Fixed Plant Specialist

About the role

First Quantum is looking for a Fixed Plant Specialist in Solwezi to improve the reliability, availability and maintainability of its fixed plant assets. The role covers flotation and crushing equipment, identifies and manages asset risks, analyses performance and failure trends, optimises maintenance strategies and supports safe, cost-effective concentrator operation.

Key responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the reliability strategy for flotation and crushing assets, including flotation cells, rotors, stators, valves, agitators, pumps, crushers, mineral sizers, feeders, lubrication and hydraulic systems, gearboxes, drives, instrumentation and auxiliaries.
• Identify, assess and manage reliability risks that affect safety, throughput, production recovery, product quality, environmental compliance, maintenance cost or plant availability.
• Develop, review and optimise asset maintenance plans, preventative maintenance tasks, inspection routines, condition monitoring requirements and critical spares strategies.
• Analyse performance, failure history, downtime, work order quality, maintenance cost and production loss data to find reliability improvements.
• Lead or support root cause analysis, FMEA/FMECA, defect elimination and corrective actions for high-cost or high-risk failures.
• Use condition monitoring data (oil analysis, vibration monitoring, thermal inspections, slurry pump performance, crusher parameters) to detect emerging failures and recommend timely interventions.
• Support maintenance, operations, planning, condition monitoring, metallurgical and project teams on troubleshooting, repair strategies and improvement priorities.
• Take part in the design, modification, commissioning and acceptance testing of new or modified flotation and crushing installations, and support repair-versus-replace, redesign, make-or-buy and lifecycle cost decisions.
• Monitor and report key reliability indicators such as availability, utilisation, OEE, MTBF, MTTR, backlog quality, repeat failures, maintenance cost, asset health, process interruptions and circuit throughput trends.
• Coach maintenance and operations personnel in reliability principles, defect identification, work quality, inspection discipline and the use of reliability tools.

Required profile

• Full Grade 12 (G12) school certificate; all academic qualifications must be verified by the Zambia Qualifications Authority (ZAQA).
• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or a related field.
• Understanding of complex electrical and mechanical equipment.
• Ability to obtain EIZ certification and a valid Zambian or international driver's licence.

Required skills

• Solid computer skills, including MS Office (Word, Excel and Outlook), with a willingness to learn new software.
• Reliability engineering knowledge, including FMEA/FMECA, condition monitoring and root cause analysis.