Eventually, every business reaches the limits of how much it can grow with the facilities they have. Site expansion, improvement, and capacity building is a specialized skill set that requires the right kind of CAPEX & engineering professionals. 

Staffing Needs for Capex & Engineering Projects

Whether you are working on greenfield or brownfield factory building, expansion, improvement, or optimization, here are some of the professionals you need:

  1. Engineering Managers: CAPEX engineers need a deep understanding of your industry and your operations, along with knowledge of OEM operations, machinery, and systems. They should be experienced with construction contractors, utility providers, regulations and permitting, as well as health and safety. 
  2. Project Engineering Managers: Engineering Project Managers need a wide range of skills, including project management, procedural design, applying lean and continuous improvement processes to facilities and manufacturing processes, ensuring that engineering design meets safety and legal regulations, and providing technical support to systems and teams. 
  3. Project Engineers: Project engineers need experience in project and construction management, AutoCAD, expertise in reviewing and evaluating submittals and proposals, and facility quality and safety. 

Staffing for Factory Maintenance

All too often, “maintenance” is an under-appreciated skill. Maintenance of factories and equipment is a critical aspect of capacity, because highly skilled maintenance managers allow companies to:

  • Ensure production and quality targets are met. In order for a facility to work at optimal capacity and produce high-quality products, it needs to be working as designed. Physical structures, machines, and processes require regular inspection, cleaning, and repair in order to keep meeting business objectives.
  • Inform future plans and projects. All too often, all eyes are on capex projects at the design and implementation stages, and then attention is directed elsewhere. However, a year or two later, it is maintenance staff and managers who can give the best feedback and input on whether equipment or processes are functioning as designed, with the most insight into specifications, installation, spare parts, and how the facility is actually being used by staff. The longer-range engagement of maintenance staff is essential for informing new capex projects. 
  • Create accurate predictions and forecasting. Maintenance managers can create accurate forecasts for the lifecycles and requirements of machines, parts, and facilities. These forecasts inform business strategy and further capex investment planning. 
  • Improve processes. Maintenance is a key consideration in all continuous improvement strategies. Maintenance managers have crucial insight in ways to reduce or eliminate waste and defects, address questions of skill and competency, and improve production. 

As many as 60% of C-level decision-makers view maintenance simply as a cost center, and not as a potential profit center, although maintenance has one of the highest ROIs of any business activity. For that reason, maintenance and facility managers often manage under-staffed and under-funded departments, to the detriment of the whole company. Maintenance managers face the challenges of working with aging equipment and processes, lack of historical data and information transparency, and difficulties getting top managers to implement or invest in preventive routines. When maintenance and facility managers and technicians are unable to complete work on time, companies need to view that information as a data point, and address the obstacles that prevent maintenance from being done as scheduled. 

CAPEX is one of the most important investments a company can make, and it requires the right professionals with the right skills, and a commitment to technology, engineering solutions and ongoing improvement. If you need a team of capex engineers and project managers who can take your business to the next level, contact grapefrute today.