Maintenance and technical service: filling technical roles

Why maintenance is harder to fill than the production around it

You look for an operator by one main capability and a training period. For maintenance the brief is different: one person on a shift has to cover a varied machine park and deal with a mechanical fault, with pneumatics or hydraulics, and with what is happening in the switchboard. In many operations work with the machine’s control system is growing — not programming, but the ability to tell whether the problem is in a sensor, in the mechanics or in the program.

Breadth of competence has a legal side as well. Intervention in the electrical part of equipment is tied to electrotechnical competence under Czech government regulation 194/2022 Sb., which replaced the earlier decree 50/1978 Sb. and distinguishes the scope of activities by level of competence. Part of the equipment falls in addition under Czech Act 250/2021 Sb. on occupational safety in connection with the operation of reserved technical equipment — that is, pressure, lifting, electrical and gas equipment. Compare the scope of a candidate’s document, therefore, against what they are actually to do at the workplace.

Roles in maintenance and how they differ

Job titles differ from company to company, and the title itself says little about the content of the work. It is more useful to describe where the responsibility of a role ends and where external service or the machine supplier begins.

The misunderstanding arises mainly between setter and maintenance technician: a setter keeps the machine running between orders and is measured by changeover time, while a maintenance technician is responsible for the technical condition of equipment over a longer horizon. If one person does both, say so in the brief.

The roles a maintenance department is usually built from:

• Maintenance technician — routine preventive and operational maintenance, part replacement, lubrication, minor repairs
• Mechanic — mechanical repairs and adjustment, alignment, work with the machine documentation
• Electromechanic — intervention in the electrical part within the scope of their own competence
• Mechatronics technician — mechanics, electrical work and the control system together, diagnosis of the more complex faults
• Setter — changeovers and machine settings between orders, and the ramp-up after a changeover
• Service technician — intervention at a customer’s site or across several workplaces, with travel
• Maintenance manager — the repair plan, shutdowns, spare parts, suppliers and people

Preventive and reactive maintenance: different brief, different person

An operation on planned maintenance needs discipline: keep to the plan, keep records, watch spare parts and prepare a shutdown in advance. An operation that mostly fights breakdowns needs a different temperament — quick diagnosis under pressure, the nerve to decide on a temporary fix, and tolerance for the phone ringing at night.

The ratio between planned and breakdown work is among the most valuable things you can put in a brief. Where it is missing, you risk parting during the probationary period: someone joins planned maintenance and finds continuous firefighting, or the other way round.

Worth adding to the brief:

• The approximate ratio of planned work to breakdown work
• The machine park — types of equipment, age, manufacturer, and the language of the documentation
• Where the boundary runs between internal maintenance and external service
• Whether the person is expected to introduce a preventive plan, or only to carry one out

On-call duty, travel and shift cover

Acceptance of an offer here is often decided by a condition unrelated to expertise: how often and in what pattern on-call duty is held. The Czech Labour Code treats on-call duty as time when an employee is outside their rostered shifts, at an agreed place away from the workplace, ready for work. It must be agreed, remuneration for it is due under the Labour Code, and work performed during it beyond the set weekly working time is overtime.

For a candidate it is an intrusion into private life, judged together with the travelling distance. State in the offer, therefore, how often on-call comes round, among how many people it rotates, and what travelling distance you expect. An operation that covers a continuous regime with a single maintenance technician is usually hard for candidates to accept, and remains a weakness after the role is filled.

No amounts and no ranges for these roles are stated here, and we do not derive them. Levels of earnings by occupation are published by the Czech average-earnings information system (Informační systém o průměrném výdělku, ISPV), and what each occupation actually covers is described by the Czech national occupations register (Národní soustava povolání). One distinction is worth keeping in the offer itself: remuneration for on-call duty is under the Labour Code a payment in its own right alongside the wage, so state the two separately rather than as a single number.

What the offer should settle about on-call duty:

• How many people share the rota, and how it is drawn up
• The expected travelling distance, and whether a vehicle is available
• Whether some interventions can be handled remotely or by telephone
• Who is on call over public holidays and during shutdowns

Documentation and handover between shifts

Maintenance is a role where what is handed over is not a part in progress but a machine in a state. When someone leaves a shift saying "it is running on a temporary fix for now" and it is written down nowhere, the loss shows up at the next breakdown. Among the capabilities worth verifying is how a candidate records an intervention: what the cause was, what they replaced, and what remains temporary.

Part of the documentation is mandatory. For reserved technical equipment, Czech Act 250/2021 Sb. governs requirements for checks, inspections and the competence of the persons performing them; inspection activity is not the same thing as routine maintenance, and it should be clear in advance who provides it. Under the Labour Code and safety rules the employer is also responsible for the safe condition of equipment and for the employee’s fitness for the work in question, including the occupational-medical examination and the protective equipment provided.

In selection that means:

• Ask about a specific situation: how they handed over an unfinished repair
• Establish what they kept records in — a logbook, a maintenance system, a spreadsheet
• Compare the scope of their evidence of competence with the actual content of the job

Passive candidates and the route from within

An experienced maintenance technician is not usually looking for work. They are employed and judge an offer from a position where nothing is urgent. That changes the whole process: an advertisement alone is generally not enough, referrals and direct approaches matter, selection runs longer, and the offer has to be intelligible the first time.

The second real route leads from within. An operator or setter who knows the machine park, the technology and the people has a head start that cannot be bought from outside. What they lack is the document and the method — and both can be addressed: electrotechnical competence can be obtained by the procedure under Czech government regulation 194/2022 Sb., and competences can be formalised through a professional qualification in the Czech national qualifications register. This route needs time, a mentor from maintenance, and a named period during which the person does not yet intervene alone.

What that route asks of the company:

• Select for interest in engineering rather than for output on the line
• Plan the qualification route before you open the position
• Define which interventions may be done independently, and from when
• Count on having to fill their place in production