Maintenance Manager

Victory Farms is the world's fastest growing aquaculture company, focused on harvesting and processing tilapia across large-scale land and lake-based sites.

The Maintenance Manager will be responsible for the overall reliability, availability, and lifecycle management of assets at Roo Farm, where Victory Farms harvests and processes approximately 75 tonnes of tilapia daily across 1,000 Ha of land and lake-based sites. This hands-on leadership role involves leading a team of about 32 individuals, setting maintenance strategy, planning and directing work, and managing the budget. The manager will ensure that vessels, barges, refrigeration plants, generators, pumps, and processing equipment are consistently available at a sustainable cost. The role requires turning maintenance strategy into disciplined execution while upholding high standards of safety, compliance, reliability, and team performance. As the company scales, the manager will also focus on root-cause analysis, reducing repeat breakdowns, and developing a world-class maintenance function.

1. Determine asset criticality and establish appropriate maintenance approaches, balancing scheduled, condition-based, and corrective work.
2. Transition the department from reactive repair to a planned maintenance operation, tracking performance data.
3. Analyze recurring and high-consequence failures to identify root causes and implement lasting solutions.
4. Set and monitor reliability targets for different asset classes.
5. Maintain a rolling preventive maintenance program across all trades, driven by running hours and scheduled around peak production.
6. Operate a unified work-order system for recording, prioritizing, assigning, and tracking all work from request to close-out.
7. Batch work by area, trade, and shutdown window to maximize useful work during each visit and outage.
8. Reserve capacity for breakdown response while keeping the planned program on schedule.
9. Collaborate with ERP personnel to build and maintain a complete asset register in ERPNext, including unique identification, cost, history, and downtime for each asset.
10. Evaluate continued repair versus replacement based on cumulative cost, remaining life, downtime consequences, parts availability, and residual value.
11. Work with Finance on depreciation, book value, and disposal to ensure the asset ledger accurately reflects the fleet's condition.
12. Identify assets nearing the end of their economic life for planned capital replacement and prepare hire-versus-purchase analyses.
13. Manage and control the maintenance budget for labor, spares, consumables, contractors, and capital, reporting variances with explanations.
14. Manage total cost of ownership, considering the production cost of downtime alongside direct repair costs.
15. Assess best-value-for-money from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) based on quality, price, lead time, warranty, and support.
16. Define spares and critical-stock policy based on lead times and criticality, and determine the balance between in-house and contracted work.
17. Establish a clear departmental structure with defined reporting lines and accountable leads for each trade.
18. Delegate specific authority for work approval, equipment release to service, and expenditure within set limits.
19. Maintain clear communication with production and support functions, including planned shutdown notices, reliable recovery estimates, and defined escalation thresholds.
20. Assign ownership for every asset, work order closure, and incident investigation conclusion.
21. Formalize resource sharing with Construction in writing, covering work direction, funding, and accountability.
22. Assess capability, recruit and train staff to address gaps, build cross-trade cover, and conduct performance reviews.
23. Establish and equip trade workshops, control tools and protective equipment, and organize stores for traceable stock charged to correct work orders.
24. Ensure safety within maintenance operations, including permit-to-work, isolation, lock-out discipline, and competence verification for hazardous work.
25. Maintain statutory inspection and certification for lifting equipment, pressure systems, and regulated plant, meeting Kenyan regulatory and environmental requirements.
26. Report monthly on availability, unplanned downtime, schedule completion, repair time, time between failures, and cost using measured data.
27. Represent maintenance in operations forums, advise management on emerging risks and deferral costs, and provide engineering input for capital projects.

1. A degree (or equivalent) in engineering from a recognized university, recognized by Kenyan certifications and mandatory regulations.
2. Minimum 8 years of post-qualification experience in engineering and maintenance within industrial, agro-industrial, or estate operations.
3. At least 4 years of experience leading a multi-trade department of 20 or more staff.
4. Experience managing a continuously running site where breakdowns directly result in lost production (e.g., aquaculture, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, food processing, agro-processing).
5. Experience with assets spread across distances, requiring planned spares rather than on-demand purchases.
6. Proven ability to build and deliver a preventive maintenance program, including establishing asset registers, setting schedules, defining spares policy, and achieving measurable reductions in unplanned downtime.
7. Direct accountability for a maintenance budget, including forecasting, variance reporting, and supplier negotiation.
8. Kenyan operating experience or demonstrated ability to work within Kenyan regulatory, labor, and supply conditions.
9. Breadth of engineering knowledge across power generation and electrical distribution, pumping and water systems, refrigeration and cold chain, mechanical plant and fleet, welding, fabrication, structural repair, and marine assets.
10. Proficiency with ERP systems (e.g., ERPNext or comparable CMMS) for asset master data, work orders, requisitions, stock, and maintenance history.
11. Project management skills for planning and resourcing multi-stage work, delivering installations and upgrades on time and budget, and coordinating with contractors.
12. Strong understanding of how availability, repair time, failure intervals, and cost per asset are derived from primary data, with discipline in accurate reporting.
13. Budgeting skills including lifecycle costing, depreciation, and payback, with the ability to present a capital case financially.
14. Personal competencies: perspective, leadership, judgment, communication, integrity, and commitment to being based at a remote lakeside site and available to the operation.
15. Advantageous: Registration with the Engineers Board of Kenya as a Professional Engineer or Graduate Engineer.
16. Advantageous: Maintenance or reliability certification (CMRP, RCM, TPM); project management certification; a recognized safety qualification; a master’s degree in engineering or engineering management.