Head of Health, Safety & Environment

A large, asset intensive industrial organisation with significant national importance is seeking an experienced Head of Health, Safety & Environment. Reporting directly to the CEO, this executive leadership opportunity will shape the future of health, safety and environmental performance across a complex, high hazard operation where process safety is fundamental to operational success.

This is not a traditional safety leadership role. We are seeking a senior HSE executive with deep experience in high hazard, process driven industrial environments who understands the realities of managing major hazards, critical risk controls and high consequence events.

The successful candidate will lead the next phase of a Safety Transformation Program while strengthening process safety capability, leadership accountability and operational risk management across the site.

What Success Looks Like
The key objective of this role is to deliver measurable improvements in process safety performance and organisational safety culture. Success will be measured by:

• Strengthening process safety capability and operational discipline across the business
• Improving the effectiveness and assurance of critical risk controls
• Reducing high potential incidents and exposure to major hazards
• Embedding process safety KPIs into business decision making and reporting
• Increasing leadership ownership and accountability for risk management
• Establishing the HSE function as a trusted and influential partner to operations
• Driving sustained improvements in safety culture and leadership behaviours

The Opportunity
Leading a multidisciplinary HSE function, you will provide strategic leadership across health, safety, environment, emergency management, occupational health, governance and quality operations.
Key responsibilities include:

• Leading the organisation's Safety Transformation Program
• Strengthening process safety management frameworks, critical control verification and assurance systems
• Driving improvement in high consequence risk management
• Providing executive level advice on operational risk, process safety and safety performance
• Embedding leading process safety indicators and performance measures
• Coaching and developing leaders to strengthen ownership of safety and risk
• Leading emergency preparedness, crisis management and organisational resilience initiatives
• Ensuring regulatory compliance and environmental performance
• Building capability across the HSE function and broader leadership team

About You
You are a recognised HSE leader with extensive experience within large scale, asset intensive and high hazard industrial operations. Most importantly, you have led process safety improvement within environments where failures can result in significant operational, environmental and human consequences.
You will bring:

• Significant senior HSE leadership experience within high hazard industrial operations
• Proven process safety leadership experience in asset intensive environments
• Strong experience managing major hazards, critical risks and high consequence events
• Expertise in critical control management, assurance and verification processes
• Experience influencing operational leaders and strengthening accountability for risk
• Relevant qualifications in engineering, safety, risk management or related disciplines

Experience within petrochemical, chemical manufacturing, fertiliser and explosives, energy, utilities, heavy industrial, metals or minerals processing environments will be highly regarded. Candidates from other comparable high hazard industries with strong process safety credentials are strongly encouraged to apply. 

For a confidential discussion, please contact Stephen Coldicutt at The Safe Step on scoldicutt@thesafestep.com.au