Maintenance Planner

Fervo Energy • Houston, TX

19d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Maintenance Planner owns work order planning and scheduling for Fervo Energy’s fleet of geothermal generating facilities. Reporting to the Director, Maintenance & Reliability, this role is the single point of ownership for turning identified maintenance needs into fully planned, resourced, and scheduled work orders. Work may originate from preventive or condition-based maintenance programs, or from requests raised by Operations, Maintenance, Commissioning, Engineering, or Reliability Technicians.

Fervo follows the Palmer methodology, distinguishing maintenance planning from hands-on maintenance execution. The Planner does not perform maintenance work, but spends meaningful time in the field with Operations and Maintenance teams to understand facilities, identify opportunities, and create or improve maintenance plans. The role covers both planning and scheduling, with approximately 80% of time devoted to planning and 20% to scheduling.

The position maintains a fleet-wide ready backlog, builds weekly schedules, owns the CMMS as the system of record for planning and scheduling data, coordinates parts and materials, tracks key maintenance and reliability KPIs, and works across engineering, operations, maintenance, commissioning, reliability, and supply chain. It supports the fleet from launch and requires travel to active sites as needed, currently including Cape Station in Milford, Utah. Travel is expected to settle at approximately 15–20%, depending on relevant experience.

The role follows a hybrid schedule, with employees expected to work in the office three days per week. The in-office schedule is considered an essential function of the role.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of maintenance planning and scheduling experience in an industrial, power generation, or process plant environment, directly supporting a workforce of 10 to 20 technicians.
• Direct working experience with a CMMS such as MaintainX, Maximo, SAP, or a comparable system for work order planning, PM template management, backlog reporting, and KPI management.
• Strong knowledge of preventive and predictive maintenance concepts needed to plan work generated by a reliability program.
• Experience scheduling multidisciplinary maintenance work across more than one site or unit concurrently.
• Experience coordinating parts and materials lead times with a supply chain or procurement function.
• Strong written communication skills; job plans, schedules, and backlog reports must be usable by people who were not present when the plan was made.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in geothermal or other utility-scale power generation maintenance.
• Professional background as a plant maintenance technician, engineer, or operator, with experience estimating labor hours for a variety of work tasks with reasonable accuracy.
• Familiarity with RCM or FMEA-based maintenance strategy development.
• Professional credentials such as CMRP, CMRT, or similar certifications.

Responsibilities

• Convert preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance Work Requests into fully planned CMMS work orders, including scope, procedure references, parts, labor estimates, and discipline requirements.
• Process PM and condition-based maintenance work generated by the maintenance strategy, as well as Work Requests from Operations, Maintenance, Commissioning, Engineering, and Reliability.
• Develop reusable work procedures by equipment type rather than by site, prioritizing work by asset criticality, priority, and repeatability.
• Provide labor and time estimates for every plan and improve estimates based on technician feedback.
• Verify that parts are available or on order, permits are identified, and required outage or equipment-access windows are confirmed before releasing job plans.
• Maintain a prioritized, ready-to-schedule rolling backlog of planned work spanning four to six weeks across all sites.
• Maintain searchable records of work performed, parts consumed, and asset findings so future plans are based on maintenance history.
• Build and maintain the fleet’s weekly maintenance schedule from the ready backlog, covering available work hours and organizing work by labor type.
• Coordinate upcoming crew hours and schedule commitments directly with site maintenance supervisors.
• Bundle work on common equipment or in the same area or facility to reduce mobilization and production overhead.
• Support Maintenance in taking advantage of unplanned opportunities to execute work from the planned backlog, and revise plans and future schedules when published schedules are interrupted.
• Own the CMMS as the system of record for fleet planning and scheduling data, including work order quality, backlog accuracy, and schedule compliance reporting.
• Track and report critical maintenance and reliability KPIs, including schedule compliance, PM compliance, backlog size in weeks, and the ratio of planned, reactive, and emergency work.
• Maintain the CMMS asset hierarchy, PM templates, and job plan library.
• Help develop training plans for new employees on relevant work streams and CMMS use.
• Identify and reserve parts and materials for planned work, coordinating lead times with Supply Chain.
• Flag parts availability as a schedule risk before committing a job to the schedule.
• Update recurring procedures with lessons learned, including tools, consumables, and parts needed to execute work effectively.
• Coordinate with engineering, maintenance, and operations on new PM and condition-based maintenance work and feedback from completed jobs.
• Coordinate with Operations on equipment access, outage windows, and schedule changes that affect plant availability.
• Escalate unresolved resource conflicts, parts shortfalls, and schedule risks to the Director, Maintenance & Reliability.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision plan options.
• Employer-paid basic life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• A 401(k) plan with up to 6% match.
• Flexible paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Family-building, fertility, hormonal health, pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting support through Carrot.
• A dependent care FSA for eligible child and elder care expenses.
• An annual Lifestyle Spending Account for eligible wellness expenses, including fitness, financial planning, pet insurance, and pet care.
• Employee ownership opportunities through the Employee Stock Purchase Program, stock option grants, and bonus opportunities for eligible roles.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed