Director - HEMM (Heavy Earth Moving Machinery)

About the role

Adexen has been mandated by a leading industrial group to recruit an experienced Director of HEMM for its operations in Africa. The position is based in Lagos, Nigeria, and provides strategic leadership and technical oversight of all heavy earth-moving machinery operations across quarry and mining sites, ensuring equipment availability, fleet productivity, maintenance efficiency, cost control, safety compliance and uninterrupted material supply to production plants.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and implement a group-wide HEMM strategy aligned with mining, quarry and production objectives, and optimize fleet size, composition and deployment.
• Ensure high utilization of key equipment (excavators, dump trucks, haul trucks, wheel loaders, dozers and graders) and drive fleet availability, reliability and productivity targets.
• Establish preventive and predictive maintenance frameworks, oversee equipment health monitoring and lead root cause analysis of major failures.
• Optimize maintenance cost per operating hour and per ton moved, and manage spare parts planning, inventory and vendor partnerships.
• Develop and manage group contracts with OEMs and service providers, and promote refurbishment and lifecycle cost optimization.
• Work with mining and quarry teams to align fleet operations with mine plans, blasting schedules and production targets, and improve cycle times, loading efficiency and haul road performance.
• Deploy and optimize Fleet Management Systems and telematics, including GPS tracking, predictive maintenance analytics and real-time dashboards.
• Champion a strong safety culture and ensure compliance with safety standards, procedures and environmental requirements.
• Lead capital budgeting for new HEMM acquisitions, define asset lifecycle management, evaluate electric and low-emission equipment, and build and lead the HEMM engineering and maintenance team.
• Train staff through structured programmes and monitor fleet KPIs, reporting regularly to executive management.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mining Engineering or a related field; MBA or postgraduate qualification an advantage.
• 20 to 25+ years' experience in HEMM, mining equipment, quarry operations or heavy industry operations.
• At least 10 years in senior leadership roles managing large equipment fleets.
• Mandatory proven experience in cement, mining or quarry operations; multi-site or multi-country experience is a strong advantage.
• Strong ownership mindset, execution focus, cost discipline and resilience in demanding, fast-paced industrial environments.

Required skills

• Expertise in HEMM operations and maintenance, and knowledge of OEM equipment such as CAT, Komatsu, Volvo and Hitachi.
• Fleet management systems, telematics tools and digital maintenance platforms.
• Maintenance strategies including RCM, TPM and predictive maintenance.
• Quarry and mining logistics, material handling and stakeholder management.