Senior Maintenance Superintendent - Kinross Gold Corporation

Chirano is located in southwestern Ghana, approximately 100 kilometres southwest of Kumasi, Ghana’s second-largest city. The mine is within the Bibiani gold belt and consists of 11 deposits. Open-pit and underground ore are processed at the Chirano plant. The capacity of the mill is approximately 3.5 million tonnes per annum. Processing involves crushing, ball mill grinding, leaching, and CIL.

Role Purpose

Responsible for the management and control of comprehensive maintenance and repair processes pertaining to the Process Plant & Mine Infrastructure with the aim of improving plant performance in terms of safety, effective operational cost control, equipment availability/reliability, and risk-mitigating initiatives and contract management.

Formulate and execute maintenance strategies to maximize operational efficiencies, safety, and profitability in alignment with the organization’s overall goal.

Job Responsibilities

• Develop and implement maintenance strategies, systems and standards to reduce risk and variation and promote the implementation of continuous improvement tools optimizing the plant performance.
• Manage and have oversight responsibilities of Plant maintenance activities such as job planning, scheduling, shift control, parts, materials, systems (i.e. data) management, performance and liaise with other operations groups to ensure equipment/plant scheduled downtimes are coordinated effectively.
• Manage all Maintenance and Inspection activities at the Process Plant in a safe and cost-efficient manner, being aware of the safety of others, effective utilization of relevant maintenance systems, processes and resources, and ensuring compliance with company and statutory requirements.
• Prepare business cases regarding projects and initiatives, analyzes information and prepares technical documents to support decision-making; present recommendations and status updates to key stakeholders.
• Create a suitable working environment to motivate staff, employees and contractors to achieve optimum effectiveness, productivity and operating costs whilst maintaining/exceeding mill availability targets.
• Assist with the management and development of operational budgets and forecasts.

• Manage Shutdown and major/campaign maintenance work programmes
• Responsible for weekly monitoring checks on safety, production and environmental critical equipment, reporting any deviation to performance standards
• Manage all fault finding and diagnostic checks ensuring all repair works are addressed promptly.
• Participate in failure investigations and root cause analysis to identify and implement reliability improvement opportunities.
• Identify, communicate and implement potential cost reduction initiatives.
• Provision of driving force to Maintenance KPI’s and reporting compliance as per the business requirements of the function.
• Management of Fixed Plant maintenance assets through Maintenance Management.

Education and Experience

• A tertiary qualification in Mechanical Engineering or a similar qualification from a recognized/accredited institution.
• Minimum of ten (10) years in-field technical experience in a maintenance function, particularly in a mining environment.
• Ghana Minerals Commission’s Certificate of Competency (Engineering Superintendent/ Manager’s Certificate of Competency).
• Experience in CIL Process plants engineering and Maintenance Management.
• Technical problem solving and failure analysis capabilities with special emphasis on crushers, grinding mills, Conveyors, CIL and elution circuits and pumping circuits for slurry, water and reagents.
• Sound business acumen and the ability to influence the main cost drivers at the Process Plant.
• Project management experience is an asset.
• Budgeting, planning and scheduling experience required as well as financial (cost) management.

Skills

• Strong organizational skills to manage all Plant Maintenance and Planned work
• Strong analytical skills and ability to identify opportunities for improvement and mobilize subordinates to act on these opportunities
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and spoken, as well as the ability to interact with people of diverse cultures.
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft applications including MS Project, Excel, power-point, and other Maintenance software /tools.
• A proven track record of leading multi-discipline maintenance and inspection teams to meet targets on time and within budget

Reporting Relationships

Reporting to the Process Manager.

Kinross is a Canadian-based gold mining company with mines and projects in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Chile, Russia, Ghana and Mauritania, employing approximately 9,300 people worldwide. Our core purpose is to lead the world in generating value through responsible mining.