Work management
The work that comes round again
Projects happen once. Maintenance comes round again, every week, every shutdown, every cycle. It needs a different discipline, different roles and a different system, and most organisations run it with people who were never trained for it.
We supply the planners, schedulers and maintenance clerks who run that work, we set up the system they operate in, and we train the people you already have to run it without us.
The problem
Capable people, set up to struggle
Planners and maintenance administrators carry direct responsibility for maintenance data quality, work order integrity and schedule performance. Most are appointed without structured role training.
The consequences arrive on schedule: degraded master data, incomplete work orders, misreported KPIs and audit findings. The risk sits with the department, and the individual carries the blame for outcomes they were never equipped to deliver.
“We handed them a laptop and a login, and expected the system to teach itself.”
The onboarding experience this work replaces.
Five patterns show up in almost every planning office we walk into.
01
The plan is not real. Work orders carry no realistic duration, no confirmed materials and no named craft, so the schedule is a wish list.
02
Nobody owns the week. Planning, scheduling and execution blur into one role, usually the supervisor, who is already running the crew.
03
Master data has rotted. Functional locations, equipment records, task lists and maintenance plans were loaded once and never maintained, so the system produces work nobody trusts.
04
The shutdown eats the year. Scope creeps because nothing was frozen, and the overrun swallows the maintenance budget for two quarters.
05
Schedule compliance is unmeasured. Nobody can say what percentage of planned work was actually done, so nothing improves.
What we do
Three ways to fix it
01
Planners and schedulers on demand
Experienced practitioners who step into the planning office and take ownership from the first week. They arrive with the routines, templates and reporting already built, so there is nothing for you to set up first.
Roles we supply: maintenance planner, scheduler, plant maintenance administrator, planning supervisor, planning superintendent.
02
Set up your work management system
We design and stand up the cycle end to end: notification to work order, planning, scheduling, execution, close-out and feedback. That includes the master data underneath it, the weekly and shutdown routines, the RACI, the KPI framework and the reporting that tells you whether the plan was kept.
We work in the system you already run. Much of our work sits on SAP Plant Maintenance and S/4HANA EAM. See our systems capability
03
Develop your planners, PMAs and FLMs
Most organisations promote a good artisan into planning and hope. We run competence-based development journeys in your own operating model, in your own system, on your own data standards, ending in a signed competence record per learner.
Where we have done this
Mining, government and heavy industry, under audit
PGM, coal, diamonds, copper and iron ore, in South Africa, Botswana and Australia.
Since 2012, the consultants who lead this practice have supported Anglo American’s businesses with work management, SAP EAM, master data and capability-building programmes, first under contract to other firms and, since DBiLL was founded in 2018, through DBiLL:
- Group operating model and SAP S/4HANA deployment across Platinum and Coal
- Maintenance work management implementation and embedment at site level
- EAM master data build, cleansing and governance
- Role-based training, assessments and go-live assurance
- Current: Valterra Platinum operations management training and full-time site coaching
Beyond Anglo: BHP Billiton in coal and aluminium, Kumba Iron Ore, De Beers, Sasol, Exxaro, Eskom and Royal Swazi Sugar Company.
The consultant leading this work co-authored the original Anglo American work management and operating model training programme and the Platinum EAM Training Strategy, and carries 21 years of SAP experience across 23 end-to-end projects.
Procurement
Ready to onboard
DBiLL (Pty) Ltd is set up to be appointed quickly and to pass a procurement review without a scramble for documents.
Why the Ariba listing matters to you
If you buy through Ariba, we are already in your system
Vendor onboarding is usually the slowest part of getting help on site. Because we are already pre-vetted and carry a vendor number in the Anglo American and Valterra networks, that step is done. If your organisation runs on the SAP Ariba network too, the same registration carries across, so a purchase order can be raised against us without a new supplier creation cycle, a fresh vetting pack, or a wait on procurement.
Where we stop
We do maintenance and operations, and we do not do facilities
Work management for us means the maintenance and operations of physical assets and the cyclical work that keeps them running: routine maintenance, shutdowns and turnarounds, and the planning office that schedules them.
We do not provide facilities management or property management services. If your need is building services, cleaning, security or property administration, we are the wrong firm and we will say so in the first call.
Our delivery approach
Six steps, every engagement
- Assess
- Design
- Build
- Implement
- Train
- Embed
Start here
Book a free delivery review
We will look at how your maintenance work is planned, scheduled and closed out, and tell you what is missing: the people, the system, or the skills. No obligation, and you keep the findings either way.