North Mackay · Bowen Basin
Engineering judgement against the asset — not a labour-hire headcount.
Precision Maintenance Australia is a specialist rotating-equipment consultancy led by director Les Horn, based in North Mackay and operating across the Bowen Basin. Every engagement is scoped against the duty cycle, the failure history and the production risk — not against a fixed retainer or a headcount.
The story to tell is the contrast with the larger field-service and labour-hire outfits that list rotating equipment on their brochure but lack the on-asset experience to deliver RCFA, power-transmission review and lube-route audits to a real standard.
What you'd engage
One director. Multi-decade on the asset. Real depth.
Les Horn personally scopes and reviews every enquiry, every report and every handover. The depth you get is the depth the director has — not a slide deck composed by a junior.
About Les Horn
Director. Engineer. On the asset for the long arc.
PMA is Les Horn's shop. The director-scope is deliberate — every engagement reads against the same set of eyes and the same on-asset experience.
Les Horn
Director · Rotating-equipment engineer
Les has spent his career on rotating fleets in Australian heavy industry — pumps, fans, compressors, mills and the power-transmission hardware that drives them. The range is wide and the specialisation is deep: RCFA on catastrophic failures, lubrication-routine design, power-transmission sizing and rating, and the day-to-day trading of reliability against production risk.
That mix — multi-decade on-asset experience plus engineering rigour — is the differentiator a field-service or labour-hire headcount can't replicate. It's why every report that leaves PMA reads as if it was written by someone who has actually opened the bearing housing, walked the lube route, lined up the laser on the coupling.
Tried and tested — not brand bound
PMA is genuinely product-agnostic. Les has personally used, worn out and replaced the bearings, couplings, drives and lubricants he specifies across the heavy-industry range — over decades and across every duty condition, not inside a vendor demo. The product or brand on a recommendation is chosen because it has earned its place on his kit list, never because of supplier incentives, vendor programmes or the manufacturer tie-in that comes with larger field-service and labour-hire outfits. The recommendation is to the asset, not to the back of a brochure.
Specialisation
Rotating equipment end-to-end
Pumps, fans, compressors, mills, drives and the lube route that keeps them alive.
RCFA depth
Forensic, not procedural
Walked-through failures, not template reports. Each finding lands in your RCFA register and feeds back into the asset strategy.
Engagement posture
Director reviews every job
No white-labelled report. No slide deck passed off as engineering. The director signs it.
About PMA
North Mackay. Bowen Basin roots. Built to stay small.
PMA is a consultancy deliberately sized to one senior engineer, not a roster of subcontractors. The shape is the strategy — depth rather than geographic spread.
Base
North Mackay
The home base sits at the gateway to the Bowen Basin — close enough to mobilise on a failing asset quickly, far enough from corporate head-office noise to keep the consultancy posture intact.
Trace
Bowen Basin roots
Coking-coal operators, contractors and the rail and port link-up that frames the Basin. The reliability questions that come up here are the ones PMA is built to answer.
Model
Traded against the asset
Engagement is sized against production risk and the surrounding fleet. You pay for engineering judgement and routines handed to your crew, not a permanent seat at the table.
Where we sit
Consultancy, with depth — not a labour-hire roster with a brochure.
The contrast with larger field-service and labour-hire outfits is the point. Many will quote rotating equipment work — not many have the on-asset experience to do it properly.
Engineering consultancy, not labour-hire
PMA scopes against duty cycle, BOM and failure history. Larger field-service outfits sell headcount against a work order; PMA sells judgement against the asset and the production risk behind it.
Depth, not a capability list
Larger labour-hire firms will quote rotating equipment on a brochure but lack the on-asset experience to deliver RCFA, power-transmission design review and lube-route audits to a real standard. PMA's basis for engagement is the depth behind each capability — the failures walked through, the bearings replaced, the drives aligned and rated.
Traded against the asset
Engagement is sized against production risk and the surrounding fleet. You pay for engineering judgement and routines handed to your crew — not a permanent seat at the table. The handover slides go home with the people who run the asset every day.
Where we're rooted
Central Queensland, with the rest of the fleet in mind.
PMA is based in North Mackay and works across the Bowen Basin industrial ecosystem — operators, contractors, rail and port. The reliability questions in this part of the world are about continuous shift cadence, contract-driven availability targets and a rotating fleet that runs hot. We've spent a career answering them on the asset.
Start an engagement
Bring us one failing asset. We'll show you how a consultancy sees it.
Director Les Horn reads every enquiry. Send the asset, the duty cycle and the symptom — we'll come back with how we'd scope it and what a first engagement looks like against the rest of the fleet.