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Daily life of a H&S Professional

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Safe&Sound
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Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by Safe&Sound »

Good morning,

Happy New Year to you all and I wish each and everyone of you all the best and success for the new year ahead :)

So for me it's back to normality after the Christmas break. As I filter through my emails and plan for the week ahead for visiting clients and carrying out inspections it got me thinking, there are a variety of different roles within the H&S industry ranging from consultants, advisors, managers and even joint roles such as QHSE.

My question is what is your day-to-day routine when managing/advising on Health and Safety and what would improve it?

The reason for this question is I would like to see if people are working similar patterns and if we can support each other with new ideas and improvements on how we go about managing the H&S management systems.

For me, I work as a H&S consultant and spend the majority of my week on the road visiting construction sites and clients from different industries. I'll normally turn up as per the schedule and meet with the person who manages the H&S. The day is spent carrying out an inspection of the work area, reviewing previous actions, highlighting areas of improvements and filling in the gaps from the gap analysis. It can be frustrating upon my return to the client that little has been done in my absence especially when you have highlighted the risk and consequences. I find the report writing to be a drain on the time however I am reviewing processes to smooth this out and make them more efficient in terms of time and quality.

I look forward to seeing the response.

S&S
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WillPool
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Re: Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by WillPool »

I work abroad in Saudi in the PMCM (Project Management & Construction Management) HSE Role.

It i s a little strange in that we are a layer of management you dont always find in UK projects.

From down to up Sub-contractor - Contractor - Site Supervision Consultant (SSC) - PMCM - Clients Representative (CR) - Client

The project is a mega project and quite demanding, there are a total of 4 PMCM Senior Safety Managers (of which I am one) to oversee different areas/aspects of the project, each reporting into the CR.

Daily, I have several meetings, site visits, client walk-through, joint walk-through (PMCM/SSC & Contractor) to try and give senior management buy-in. Reviewing and approving RAMS and other SSoW.

Weekly I have a weekly report to submit looking at accident/incident data, trends in observations reported, man-hours etc

Monthly I have 2 reports to submit (similar but not the same), one for the project as the PMCM and one to send back to UAE to our Corporate Office, the corporate report solely focuses on the PMCM staff where as the project one includes, SSC's, Contractors & Subbies information which has to be verified.

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Re: Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by Keith1983 »

One of the aspects of working in H&S that appeals to me is that no two days are the same. I work for a business that work in the building maintenance / installations industry. I do have some regular duties such as preparing RAMS for clients, carrying out audits of our site engineers etc. Even within that each client can pose different challenges. I also work closely with our HR Manager to ensure training is suitable for what all employees require. I monitor/inspect and keep records of safety equipment such as lanyards/harnesses etc. I oversee tasks such as the PAT testing for our electrical equipment but this isn't something that involves daily input.

I love the variety of challenges that the type of work we do throws up and am fortunate to work for a very supportive senior management team.
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Re: Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by Messy »

I am employed and based in London and look after the fire safety side of a large specialist portfolio of buildings based mainly in the UK and a few elsewhere across the world.

My days are extremely varied and unpredictable as I often need to react to unexpected events. As a result, literally no two days are alike. Sometimes that is a very good thing indeed :roll:

Roles:
Maintaining fire safety in around 60 buildings in the portfolio via fire risk assessments (new and reviews) plus audits
Building project work - from a £multi million new data hall complex to moving walls to open plan office space, or a refurb of a 28 storey building, to the conversion of an industrial building to a complex positive pressure scientific lab
Appointing and monitoring fire safety training contractors to deliver 4 x different courses to thousands staff
Advisor Role on a 24/7 Crisis Management Team - whether the incident is fire related or not
Advising on changes to introduce technology - Recent innovations include a hypoxic fire system and video smoke detection
Fire Investigation - nine(reported) fires last year across the estate
Supervising Fire Drills across key (but not all) buildings across the estate
Writing policy and guidance - currently introducing new fire safety strategies for each building. Plus reorganising management responsibilities
Constantly attempting to bring costs down. Currently considering ways of reducing extinguisher maintenance costs (c. 800 units in our Head Office)

But the biggest annoyance - sorry workload- is dealing with the day to day ad hoc enquiries. “Can we do this,?”, How do we do that?”. A recent FAQs page on the intranet has reduced some queries, but not as many as I would like.

With 60 ish buildings, over 10,000 staff, and perhaps 25 projects on the go - with me and an admin assistant, it a tough workload on an ever decreasing budget. This accounts for why I am so grumpy most of the time :roll: ;)
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David68
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Re: Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by David68 »

I think for most of us our daily work life is often summed up in one word - frustrating!

I am the H&S Manager for a point of sale manufacturer in the East Midlands. I am a team of one reporting to the Head of Manufacturing and to the MD. Over the last year or so my role has expanded to include working with the Group CSR Director with audits and visiting sites around the world to give them ideas and guidance as to how to improve the day-to-day management of health and safety. With many of the sites visited the national standards fall far below that which is expected in the UK and France (our parent company is French) but we still have to ensure that we do make recommendations that are not contrary to local laws. Over the next month or so I am in France, China, Thailand and India - I consider myself very fortunate indeed to be in such a position.

Like many others, no two days are the same and that is the joy of being a safety professional.

My biggest frustration is having to deal with problems that are not necessarily H&S issues and certainly should be being dealt with by team leaders and line managers.

I would not change my career for all the tea in China.
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David68
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Re: Daily life of a H&S Professional

Post by David68 »

Post Script

The other day I sent a reviewed H&S policy to my MD expecting him to agree with what I have written and and send it back. What I did not expect was for him to actively amend and improve the document. I am over the moon!

Dave
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