Senior Maintenance Planner

The Senior Maintenance Planner is responsible for planning, coordinating, and optimizing maintenance execution and plant downtime activities to maximize equipment reliability, plant availability, and workforce efficiency. This role serves as the central coordination point between Maintenance, Operations, Reliability, Engineering, and Spare Parts teams to ensure work is properly scoped, planned, resourced, scheduled, and executed safely. 

The role focuses heavily on outage planning, resource coordination, contractor alignment, and improving overall maintenance execution performance through structured planning processes. Focus between outage preparation and execution will be to support weekly maintenance schedules and preventative maintenance activities.  

Maintenance Planning & Scheduling 

• Develop detailed job plans for preventive, corrective, predictive, and turnaround maintenance activities  

• Build and maintain weekly maintenance schedules in coordination with Operations and Maintenance leadership

• Define labor requirements, tooling, permits, scaffolding, specialty services, and materials required for work execution  

• Ensure all work orders contain complete scope, estimated labor hours, procedures, drawings, and parts requirements before scheduling

• Prioritize maintenance backlog based on risk, criticality, production impact, and equipment health

Downtime / Turnaround Coordination 

• Lead planning and execution for plant shutdowns, outages, and major maintenance events

• Develop integrated downtime schedules including:  

• Critical path activities  

• Resource loading  

• Contractor coordination  

• Equipment isolation sequencing  

• Startup readiness planning  

• Facilitate daily outage coordination meetings during shutdown execution

• Track downtime progress, identify schedule risks, and drive recovery plans when deviations occur

Cross-Functional Coordination 

• Act as liaison between Operations, Maintenance, Reliability, Engineering, EHS, and Contractors

• Coordinate equipment access windows and ensure operational readiness for planned work 

• Support Management of Change (MOC) activities related to maintenance or shutdown work  

• Work with Reliability Engineering to incorporate RCA findings, PM improvements, and predictive maintenance strategies into future plans

Required 

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Industrial Technology, or related technical field OR equivalent industrial maintenance experience.  

• 5+ years of experience in industrial maintenance, planning, and/or scheduling 

• Experience planning major outages, shutdowns, or turnarounds in a manufacturing or process plant environment.  

• Strong understanding of:  

• Mechanical systems  

• Rotating and fixed equipment  

• Process equipment  

• Maintenance workflows  

• Lockout/Tagout and permitting systems  

• Experience with CMMS systems (SAP, Maximo, JDE, etc.).  

• Strong organizational, communication, and coordination skills.  

Preferred 

• Experience in chemical, mining, refining, cement, energy, or heavy industrial environments

• Familiarity with reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), RCA methodologies, and predictive maintenance programs  

• Experience with Primavera P6 or Microsoft Project 

• Supervisory or lead coordination experience during outages or shutdowns