Maintenance Planning Specialist

Maintenance Planning Specialist

Lead the Corporate Outage Program by developing, implementing, and continuously improving standardized shutdown governance, processes, and best practices across all operating facilities to ensure safe, efficient, and predictable outage execution. Develop long-term outage strategies by partnering with Operations, Maintenance, Reliability, and Engineering teams to define outage scopes, establish multi-year shutdown plans, and prioritize work based on business risk, asset condition, safety, and operational requirements.

Manage outage budgets and sustaining capital forecasts by developing annual outage budgets, maintaining long-term sustaining capital forecasts, monitoring expenditures, and supporting the corporate capital planning process. Oversee outage planning and execution by ensuring detailed planning, resource coordination, contractor readiness, scheduling, execution oversight, and effective management of scope, schedule, cost, and operational risks throughout each outage. Lead contractor and stakeholder performance by managing strategic contractor relationships, coordinating cross-functional teams, and fostering collaboration among Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Procurement, and Finance to achieve successful shutdown outcomes.

Monitor performance and drive continuous improvement by establishing key performance indicators, conducting post-shutdown reviews, benchmarking performance, capturing lessons learned, and implementing improvements that enhance future outage execution and asset reliability.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and implement standardized shutdown governance, processes, and best practices.
• Partner with Operations, Maintenance, Reliability, and Engineering teams to define outage scopes and establish multi-year shutdown plans.
• Prioritize work based on business risk, asset condition, safety, and operational requirements.
• Develop annual outage budgets and maintain long-term sustaining capital forecasts.
• Monitor expenditures and support the corporate capital planning process.
• Ensure detailed planning, resource coordination, contractor readiness, scheduling, and execution oversight.
• Effectively manage scope, schedule, cost, and operational risks throughout each outage.
• Manage strategic contractor relationships and coordinate cross-functional teams.
• Foster collaboration among Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Procurement, and Finance.
• Establish key performance indicators and conduct post-shutdown reviews.
• Benchmark performance, capture lessons learned, and implement improvements.

Essential

Skills:

• PMP certification.
• Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Maintenance Management, Industrial Technology, or a related discipline.
• 5-8 years of maintenance, reliability, engineering, or outage management experience within heavy industrial manufacturing.
• Strong knowledge of shutdown planning, cost development, budget management, and execution oversight.
• Experience in project management, mechanical engineering, Primavera, and steel manufacturing.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Project.

Additional Skills &

Qualifications:

• Master's degree in project management preferred.
• PgMP, CAPM, and/or comparable project certification.
• Certification in steel or a related field.

Work Environment:

The role requires 50% onsite presence at the Bluffton site and 50% traveling between plants in Bluffton IN, Lordstown OH, Shelbyville KY, Franklin KY, and Wisconsin Rapids, WI. The work involves installing, inspecting, adjusting, and repairing equipment such as furnaces, extruders, robotics, saws, palletizers, and yard equipment. The work environment is an aluminum cast house where scrap aluminum is processed into billets/logs, serving as a tier 2/3 automotive supplier.

Employees must meet all safety standards and respond swiftly to equipment failures to meet production needs.

Job Type &

Location:

This is a Contract to Hire position based out of Fort Wayne, IN.

Pay and Benefits:

The pay range for this position is $50.48 - $57.69/hr individual compensation offered for this position within this range will depend on many factors, including qualifications, skills, relevant experience, job knowledge, geographic location,…