Company: Anthem

Location: Eswatini

Department: O&M

Work Arrangement: On-site or off-site

Role Summary

This role requires a flexible working environment, including onsite response, office-based work, remote work from home, and travel as operational needs demand.

Anthem South Africa’s newest IPP is seeking an Operations & Maintenance Supervisor to oversee the performance, reliability, and maintenance of renewable energy assets, including the Lower Maguga Hydropower Plant and Ngwenya Solar PV Plant.

Key Responsibilities

1. Plant Status and Control

Take the shift handover from the control centre each morning, review overnight alarms, trips, deratings and abnormal readings, and direct the day’s work accordingly.
Ensure no breakdown, defect or alarm is left unattended and that plant is returned to service in the shortest safe time.
Walk the plant daily to review asset condition, intake, waterways, switchyard and station service, and record condition, leaks, vibration, temperature and housekeeping.
Monitor the Ngwenya plant through the contracted control centre and escalate performance shortfalls to the General Manager while the plant remains EPC-operated.

2. Work Control

Issue, control and cancel permits to work and switching instructions; ensure isolation, earthing, locking and testing are proven before work begins.
Ensure a risk assessment, method statement and safe work procedure exist for every non-routine task.
Plan and allocate daily work of the Maintenance Technicians and, through the Senior Operator, the day shift supported by Plant Operators.
Supervise the defined minor non-technical works performed under the security contract, confirm the scope is within contract, and keep those persons out of any energised, rotating, pressurised or hot work areas.
Raise, progress and close work orders in the maintenance system on the day the work is done.

3. Communication

Report plant status, defects and risks to the General Manager each day.
Engage the original equipment manufacturers, specialist contractors and the technical function in South Africa on faults and technical queries.
Engage the off-taker’s system operator on switching, outage notifications and grid events through the agreed channel.
Brief the incoming shift on plant configuration, limitations, live permits and work in progress.

4. Weekly Activities

Issue the weekly maintenance and outage plan and confirm resources, spares and permits are in place before work starts.
Check the weekly maintenance toolbox and planning meeting with the technicians and the Senior Operator.
Review open work orders, defect backlog and overdue preventive maintenance, and clear or escalate anything overdue.
Verify calibration and condition of test equipment, tools, lifting tackle and portable electrical equipment.
Check the spares store, reservations and consumption and raise requisitions through the Contracts & Administration Officer.
Verify the shift roster for the coming week, including leave, training and standby cover, and confirm no roster blocks without planned overtime.
Audit a sample of permits, isolations and logbook entries for completeness.
Submit the weekly technical input to the General Manager’s report.

5. Monthly Activities

– Reports and submissions:

Compile the monthly maintenance report: preventive compliance, corrective volumes and close-out, mean time to repair, repeat failures, forced outage counts and spares consumption report.
Provide the technical input to the monthly operating report, including outage causes, deratings and water availability.
Analyse trends and raise action plans where reliability or compliance is deteriorating.

6. Meetings

Attend and present at the monthly operations and maintenance meeting.
Attend the monthly SHE and social performance committee.
Hold a monthly review with each direct report on performance, training and development.

7. Other Duties

Maintain the annual maintenance plan, the outage plan and the statutory inspection calendar, and update them for plant changes.
Conduct root cause analysis on every forced outage and every repeat failure, and track corrective actions to closure.
Maintain the asset register, equipment history, technical manuals and as-built drawings, and control all revisions.
Review and update the critical spares list and the minimum and maximum stock levels.
Prepare technical scopes of work for contracted services and evaluate the technical content of quotations.
Support internal, lender, insurance and water safety inspections and close out technical findings.

8. Human Resources

Supervise the technicians, the Senior Operator and, through the Senior Operator, the Plant Operators.
Build and maintain the shift roster to meet the three-shift cycle covered with the approved complement and leave in planning.
Authorise overtime, standby call-out and call-out within the limits approved by the General Manager and report it monthly.
Assess the technical competence of every operating and maintenance employee and maintain the competence and authorisation matrix.
Identify training needs, prepare the technical training plan and ensure statutory and plant-specific training and authorisations stay valid.
Conduct on-the-job training, mentoring and assessment.
Brief incoming commissioning engineers in the first year of operation.

9. Safety

Hold the appointment as the responsible person for plant work control and act as the appointed engineering supervisor under the site safety appointments.
Act as the appointed responsible person for electrical switching and isolation, and appoint an authorised competent person in writing.
Ensure work proceeds on plant without a valid permit, an assessed method and the correct personal protective equipment.
Conduct and record task risk assessments and ensure baseline risk assessments are reviewed after every change.
Hold and record toolbox talks with the maintenance and operating teams.
Ensure lock-out and tag-out discipline, and that stored energy — hydraulic, pneumatic, gravitational and water column — is released or restrained before work.
Ensure confined space entry, work at height, hot work and lifting operations are controlled under the applicable procedure and permit.
Ensure fire detection and suppression systems, emergency lighting, escape routes and emergency stops are tested and functional.
Participate in incident investigation as a technical investigator and implement the technical corrective actions.
Ensure contractor technical competence is verified and that contractor work is supervised on site.
Ensure the emergency response plan is exercised for plant hazards, including loss of grid, runaway, flooding and fire.

10. Control Centre and SCADA

Own the operating routines of the centralised control centre: logs, checklists, alarm response categories, shift handover and escalation.
Ensure the control centre monitors and controls both plants correctly and that all set points, limits and protection settings are approved ones.
Investigate and resolve SCADA faults, communication outages and data gaps with the service provider.
Maintain the alarm list and derive alarm rationalisation so that operators are not desensitised by nuisance alarms.
Control access to the operational technology network and ensure no unauthorised device or change reaches plant control systems.
Verify that metering, generation and availability data reported from the control centre reconciles with the revenue meter.

11. Information Technology

Act as the site point of contact for the contracted information technology service on control centre networking, workstations and connectivity.
Ensure backups of plant control configuration, protection settings and historian data are taken, stored off site and tested.
Coordinate with Procurement and Logistics.
Prepare technical specifications and requisitions for spares, consumables and contracted services.
Technically evaluate quotations and recommend award to the General Manager.
Receive and quality-check technical goods, verify certificates and test reports, and reject non-conforming supply.
Manage the spares store: bin locations, preservation, calibration, shelf life and the monthly stock take.
Track long-lead items and advise the General Manager where lead time creates an availability risk.
Supervise the logistics of heavy component movements for repair or replacement.

Experience and Competencies

National Diploma or B-Tech in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, or a qualified Electrician or Millwright with trade test certification and supervisory experience.
Recognised high-voltage switching and operating authorisation, or the ability to obtain the plant authorisation within the first two months of appointment.
Valid driver’s licence, ideally for work at height and in confined spaces.
Seven or more years’ experience in power generation or heavy industrial maintenance, of which at least three years supervising a maintenance team.
Demonstrated experience of a computerised maintenance management system and a formal permit-to-work system.
Experience of hydro generation plant — turbines, governors, generation, protection and auxiliary systems — will be a strong advantage; experience of solar PV plant and SCADA operations will be an added advantage.

Key Competencies

Ability to follow and enforce procedure, and to work independently without daily direction.
Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to build and sustain a small, continuously manned operation.
Ability to establish effective working relationships with employees, contractors and original equipment manufacturers.
Ability to diagnose faults methodically and to decide correctly under time and revenue pressure.
Ability to effectively prioritise and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
Ability to work efficiently and to close work out rather than carry it forward.
Personal discipline in safety and the authority to stop unsafe work, regardless of who is doing it.

Considerations

Anthem is committed to fair and inclusive employment practices in line with the Employment Equity Act. Candidates from designated groups are encouraged to apply.

If you meet the requirements and would like to join our team, please email your application to hr@anthem.co.za by 30 October 2026.

Please Note: Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

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OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE SUPERVISOR