Tradesperson

Understand

Who this role is and what they own.

Reports to

Maintenance Supervisor

Key relationships

Supervisor — job allocation, permits, handbacks
Planner — pack feedback, missing steps or materials
Operator — isolations, permits, and asset handover

Top accountabilities

Execute assigned work orders safely and to the standard in the pack
Verify isolations and permits before touching the asset
Record time, parts, failure code and findings before closing the Work Order

Deep dive · phase-by-phase detail

P1Identify Work

Open ↓

The Tradesperson is the ground-truth on defect detection. A work request raised by someone who was on the tools, at the asset, with a spanner in their hand, is the highest-quality intake in the whole system. If that work is done verbally or 'fixed while there' and never entered, the failure history is silently corrupted.

What this role does

Raise a work request for every deferred, discovered or follow-up defect — before you leave the asset
Include failure mode language, evidence (photo, sample, measurement) and asset tag on every work request
Do not 'fix while there' without raising the record — the work is not done if the CMMS doesn't know
Escalate any defect you believe is safety-critical to the Supervisor verbally as well as raising the request
Flag repeat issues on the same asset to the Reliability Engineer — you see the pattern first

Good looks like

Follow-up work requests are raised at the job face, not remembered days later in the crib room
Every hidden defect discovered inside a job gets its own record — failure history stays clean
The Reliability Engineer knows about the pattern before it reaches the bad-actor review

Bad looks like

'Fixed while there' work never entered in the CMMS — history lost, strategy corrupted
Verbal 'someone should have a look at that' — the defect dies in the smoko room
Follow-up work bundled into the parent work order — one record, no analysis possible

P2Plan Work

Open ↓

The Tradesperson gives the Planner the reality-check feedback that stops the same pack being wrong twice. Every mark-up on a returned pack is a permanent improvement to the Standard Job Plan library. Working around a bad pack silently is the fastest way to guarantee the same errors recur next cycle.

What this role does

Review the pack before mobilising — flag missing steps, parts, isolations or drawings to the Planner
Mark up the pack during the job — what took longer, what was missing, what was over-scoped — and return it
Return marked-up packs to the Planner within the week, not the quarter
Contribute Standard Job Plan drafts on jobs the library doesn't cover yet — you did it, you can write it
Push back on estimates you know are wrong before the pack goes to Scheduling, not after the job fails

Good looks like

Standard Job Plans improve pack after pack because tradespeople mark them up and return them
Estimates on repeat jobs converge to reality within a couple of cycles
New Standard Job Plans are drafted by the trade that did the novel job — captured while fresh

Bad looks like

Tradesperson quietly works around a bad pack — the same errors recur next cycle, and the next
Marked-up packs go into a folder and never reach the Planner — library never learns
Feedback given verbally over lunch — nothing lands in the CMMS, nothing changes

P3Schedule Work

Open ↓

The Tradesperson honours the schedule. Cherry-picking easy jobs makes the crew look busy while the actual plan collapses. The schedule only defends the site against reactive drift if the people executing it actually work it.

What this role does

Confirm readiness before shift — parts, permits, isolations available — and raise blockers to the Supervisor immediately
Work to the sequence in the schedule unless the Supervisor formally re-sequences it
Do not add unscheduled work to your day without informing the Supervisor — visibility matters more than the extra job
Escalate any pack you can't start due to a readiness issue before you move to a different job
Provide honest hours-remaining estimates during the day so the Scheduler can react

Good looks like

Schedule compliance is real — days finish where the plan said they would
The Supervisor can trust that if you moved off a job, they know why
Blockers surface at 07:30, not at end of shift

Bad looks like

Self-directed 'cherry-picking' of easy jobs, ignoring the schedule sequence
Blockers absorbed silently — the crew stands around for two hours instead of surfacing the issue
Off-plan work done as a favour — schedule compliance number is fiction

P4Execute & Record

Open ↓

This is the trade's home phase. The job gets done safely, correctly, first time — and the record gets left right behind it. Bulk-booking time and parts at end of week destroys data quality more than any other single behaviour on a maintenance site.

What this role does

Verify isolations and permit conditions before starting; stop the job and call the Supervisor if unsafe
Follow the Standard Job Plan; do not improvise around missing steps — call the Supervisor and Planner instead
Book time, parts, failure code and free-text findings on every work order before closing it — not at week-end
Hit hold points and get them formally verified — do not sign your own hold points
Formally hand back to the Operator with a clear condition statement — 'good to run', 'run with caution', or 'not ready'
Write history a stranger could learn from in two years — symptom, cause, action taken, verification

Good looks like

History reads like a story — someone else could learn from this work order in two years
Zero unplanned rework on the job in the following 30 days
Time and parts booked on the day, from the catalogue, with failure code chosen deliberately

Bad looks like

'No fault found' plus no comments — a dead entry that helps nobody and hides a real defect
Time and parts booked in bulk at end of week — data quality destroyed
Hold points self-signed to keep the job moving — precision maintenance evidence lost

P5Close-out & Analysis

Open ↓

The Tradesperson contributes the on-tools evidence root-cause investigations and bad-actor reviews depend on. A photo, a failed component preserved for teardown, or one honest observation about what looked unusual, is often the piece of evidence that turns an investigation from guesswork into a decision.

What this role does

Attend root-cause investigation sessions for repeat failures on your assets — not optional, not delegable
Provide photos, samples and observations to the Reliability Engineer while the job is fresh
Preserve failed components until Reliability confirms teardown is not required — do not skip to the bin
Write a proper close-out narrative on any critical-asset job, even when the CMMS field is optional
Push back on close-out coaching — 'thin history' feedback is an opportunity, not a criticism

Good looks like

Root-cause investigation outputs cite tradesperson findings as primary evidence
Failed critical components are preserved for teardown, not scrapped on the spot
History on critical-asset jobs is genuinely useful to the next person who reads it

Bad looks like

Root-cause investigations held without the trades who did the job — root cause guessed, not found
Failed components binned before Reliability sees them — evidence gone forever
Close-out narrative left blank because 'the failure code says it all' — it never does

P6Metrics & Continuous Improvement

Open ↓

The Tradesperson owns the data quality that makes every downstream KPI trustworthy. Failure-code percentage, history depth and close-out lag are trade-owned KPIs; if the trades don't own them, they don't move. Improvement ideas raised at smoko and forgotten are a loss the whole site pays for.

What this role does

Own your data-quality KPIs — failure code coverage, history quality, close-out lag — do not let the Supervisor own them for you
Nominate Standard Job Plan, tooling or spares changes that would prevent recurrence — through the CI register, not verbally
Contribute to the quarterly reliability review with concrete examples from your own work orders
Follow through on your own improvement suggestions — attend the pilot, verify the change actually helped
Coach apprentices and new starters on close-out quality — the culture propagates through the trades, not from the office

Good looks like

Trade-driven improvements make it back into the Standard Job Plan library and the bill of materials
New starters inherit close-out discipline as the norm — 'this is how we do it here'
Trade KPIs are visible on the shop floor and the crew talks about them without prompting

Bad looks like

Improvement ideas raised verbally at smoko and forgotten by Monday
Data-quality KPIs treated as a Supervisor problem — trades disengage from their own outputs
New starters inherit the worst habits by osmosis — no one coaches close-out quality

Good looks like

Follow-up work requests are raised at the job face, not remembered days later in the crib room
Every hidden defect discovered inside a job gets its own record — failure history stays clean
The Reliability Engineer knows about the pattern before it reaches the bad-actor review

Bad looks like

'Fixed while there' work never entered in the CMMS — history lost, strategy corrupted
Verbal 'someone should have a look at that' — the defect dies in the smoko room
Follow-up work bundled into the parent work order — one record, no analysis possible

Learn

Courses, guides and reading to build the capability.

Academy modules

Structured pathway

Process guides

Phase deep-dives

Read & download

Free PDF guides

Competencies

Trade qualification and asset-specific competencyPermit-to-work, isolation and confined-space trainingWorking knowledge of the CMMS — how to book, close and write historyFailure-mode literacy — able to select the right failure code