Top Skills every Maintenance Technician should have
The world of work is diverse and highly competitive, whatever country you live in. Getting a career path right can be tricky. A good choice for the person who is good with their hands, thinks quickly and is a practical problem-solver is to be a maintenance technician, also known as the maintenance worker.
There is a world of opportunities for the maintenance technician, as seen wide range of maintenance jobs available in Jamaica alone.
However, like any career path, there are certain skills that are requisite for maintenance technicians. There are also qualifications or certifications that may need to be considered to get ahead.
With a focus on Jamaica and the Caribbean region, this article will provide an overview of some of the key factors needed to be in maintenance, including the top maintenance technician skills to be successful.
What Does a Maintenance Technician Do?
Defining what a doctor, or an accountant or a lawyer does is straightforward. There may be specializations in each field, but what each professional does is fundamentally the same as fellow professionals. The maintenance field is far more diverse, less easy to generalize, and greatly depends on the industry and the organization a maintenance technician works in.
A broad definition of a maintenance worker job is that a maintenance technician or worker repairs and helps maintain buildings, machinery and equipment. Their tasks can range from plumbing and carpentry work to painting, cleaning and doing landscaping or gardening.
Add heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), and you get just some idea of how many different tasks maintenance work might involve! There’s even more than the job might entail, that could include:
- Diagnosing and fixing mechanical issues in machinery and equipment;
- Doing minor electrical work or repairs as they arise;
- Conducting routine inspections of premises and equipment;
- Overseeing contractors doing professional repairs when needed; and
- Involvement in safety and health systems and process-related audits.
Becoming A Maintenance Technician
There is no single step-by-step’ process to becoming a maintenance technician, given the sheer diversity of work in the maintenance field. The evolution of how one becomes a building maintenance technician in the hospitality industry, for example, is quite different from that needed to become an industrial maintenance technician or landscaping specialist.
Whatever the approach or career aspirations, the aspiring Maintenance Technician does well to do two fundamental things:
- Get an education: having a high school diploma is a basic entry requirement into most maintenance technicians jobs. Any further education, especially if it involves acquiring technical skills, is a bonus and an investment in your future.
- Get practical experience: hone your skills however you can, including with an apprenticeship. Even if unpaid or with a very modest stipend, being an apprentice is always a beneficial and practical way of learning the tools and processes of a given trade or skill.
Skills Needed To Be a Good Maintenance Technician
As with any profession, maintenance work has required generalist and specific or technical skills that should include:
- Practical mindset and ability to work well manually;
- Broad technical knowledge;
- Problem-solving and diagnostics-related skills;
- Attention to detail
- Time management skills;
Further ability to:
- Work well and quickly on one’s feet;
- Work confidently and efficiently under pressure; and be highly flexible.
Having sound soft skills cannot be understated. Emotional intelligence (EI), empathy and good social/people skills are all important for maintenance technicians.
The Caribbean chapter of the International Labour Organization (ILO), based in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, offers this important advice: “Employers are demanding that workers for the 21st century must possess the knowledge, technical skills, and “soft-skills” to function effectively and be competitive in the workplace. To attain this level of competitiveness, workers must be lifelong learners who will continue to increase their knowledge and update their skills…”
How Much Money Does a Maintenance Technician Make?
Salaries or pay rates in the maintenance field in Jamaica and the Caribbean are as diverse as the different jobs found in the industry.
On average, an early career maintenance technician with 1-4 years of experience can expect to earn an average total compensation (including bonuses and overtime pay) of JA$799,918 per year. A mid-career maintenance technician (5-9 years of experience) can expect an average of JA$1,130,000, whilst an experienced maintenance technician (10-19 years of experience) can earn an average of around JA$1,320,000 per year.
Salaries for plant (industrial) maintenance technicians in Jamaica are considerably higher. This is unsurprising given that the maintenance work needed in industrial settings is usually complex and hazardous and, as such, requires more qualifications and greater expertise.
Maintenance Technician Qualifications
There are three principal ways in which maintenance technicians become qualified for a given maintenance job or specialization:
- On-the-job training;
- Apprenticeship; and/or a
- Certification program
Different maintenance jobs will require different qualifications or skills sets.
The diversity of qualification (i.e. formal education) requirements can be seen when perusing an online jobs board. For example, a recent job listing for a Maintenance Coordinator in HVAC and Plumbing for an aviation company required a Bachelor’s degree in engineering or its equivalent or a National Vocational Level 3 qualification or ULCI Level II or City Guilds in Mechanical Engineering.
In the public sector, a listing by the National Housing Trust (NHT) in Jamaica for a Maintenance Technician required a Certificate in Electrical and Mechanical Installation/Maintenance from a recognized institution and at least five (5) CSEC or GCE subjects (including Mathematics and English Language).
On the other hand, the qualifications requirements for apprenticeships in the hospitality or property management industries may be far more basic, with on-the-job up-skilling as emphasis.
Maintenance Technician Experience Requirements
Not surprisingly, different maintenance technician jobs will require different types and levels of proven experience. Clearly, the primary focus is on experience in actual maintenance-related work. Technical experience should include:
- Perform routine maintenance not requiring certified expertise
- An ability to readily:
- take apart machinery, equipment or devices and correctly diagnose faults or flaws;
- remove and replace defective parts.
- check and readily understand blueprints, repair manuals, material safety data sheets (MSDSs) or parts catalogues;
- use common manual and electrical/hydraulic/fuel-powered tools such as hammers, saws, drills, wrenches and gardening equipment; and
- use precision measuring instruments or electronic testing devices for calibration.
An equally important for many maintenance technician jobs is the aforementioned ‘soft’ or people skills. These include the ability to work in and even lead teams, communicate effectively and clearly and manage one’s time efficiently and as part of a maintenance management system.
These non-technical skills become even more important for higher-level jobs such as Maintenance Coordinator or Maintenance Management.
As seen, there are many potential paths to becoming a maintenance technician. Required skills, both technical and soft, are as equally diverse, as are the qualification and certifications that may be pre-requisite for a given maintenance job.
All that diversity of options and requirements may be somewhat daunting for the novice maintenance technician but it shows what an interesting field it is, full of possibilities.
Remember this: maintenance technicians should be considered the foundation of any workplace in which machinery, equipment and buildings need to be kept in good working condition and repair.
A five-star resort, hospital or manufacturing facility can have the very best state-of-the-art machinery and digitized maintenance systems, but they will all be for nought without well-trained and efficient maintenance technicians doing a consistently good job.
In the end, being a maintenance technician is an honourable, multi-skilled career choice to be proud of.
