The uneasy alliance between mine operators and maintenance providers is in need of an overhaul.

Perhaps someone should write a book entitled, Mine Operators are from Mars, Maintenance Providers are from Venus. That would seem an apt title for any discourse on the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the two parties.

It is a relationship too easily dominated by mutual suspicion and distrust. There is no getting around the fact that the requirement of maintenance people to stop production is fundamentally at odds with the overwhelming production focus of operators. In short, maintenance people are an addendum to the core business of running a mine, the “poor cousin to production”, as one manager said. That is, until everything breaks down.

The standing of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in this mutually dependant relationship is also tricky. OEMs provide the equipment and often offer ongoing maintenance programs, which they say perform better than alternatives. At the same time, many argue it is hard for OEMs to remain objective when it comes to warranty claims or poor equipment availability.

The way maintenance is perceived and managed is changing as operations begin to look much more closely at how and when maintenance is done, and how it is costed. The fact that current availability rates in Australia for face equipment systems run at 50-70% suggests that maintenance strategies are not always delivering optimum benefits to either party. While there is no doubt the relationship between operators and their maintenance providers has shifted significantly, it remains at times an uneasy alliance. One thing both parties agree on is the importance of qualified, committed personnel doing the job of maintenance, people with “60% knowledge, 20% public relations and 20% personality”

Earlier this year, coal industry representatives took the opportunity at a Sydney conference to discuss maintenance in longwall mines. The importance of preventative maintenance was one of the most significant points to emerge from a workshop facilitated by Bruce Robertson, chief mining engineer Shell. While most operators utilise some form of preventative maintenance, systems across the industry are not standardised. Some OEMs argue maintenance is sometimes performed in a haphazard fashion, leading to unexpected breakdowns and crisis situations. And because maintenance teams are often under-resourced and transient, maintenance strategies can become piecemeal rather than holistic.

Similarly, condition based monitoring (CBM), on which modern underground equipment is heavily reliant, is often either substandard, poorly performed or random. Many workshop participants, including operators and OEMs, suggested responsibility for this central diagnostic task needed to be much more clearly defined.

By and large, however, the battle for credibility for good maintenance programs has been won and despite differing positions there was consensus that the success of an operation often hinged on the standard of maintenance performance. Yet to be resolved are issues surrounding clear demarcations of responsibility and authority, the costing of maintenance programs, and a need to develop greater flexibility without compromising the integrity of a maintenance program.

Coal mines are no strangers to outsourcing maintenance of fixed assets such as fans and pumps, but the thin edge of the production wedge — face production equipment and longwall systems — remains least accessible to outside contractors. One notable exception to this is the monitoring and management of longwall equipment lubricants by firms such as Fuchs Australia, which tests about 1500 oil samples a month and monitors roof support fluid for three quarters of Australia’s longwall operations.

Darryl Sharpe, Fuchs engineering services manager, believes the relationship between maintenance providers and owners is becoming more of a partnering arrangement.

“In the early days of longwalls in the 1980s operators owned their own equipment. The interesting thing was the level of antagonism between OEMs and owners, where OEMs were fiercely protective of their equipment. Now owners may elect to lease equipment from OEMs who get paid cents per tonne for availability,” said Sharpe.

Such performance-based contracts are becoming increasingly common as operators seek to put a dollar value on performance, but the arrangement can be a double-edged sword as Joy Mining Machinery NSW sales manager Brant Wright remarked during the workshop session on maintenance at the Sydney conference.

“These performance based contracts are reliant on operators producing budgeted production for that equipment. If this doesn’t occur both parties end up losing,” Wright said. He seemed to have a point: how can performance be measured against goals that are not achieved?

One of the problems this underlines is that whatever is negotiated at the point of sale is often neither formalised nor documented, causing confusion about the various responsibilities of the parties. A central consideration is, who is finally responsible for monitoring equipment, and what actions flow out of any monitoring activity?

Becoming more prevalent is the inclusion of “OEM time” in tenders for new equipment. Moranbah North’s $45 million tender included a requirement for 300 man-weeks of OEM effort from Joy, according to technical services manager Steve Newson. “Once OEM time is used up longwall miners face the perennial problem of what to do next. Do they re-negotiate another package of time with the manufacturer or get Fred Bloggs and Sons to do the job cheaper?” Newson said.

Despite resistance to the outsourcing of maintenance, many coal operators are willing to look at doing so if they can see clear benefits, and there are many providers keen to pick up a piece of this action. Silcar Maintenance Services, established in 1993 to provide maintenance services to the Loy Yang Power Station in Victoria, recently set up shop in Queensland to service BHP’s Gregory opencut mine. Graham Mayberry, site manager, said Silcar offered reduced maintenance costs, increased plant reliability and performance, and improvements in “whole of life asset value”

“We are trying to demonstrate what we do and how we do it,” Mayberry said.

The trend toward outsourcing non-core maintenance is likely to gain momentum, however, maintenance of longwall equipment, other than by OEMs, is probably a long way off. One observer suggested coal operators did not always cost maintenance properly, obscuring the real costs — and benefits — in day-to-day operating budgets. Bring in an “outsider” to do maintenance and the costs rapidly become apparent, while the benefits are sometimes overlooked.

“Nobody would ever fiddle about with the real structural components of any underground machine. But it boils down to, can we trust these people?” Newson said.

This highlights a quandary for prospective maintenance providers. The only way a contractor can gain experience underground is by winning an underground contract, but many operators won’t look at a contractor unless he has some sort of track record. Committing to increased levels of skilled and experienced staffing before winning contracts can prove an expensive mistake.

Said Moranbah North’s Newson: “I think there will be more and more potential for outsourcing maintenance, but we’ll never reduce our standards. The people who do this maintenance will find it is fairly rigorous and it’s not a very forgiving industry. You can make one mistake but you can’t make two.”