By Shane Johnson, Preservar CEO
Imagine you’ve just stepped into a senior maintenance role and the business is investing in a new fleet of assets; loaders, haul trucks, dozers, graders… even a state-of-the-art six-wheel-drive service truck that can reach the most remote part of the mine!
The production team is energised after grinding through the old fleet’s final stretch, and the maintenance crew is relieved to see the last of the breakdown-prone machines.
As a seasoned professional, you’ve covered your bases: a strong OEM support contract, maintenance plans set up in the ERP, spare parts stocked, and a five-year budget aligned to industry benchmarks. Welcome to the honeymoon period.
The Honeymoon
Sure, there are a few early hiccups. Tech bugs from post-assembly installs, uncomfortable seats, and the new trucks don’t fit in the old workshop bays. But with a few clever workarounds, the team gets through it. Soon, the fleet is hitting all the industry HME benchmarks.
Two years in, and you’re getting noticed. Senior management is singing your praises. You’re sent to other sites and even the occasional conference to share the secret sauce. A short secondment to group Asset Management follows, then a promotion to General Manager. Life is good. Early Friday knock-offs become tradition. The mine is humming.
Reality Hits
By year five, reality creeps in. Planned Component Replacements (PCRs) are due across the entire fleet — simultaneously. Maintenance costs rise 15%, availability drops 7%, and OEM contractor spend balloons. You prepare a detailed, logical presentation for the MD and CFO. You are only on slide 3 when the CFO shakes their head and the MD stand up, red in the face. You’re marched out with orders to “fix the budget.”
What just happened? You seek out council from the CFO: “This affects free cash flow, increases cost, and tells the wrong story in a low-price environment,” they explain. “Can you reduce the PCR’s impact?”
The Downward Spiral
The bewildered site management team scrambles to respond. PCRs are reluctantly deferred, maintenance budgets trimmed, explosives cut back, and waste stripping postponed. The spreadsheet looks better and MD is happier — temporarily.
The reality that the honeymoon is over hits you hard, and after briefly considering a job change, you opt to ride out the inevitable tough times. Major components begin failing after running past OEM hour limits. Lower drill and blast intensity leads to blocky material, which strains the loading fleet. Parts are delayed after supply chain quietly shifted critical spares to consignment stock — and forgot to tell you. Labour is tight. Reliability tanks. Costs spiral. Availability shrinks.
Your original (rejected) budget would have covered this — but now the numbers are ugly for all the wrong reasons.
Then comes the real kicker: deferred waste stripping limits pit access. Production stalls. The MD is on their way. You ask yourself, “How did I get into this situation?”
The Hard Truth
The answer is simple – you wasted the honeymoon.
What was once the peak of your career has caught up with you. And in hindsight, some key missteps come into focus:
- You weren’t clear about the long-term cost peak. The 5-year plan smoothed it across other sites. No one saw the spike coming. The business was surprised!
- You didn’t plan to stagger the PCRs. A phased approach could have softened the impact and cash flow impacts to the business.
- You lost visibility of supply chain decisions. Critical spares disappeared — and so did your buffer.
- You deferred essential work. Pushing out PCRs and scaling back on explosives bought short-term peace… at longer-term cost.
What Can We Learn?
Unfortunately, this story is not unique. Often, we don’t highlight the peak of the cost cycle early enough! The business gets surprised and short-term decisions kick in. At Preservar we’re often called in when things begin to unravel — and too often, the root cause lies in the avoidance or deferment of tough executive level discussions during the honeymoon period.
That brief window of high performance and low resistance is the ideal time to fall with and solidify strategic planning, life cycle management, operating practices and supply chain management. In the wise words of rock band Cruel Sea; “the honeymoon is over baby, it’s never gonna be that way again!”