How to Be a Successful Maintenance Supervisor

Everyone wants to succeed in their professions, and those who take on the position of a maintenance supervisor are no different. What are some concrete things you can do as a maintenance supervisor to improve your performance? Advance in your career? Increase the value you bring to your job? We’ll answer all those questions and more in the following article.

What is a Maintenance Supervisor?

A maintenance supervisor is an employee who oversees and manages maintenance tasks on building systems, equipment, assets, or machinery.

What Does a Maintenance Supervisor Do?

Maintenance supervisors direct and organize all activities around building systems, equipment operations and safe production standards. They also handle the day-to-day functioning of the machines or tools critical to organizations. Maintenance supervisors oversee, direct, and lead the work of maintenance technicians. This ensures that the company’s goals are met and applicable laws and regulations are followed.

The responsibilities of maintenance supervisors vary depending on nature of the specific business. They typically include planning and directing tasks for a particular shift. One of their key responsibilities is to ensure that work is completed in a timely and safe manner. Maintenance supervisors must make sure that all Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) and other rules or government regulations are met.

Maintenance supervisors are typically part of middle management and work primarily with the employees and technicians assigned to their shift. They must lead and motivate their team and delegate tasks. They may report to a vice president of operations or another company executive.

Key performance indicators include equipment uptime, schedule compliance, and safety metrics (e.g. number or incidents).

The Four Types of Maintenance Supervisors

The different types of maintenance supervisors can vary greatly depending on the specific business needs. Here are some examples.

Plant Maintenance Supervisor

Directs team and maintains the operations of plant systems and equipment including conveyor belts, electrical systems, and pulleys.

Building Maintenance Supervisor

Oversees technicians who are responsible for the daily upkeep and operations of a building. They may also supervise purchasing of materials and communicate with tenants.

Facilities Maintenance Supervisor

Manages team that handles minor maintenance and engineering tasks such as mechanical, electrical and plumbing projects.

Public Works Maintenance Supervisor

Leads technicians in maintaining public fleet vehicles as well as construction and maintenance activities around a city.

Key Responsibilities of Maintenance Supervisors

When it comes to ensuring that maintenance tasks are completed, the maintenance supervisor is the one in charge. These employees are responsible for a wide variety of tasks to keep a facility and critical assets up and running. They manage all the systems and equipment that support the rest of the employees in accomplishing the company’s mission.

1. Plan and organize technician tasks.

Maintenance supervisors assign the tasks that must be completed on a given shift. They must take into account skill sets, urgency of task, location of equipment, estimated time to complete, and other factors. This is critical to the smooth functioning and the overall efficiency of each shift.

2. Ensure health, safety, and other regulations are followed.

Maintenance supervisors ensure that work environments are safe and healthy for employees. They can also protect the company from fines and violations that could be incurred from compliance or regulation failures.

3. Manages preventive maintenance system.

By overseeing the company’s preventive maintenance system, maintenance supervisors can minimize costly emergency work orders. Instead, they can focus on providing the right level of maintenance to critical assets and systems. Ideally, these tasks reduce downtime and lengthen the lifespan of assets.

4. Oversees maintenance staff.

As leaders of maintenance technicians, supervisors must motivate, discipline and review staff on a regular basis. This may include organizing ongoing professional development and team building activities to foster a positive culture within the maintenance staff.

5. Hires and trains new technicians.

Maintenance supervisors often play a role in hiring new technicians by participating in the screening and interview process. Once technicians are hired, supervisors oversee their initial onboarding and training process. Supervisors must ensure new technicians are brought up to speed on company policies, procedures, and technology.

Ten Skills That Successful Maintenance Supervisors Possess

Since maintenance supervisors play many roles, they must have a mix of management, technical, and people skills to succeed. Here are some key traits they should possess or develop to do well in this position.

1. Leadership

Since maintenance supervisors oversee people and processes, they must exhibit the authority to lead a diverse team.

2. Analytical Skills

Supervisors must be able to get past the surface of problems and find the root causes to work most effectively and efficiently.

3. Time Management

Maintenance supervisors need to balance their own time between daily and strategic goals. In addition, they must manage their staff’s time as well to ensure daily tasks are accomplished.

4. Technical Experience

Although maintenance supervisors may not complete work orders themselves, they should be familiar with the technical aspects of the job.

5. Do-It-Yourself Skills

Maintenance supervisors must be able to step in during emergencies or when a technician is unavailable and assist wherever is needed.

6. Character Judgment

Since maintenance supervisors participate in the hiring process, they should be good judges of character.

7. Extremely Organized

Maintenance supervisors must stays organized in facilities with robust preventive maintenance schedules and continuous work requests.

8. Problem-Solving

A myriad of problems involving assets, equipment, processes and people will inevitably arise. Maintenance supervisors must be able to tackle each problem with calm thoughtfulness.

9. Team Building

Supervisors must foster a positive work environment where technicians work together well. They are responsible for leading in an effective, positive, and efficient manner.

10. Understand OSHA Guidelines

Maintenance supervisors must have a firm handle on OSHA and other regulatory guidelines to ensure the company’s compliance.

Maintenance Supervisors Should Be Certified

Requiring your new hires to carry certain certifications can help you build a strong team from the start. Additionally, you can require your current maintenance team to earn these certifications as part of their ongoing professional development. In doing so, you will build an experienced and well-trained team that will deliver exceptional maintenance services to your organization.

Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP)

This certification is offered through the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals. It tests the knowledge and skills of professionals who work with preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance. It also evaluates knowledge in business, management, organization, and leadership.

Certified Maintenance and Reliability Technician (CMRT)

This certification is also from the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals. Technicians can leverage this certification to get promoted to a supervisor position. The certification assesses competence to execute preventive and predictive maintenance tasks as well as how to troubleshoot and analyze problems. These skills are important for supervision of technicians as well as the technicians themselves.

Certified Master Technician

This certificate is offered by Professional Service Association. It includes evaluation of residential sector repair issues. Managerial topics such as customer service and HVAC equipment and repair are covered as well. Two years of field experience or a trade school education is required to qualify.

HVACR Certification

Associations such as the Associated Builders and Contractors offer apprenticeship programs that provide this certification. This helps supervisors learn more about complex tasks in the management of heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and radiation.

Six Interview Questions to Ask a Maintenance Supervisor

If you’re planning on hiring a maintenance supervisor for your organization, you should evaluate three main areas of experience. These are: operational and situational expertise, specific role knowledge, and behavioral or coaching style.

1. How do you typically assign tasks to subordinates?

By asking this question, you can better determine if the candidate has a good grasp of workload. Understanding how many tasks a technician can take on at one time is important in management.

2. How do you ensure that your instructions, especially those that pertain to OSHA or other regulations, are understood and followed?

This question helps you evaluate the candidate’s communication style and whether it’s effective.

3. Are you familiar with ISO standards?

If your company adheres to ISO or other quality programs, you may want to ask about specific knowledge. This will help assess how much training may be required to get a particular candidate up to speed.

4. What is preventive maintenance regulation?

Again, this type of question assesses knowledge about specific rules and regulations unique to your industry.

5. Describe how you coached a subordinate successfully.

People management skills are critical to being a good supervisor. Ideally, your candidates have already managed other individuals. This question helps you understand how a candidate works with technicians to learn and grow in their profession.

6. Share a maintenance problem and how you solved it.

Asking for an example of problem-solving illustrates the candidate’s thought process in a potentially stressful situation.

Who Should Hire a Maintenance Supervisor?

Businesses must review their specific needs, management structure, and employee development process to determine whether they need a maintenance supervisor.

In small companies, a maintenance technician might work directly with the owner or president of the organization. Depending on experience, that technician may simply execute tasks from management or handle some of the decision-making independently. If that individual gains enough experience, a promotion to maintenance supervisor may be in order. In that case, the supervisor would not necessarily oversee more people but the entire scope of work instead.

In mid-sized or larger companies, a maintenance supervisor may oversee, develop, and manage one or more technicians. These supervisors must be able to discipline, encourage, hire, and organize people as well as possess technical skills and experience.

Conclusion

Maintenance supervisors play a critical role in all companies and organizations. Whether they are responsible for overseeing only maintenance tasks or a team, they ensure systems and assets are running well. Career opportunities abound in different industries for maintenance supervisors as well as opportunities to advance. Developing management, technical and people skills through training, certification and experiences is the key for ongoing success.