SiteIt's Monday, 7am. The production meeting starts and the maintenance chair is empty. Your maintenance manager had a knee operation on Friday. Six weeks off, maybe more.
Someone says your senior fitter can keep an eye on things. Everyone nods. That fitter is also your best fault-finder on nights.
By Wednesday the compressor contractor is at the gate and nobody's sure who can issue the permit. A LOLER report has landed with two defects on it. Production wants to know if line 2 can run Saturday. Then the case packer trips on nights, and the person who'd normally take that call is in a meeting about overtime.
The fitters can still fix things. But the manager's job is mostly decisions that nobody else is authorised to make. When they're off, those decisions stop, or get made by whoever's nearest.
Write down what the manager actually does
Most of a maintenance manager's job lives in their head and their inbox. Before you decide who covers, get it on paper. If the absence was planned, sit down with them before they go. If it wasn't, go through the diary, the CMMS and the email with whoever knows the site best.
The list usually looks like this:
- who can issue and sign off permits, and for what work
- open defects from LOLER, pressure system and other statutory reports, with their deadlines
- the next statutory exams and inspections due
- contractors booked in, and who briefs them
- spend limits, purchase orders waiting, and spares on order
- the on-call rota and who gets the 3am call when the shift fitter is stuck
- who signs off a restart after a breakdown
That list is the job. Each line needs a name next to it while the manager's away.
Permits need a name, not a guess
Permits are where cover goes wrong first. HSE's guidance on permit-to-work systems says a good system has "clear identification of who may authorise particular jobs (and any limits to their authority)" (HSG250). It also says people signing permits "should have specific training and authorisation from the company", and that "a person should not issue a permit to themself."
That last one catches small teams. If your senior fitter is now the only one who can issue permits, they can't issue one for a job they're doing themselves. Someone else has to be authorised, in writing, before the first job that needs one. Our post on running a permit-to-work system covers the rest.
The guidance on site managers says the same thing in a wider way. They either take on the permit roles themselves or put arrangements "in place which clearly delegate them." An absence is when you find out whether you've done that.
The law expects someone competent to be there
Your health and safety duties don't take six weeks off. Under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, you must appoint "one or more competent persons" to help you meet them. The time they have and the means at their disposal must be adequate for the size of the site and its risks (regulation 7). With five or more employees*, you also have to record your arrangements for planning, organising, controlling, monitoring and reviewing safety (regulation 5).
On many sites, the maintenance manager is a big part of those arrangements. When they're off, the paperwork still names them. Update it. Say who covers each duty, and from what date.
HSE describes competence as "the combination of training, skills, experience and knowledge that a person has and their ability to apply them to perform a task safely" (HSE). A good fitter has a lot of that. Managing permits, contractors and statutory defects is a different set of skills. Give the person stepping up the authority in writing, and someone to ring when they're not sure.
Three ways to cover
The first is to step someone up. Your senior engineer acts up, with written limits on spend and sign-off. It works because they know the site. The catch is what it does to the tools. Your best fault-finder is now in meetings. Nights lose their escalation point. If they were also the only one who can fix line 3, you've just made that risk worse.
The second is an interim manager: an experienced manager through an agency or their own company. Good for long absences, or when nobody inside is ready. They need time to learn the site, and the paperwork has rules. Through an agency, the 12-week rule applies. Through their own company, check whether your IR35 decision is needed.
The third is to split the job. The operations manager takes spend and the production meeting. Your senior engineer takes permits, defects and contractors. Nobody tries to be the whole manager.
Our view: cover the hands as well as the desk
Most sites get the desk covered somehow. What they forget is the gap it leaves on the tools.
When your senior engineer steps up, you're one experienced fitter down on the floor. That's when the first serious breakdown happens. Nobody's free to take it, the shift fitter waits for a callback, and the line sits for hours that one more pair of hands could have saved. Work out what one of those nights costs you, then put it next to the cost of a cover engineer for the absence.
So if you step someone up, backfill their shifts. A cover engineer for the shifts they've left lets the acting manager actually manage. Then get a proper handover going both ways, so the acting manager hears about every night shift job before 7am.
And when the manager comes back, do the same list in reverse. What changed, what's still open, and who signed what.
What to do on Monday
- Write the manager's list: permits, open defects, statutory dates, contractors, spend and on-call. Put a cover name next to every line.
- Authorise a second permit issuer in writing, so nobody has to issue a permit to themself.
- Update your safety arrangements to show who covers each duty, and from when.
- If your senior engineer steps up, book cover for the shifts they leave behind.
* The five-employee threshold for recording safety arrangements is correct as of 2 November 2026. Check regulation 5 on legislation.gov.uk for the latest.