The Maintenance Skills Shortage in South Africa: How to Do More With Your Current Team

The maintenance skills shortage in South Africa is no longer a future risk; it is here. Mines, factories, and facilities across the country are struggling to find and keep diesel mechanics, millwrights, instrument technicians, and electricians. When you cannot hire your way out of the gap, the only option is to do more with the people you have. That means working smarter: standardising procedures, capturing knowledge before it walks out the door, and using the right tools so every technician’s time counts. This article explains the scale of the problem, its impact on South African operations, and how a CMMS and clear processes help you maximise your current maintenance team.

The Scale of the Maintenance Skills Shortage in South Africa

Understanding why the shortage is so acute helps explain why “just hire more” rarely works — and why improving how your existing team works is the practical path.

High-Demand Trades and Weak Pipelines

In 2024, sector bodies and employer surveys again listed diesel mechanics, millwrights, instrument technicians, electricians, and fitters among the most in-demand artisan trades. Demand comes from mining, manufacturing, logistics, and power generation — all sectors that depend on maintained equipment. Companies in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, and the mining provinces report the same difficulty: vacancies stay open for months, and poaching between employers drives up wages without increasing the total number of skilled people in the country.

At the same time, the pipeline from TVET colleges and apprenticeships is not keeping pace. Apprenticeship completion rates remain low, and many graduates lack the hands-on experience employers need. Workshop capacity, mentorship, and alignment between curricula and industry needs are ongoing challenges. The result is a structural gap: too few qualified artisans entering the workforce each year to replace those leaving or to support growth. For maintenance managers, that means planning for a world where you cannot assume you will fill every vacancy.

An Aging Workforce and Tribal Knowledge

A large share of South Africa’s experienced maintenance technicians and artisans is approaching retirement. When they leave, they take decades of tacit knowledge with them: how a specific machine behaves, where the recurring faults are, which workarounds work, and how to diagnose problems quickly. That “tribal knowledge” often lives only in people’s heads. If it is not captured in procedures, checklists, and work order history, the next person — whether a new hire or a junior technician — starts from zero. MTTR goes up, repeat failures increase, and the skills shortage is compounded by knowledge loss.

How the Skills Shortage Hits Your Operation

When you are short of skilled people, the effects show up in four main ways.

Longer Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

Fewer technicians, or technicians stretched across too many sites and trades, mean jobs wait longer. Diagnosis and repair take more time when the right skills are not available or when one person must handle work that used to be shared. Longer MTTR means more downtime, lost production, and higher cost per failure. For operations already under pressure from load-shedding and aging plant, extended repair times make the situation worse.

Deferred Preventive Maintenance

When the team is constantly firefighting breakdowns, scheduled preventive maintenance gets pushed out. PMs are deferred or skipped, which increases the chance of unplanned failures and turns a temporary overload into a sustained reactive cycle. The more PM slips, the more breakdowns; the more breakdowns, the less time for PM. Breaking that cycle requires deliberate prioritisation and a system that makes planned work visible and assignable — which is exactly what preventive vs reactive maintenance planning and a CMMS support.

Compliance and Audit Risk

The OHS Act and the Mine Health and Safety Act (MHSA) require employers to maintain plant and equipment and to keep records. If you cannot complete statutory inspections and maintenance because you lack people or because work is not clearly scheduled and tracked, you run compliance risk. Inspectors can ask what was maintained, when, and by whom. Deferred or unrecorded work leaves you exposed. In mining, MHSA and mine-specific regulations add further pressure. A CMMS that schedules and records maintenance helps you prove due diligence even when the team is lean and gives you a clear view of what is overdue so you can prioritise before an audit.

Dependence on Contractors

Many operations fill the gap with contractors. Contractors can help in the short term — for shutdowns, specialist work, or peak demand — but they are expensive, often less familiar with your assets and your history, and they do not build your internal capability. Over-reliance on contractors also means your own team’s knowledge and capacity do not grow, and you remain vulnerable when contractor availability or rates change. The goal should be to use your core team as effectively as possible and to use contractors only where necessary, not as a permanent substitute for structured maintenance and knowledge retention.

Strategies to Do More With Your Current Team

You cannot fix the national skills pipeline overnight. You can, however, change how your maintenance team works so that every person’s time is used better and knowledge is preserved.

Standardise Work Procedures in a CMMS

When every technician follows the same, documented procedure for a task, quality is consistent and less depends on any one person’s memory. A CMMS lets you attach step-by-step procedures and checklists to work orders and assets. New or junior technicians can follow the procedure instead of guessing; experienced technicians can improve the procedure over time. Standardised work reduces rework, speeds up execution, and makes it easier to cross-train. For a lean team, this is one of the highest-leverage steps you can take. If you are new to the concept, our guide on what is CMMS in South Africa explains how a CMMS supports procedures, work orders, and asset history.

Capture Knowledge in Work Order History

Every completed work order is an opportunity to capture what was done, what was found, and what fixed the problem. When technicians log notes, root causes, and parts used in the CMMS, that information becomes searchable history on the asset. The next person facing a similar fault can see what worked before. Over time, work order history becomes a knowledge base that survives when people leave. Encourage technicians to record findings and solutions; make it part of the job, not extra admin. The CMMS is the place where that knowledge lives.

Prioritise by Asset Criticality

When you cannot do everything, you must do the right things first. Rank assets by criticality: which equipment, if it fails, stops production, causes safety or environmental harm, or breaches compliance? Focus PM and quick response on those assets. A CMMS lets you tag criticality and filter work orders and PM schedules so the most important work is visible and gets assigned first. That way, a small team concentrates on what matters most instead of being pulled in every direction.

Schedule PM to Reduce Reactive Fire-Fighting

The more preventive maintenance you complete on time, the fewer unplanned failures you get. Use the CMMS to schedule PM by time or usage (hours, kilometres, cycles) and to generate work orders automatically. Assign and track completion so PM does not slip. As preventive vs reactive maintenance balance shifts toward planned work, the team spends less time on emergencies and more on predictable, manageable tasks. That reduces stress, improves morale, and makes better use of limited people.

Use Mobile CMMS for Faster Execution

Technicians who receive work orders on a phone or tablet can start jobs without returning to the office for paper or a desktop. They can view procedures, log completion, attach photos, and update status from the floor or the field. Mobile CMMS cuts travel and admin time and speeds up turnaround. In South Africa, where sites can be spread out and connectivity is not always reliable, a CMMS that works offline and syncs when back online keeps work flowing even when the network or grid is down.

Plan Cross-Training and Skill Development

Identify which skills are in shortest supply and which technicians could be trained to cover more than one trade or asset type. Use the CMMS to see who has done which types of work and how often; that helps you plan who gets trained on what. Cross-training does not replace qualified artisans, but it spreads capability so that more people can handle common tasks and only the most complex work needs a specialist. Document procedures in the CMMS so that cross-training is built on consistent, written steps rather than ad hoc shadowing. In a skills-short environment, investing in your existing people and capturing what they know is as important as any new hire.

How a CMMS Supports a Lean Maintenance Team

A CMMS is not a substitute for people, but it multiplies what your team can achieve when you use it to standardise, capture knowledge, and prioritise. South African operations that have adopted a CMMS in the face of the maintenance skills shortage often report three benefits: less time lost to unclear instructions or missing history, better PM completion because work is scheduled and visible, and a single place for compliance and audit evidence when the team is stretched.

Step-by-Step Procedures on Mobile

Technicians can open a work order on a mobile device and follow the procedure step by step. No need to memorise or hunt for paper manuals. New staff get the same guidance as experienced staff; deviations are reduced. When procedures live in the CMMS and are linked to assets and work orders, they are always up to date and in one place.

Photo and Video for Knowledge Transfer

When a technician finds a fault, takes a photo or short video, and attaches it to the work order with a note, that becomes part of the asset history. The next person can see what the problem looked like and how it was resolved. Photos and videos are especially useful for training and for complex or rare failures. The CMMS stores them with the asset and the work order so they are findable when needed.

Skill Tracking and Workload Balancing

Some CMMS systems let you record skills or certifications per technician. That helps planners assign the right person to the right job and avoid overloading the only person who can do a critical task. Workload views show who has too much open work and who has capacity, so you can balance the backlog and prevent burnout. When you have few people, fair and visible distribution of work is essential.

One System for Planning, Execution, and History

Planning, scheduling, execution, and reporting in one system mean less duplication and fewer gaps. Work orders are created from PM schedules or requests, assigned to technicians, completed with notes and parts, and then feed asset history and reports. Managers see backlog, PM compliance, and MTTR in one place. That visibility helps you decide where to focus your limited team and how to improve over time. When audits or B-BBEE reporting require proof of maintenance and skills development, having one source of truth in the CMMS simplifies the response.

Implementing these practices does not require a big-bang project. A phased approach — starting with critical assets, standardising a few key procedures, and rolling out mobile work orders — delivers value quickly. For a structured approach to rolling out a CMMS in your operation, see our how to implement a CMMS in South Africa guide.

Conclusion

The maintenance skills shortage in South Africa is real and will not be solved by hiring alone. Mines, manufacturers, and facilities must get more from their current teams by standardising work, capturing knowledge, prioritising by criticality, and using a CMMS to schedule, assign, and record maintenance. When procedures live in the system, work order history becomes a knowledge base, and mobile tools let technicians execute faster, a lean team can maintain more assets more reliably and with better compliance. If you would like to see how Lungisa CMMS supports standardised procedures, knowledge capture, and mobile work orders for South African operations, get in touch with the Skynode team or explore Lungisa for more on our maintenance management software.