
• Demonstrated experience leading shutdowns, turnarounds and major maintenance projects.
• Experience managing a multi-disciplinary team in a refinery or heavy industrial environment.

Knowledge & Skills

• Strong understanding of rotating and static equipment, mechanical integrity and condition monitoring.
• Deep knowledge of maintenance methodologies — RCM, FMEA, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and bad-actor elimination.
• Reliability systems and tools — Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS/SAP PM), predictive analytics and condition-monitoring technologies.
• Financial and budgeting acumen for maintenance planning and cost control.
• Strong leadership, coaching and team-development capability.
• High commitment to safety, process integrity and quality; knowledge of safety and environmental regulations.
• Strong communication, stakeholder-engagement and change-management skills.

Application deadline: 13 November 2026

Astron Energy is a leading supplier of petroleum products in South Africa, with a vast network of Caltex-branded service stations that make us one of the country’s top two petroleum brands. We are strongly committed to being a responsible corporate citizen, promoting education, health and economic development in an effort to build stronger communities and drive sustainable economic growth. We own and operate the country’s third-largest crude oil refinery in Cape Town, which has a capacity of 100,000 barrels a day, and a lubricants manufacturing plant in Durban.