Service
Mechanical and rotating equipment maintenance
Planned, outage and breakdown maintenance on operating plant — coolers, pumps, conveyors, drives and their structures — under permit-to-work, with supervised resources when a section needs them for a year.
Umbusso Engineers maintains mechanical plant where it operates: inside permit-to-work and isolation regimes, within outage windows, and around equipment that cannot be stopped for long. The team is inducted, permit-trained and used to working under lock-out on Eskom generation sites.
Our reference work includes the refurbishment of three EVAPCO closed-circuit evaporative coolers at an Eskom power station in 2024 — new fan and motor pulleys and bushes and restored V-belt drive trains — and a year-long workshop services and supervised maintenance resources contract for an Eskom pumps maintenance section, run on a three-shift rotation with a site supervisor, rosters and medical surveillance, and renewed in December 2025.
What we do
- Refurbishment of evaporative coolers, fan and motor drives, belts, pulleys and bushes.
- Pump, valve and drive-train maintenance in pump stations and auxiliary plant.
- Conveyor mechanical maintenance: pulleys, idlers, gearboxes, couplings and belt structure.
- Supervised maintenance resources on shift rotation, with rosters, medicals and access management handled by Umbusso.
- Plant drains and sump cleaning and unblocking under approved method statements and confined-space controls.
- Outage and shutdown scopes with a quality control plan and close-out data book.
Standards, quality and documentation
Our quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management systems are certified to ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018 by Assurance Quality Certification, with a scope that includes power plant maintenance. Site work runs under the client’s permit-to-work system, our task risk assessments and a safety file, and every scope closes out with the inspection records the client’s quality department requires.
Where this service applies on the plant
Explore the representative plant environment in the Umbusso Industrial World to see the equipment this service covers.
Proof: work delivered on purchase order
Each project record states the client, the order or contract reference, the scope and the quality documentation it ran under. Contract values are available to prospective clients on request.
EVAPCO cooler refurbishment
Refurbishment of three closed-circuit evaporative coolers, restoring the fan and motor drive trains to service.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd · 2024
Read the project record →Workshop & pumps-maintenance resources
Provision of supervised workshop and maintenance resources on a three-shift rotation, with a site supervisor, rosters, medicals and access management.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd · 2025–2026
Read the project record →Plant drains cleaning
Cleaning and unblocking of plant drains under an approved method statement with confined-space and permit-to-work controls.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd
Read the project record →Conveyor gearbox repairs
Repair of two main coal conveyor gearboxes, including the manufacture of a new output shaft to drawing.
Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd (via the main contractor) · 2017
Read the project record →From the workshop and site
How an order runs
Send the drawing, scope or problem. We reply with questions or a site-visit date.
We confirm the scope, access, outage window and your quality and safety requirements.
Priced quotation with a quality control plan outline so the hold points are agreed before award.
Work under permit-to-work and the agreed plan, with witnessed hold points and progress reporting.
Inspection records, certificates and material traceability compiled into the data book and handed over.
Frequently asked
Can you provide a maintenance crew for a fixed period rather than a fixed scope?
Yes. The Eskom pumps-maintenance contract supplied supervised workshop and maintenance resources on a three-shift rotation for a year, with Umbusso managing rosters, medicals and plant access.
Do your people hold the inductions and medicals Eskom sites require?
Our teams are inducted and hold current medical surveillance for the sites they work on; access management is part of what we run on resources contracts.
What happens when a breakdown falls outside working hours?
Call the office number or the WhatsApp line. For contracted sites we agree a call-out arrangement in the contract.
Technical articles on this equipment
Written and reviewed in-house. What fails, why it fails, what the standards require and how to specify the repair.
Output-shaft and bush failure on main conveyor drives: repair, shaft manufacture and re-commissioning
When the output shaft of a main conveyor gearbox fails, the plant loses a belt and often waits months for an OEM unit. This article explains why output shafts and bushes fail, how to assess a stripped gearbox, and how a new shaft is manufactured and the unit re-commissioned.
Reviewed by the Operations Manager · September 2026
Read the article →Fan and motor drive refurbishment on closed-circuit evaporative coolers
Closed-circuit evaporative coolers run continuously in a wet, corrosive environment and their V-belt drive trains are the usual point of failure. This article covers the drive components, how they fail, and how a refurbishment restores the units to service.
Reviewed by the Operations Manager · September 2026
Read the article →Blocked plant drains: cleaning methods, confined-space controls and permit requirements
Blocked drains flood plant areas and stop work; clearing them is a confined-space job with real hazards. This article covers how drains block, how they are cleared, and the controls that an approved method statement must contain.
Reviewed by the Safety Officer · September 2026
Read the article →Related services
Request a quotation
Send us the drawing, the scope or the problem. We reply with questions, a site-visit date or a priced quotation — whichever gets you an answer fastest.
Office +27 17 007 0135 · WhatsApp +27 72 535 1598 · info@umbussoengineers.co.za
