Head of O&M

About the Role

Job Profile Role Purpose Lead, build, and scale a safe, technically strong, reliable, cost-effective, and customer-focused Operations & Maintenance organization for the Bio-CNG portfolio. The role holder will own the overall O&M business performance across Thermax-built and third-party Bio-CNG plants, establish a scalable multi-site operating model, develop high-performing technical and operations teams, strengthen plant reliability and safety systems, and drive profitable growth of the O&M business. The incumbent must combine deep hands-on plant O&M expertise with business leadership, multi-site operational excellence, customer management, P&L ownership, people development, and the ability to establish standardized systems that support rapid portfolio expansion.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a scalable Bio-CNG O&M business capable of supporting 30–50+ plants while maintaining safety, quality, reliability, and margins.
• Deliver safe, reliable, and commercially sustainable plant operations across the complete portfolio.
• Build O&M capability for both Thermax-built plants and new third-party O&M opportunities.
• Improve plant availability, gas production, productivity, asset reliability, and O&M profitability.
• Create a strong corporate, regional, and site-level O&M operating model with clear ownership and performance governance.
• Develop and retain a capable leadership pipeline across Station Managers, Deputy Station Managers, Maintenance Managers, Reliability Engineers, and technical specialists.
• Establish strong customer relationships and generate opportunities for O&M contract extensions, additional scope, and new business.
• Ensure operational excellence through standard work systems, technical governance, digital reporting, benchmarking, preventive/predictive maintenance, and continuous improvement.

Major Deliverables

• O&M business leadership
• Own overall O&M performance across the Bio-CNG plant portfolio, including safety, production, availability, reliability, quality, cost, contractual KPIs, and customer satisfaction.
• Define and execute the O&M business strategy in alignment with the Bio-CNG growth plan.
• Build a commercially viable O&M model for Thermax-built assets as well as third-party Bio-CNG plants.
• Develop annual and long-range business plans for revenue growth, margin improvement, plant-performance improvement, capability development, and market expansion.
• Establish competitor and industry benchmarking for plant performance, manpower productivity, operating cost, maintenance practices, and customer-service standards.
• Implement monthly business-review mechanisms to track operational and financial performance by plant, region, cluster, and customer.
• Organization design and capability building
• Design and establish an efficient corporate, regional, cluster, and plant-level O&M organization.
• Develop a lean but scalable manpower model that balances internal capability, third-party workforce deployment, safety, quality, and cost.
• Build a strong second line of leadership comprising Station Managers, Deputy Station Managers, Maintenance Managers/In-Charges, cluster managers, and technical specialists.
• Establish competency frameworks, technical skill matrices, career paths, succession plans, and talent pipelines for critical O&M positions.
• Develop a central technical-support, reliability-engineering, maintenance-planning, and performance-improvement function.
• Define third-party workforce governance, contractor performance scorecards, contingency/back-up arrangements, and replacement plans for non-performing service providers.
• Build a performance-oriented culture with clear KPIs, role accountability, regular reviews, recognition, corrective actions, and leadership development.
• Plant operations and performance
• Ensure consistent achievement of contractual, customer, regulatory, and internal plant KPIs.
• Drive improvements in feedstock utilization, biogas yield, methane purity, gas upgrading, compression, cascade filling/dispatch, utilities consumption, and by-product/digestate handling, as applicable to the plant configuration.
• Establish common operational standards, SOPs, operating envelopes, escalation protocols, and performance-review routines across all sites.
• Lead technical reviews for underperforming plants and implement structured performance-recovery plans.
• Drive effective daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews at plant, cluster, regional, and corporate levels.
• Ensure availability of critical utilities, consumables, chemicals, feedstock interfaces, and operating resources required for stable plant performance.
• Asset reliability and maintenance excellence
• Improve plant availability, equipment reliability, MTBF, MTTR, maintenance productivity, and lifecycle performance across the portfolio.
• Establish preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance practices for critical mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, automation, and process assets.
• Standardize maintenance planning, shutdown planning, major-overhaul practices, spares strategy, and breakdown-management systems.
• Develop plant-wise equipment criticality assessments, asset registers, reliability frameworks, and lifecycle maintenance strategies.
• Establish structured root-cause analysis and corrective/preventive action processes for recurring equipment and process failures.
• Create subject-matter-expert capability for critical equipment such as feedstock-handling systems, pumps, agitators, blowers, compressors, gas purification/upgrading systems, electrical systems, PLC/SCADA, analyzers, and utilities.
• Drive inventory optimization while ensuring availability of critical and long-lead spares.
• Review and improve maintenance vendor performance, AMCs/CMCs, technical service contracts, and OEM support arrangements.
• Safety, compliance and sustainability
• Build and institutionalize a strong safety culture across all operating plants and third-party workforce.
• Demonstrate visible safety leadership through site visits, safety walks, leadership interventions, audits, and review of leading and lagging indicators.
• Establish and enforce zero-tolerance standards for unsafe acts, unsafe conditions, and deliberate deviation from life-saving/safety rules.
• Ensure effective implementation of permit-to-work, lockout/tagout