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So you want to be a safety consultant?

Having just spend two days at the DE&S Environmental and Safety Assurance Symposium (ESAS) conference, this article covers a question that I heard several discussions cover - along with when are you a Safety Manager and when are you a Safety Engineer?  Does Professional Registration cover Safety and is it understood?  Any thoughts on this....

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By:  Wayne J. Harris , Director HSSE, Chairman of ISQEM, Board Director WSO, Change Management Professional, Conference Speaker

 


  • Thought-provoking article Wayne.  I became a safety management consultant after working in the RN and then as safety manager for an Airbus Business Unit.  I live in provincial NZ and quickly found that there is little understanding of this term, or what I can offer as the more general HSE advisor is more prevalent, though I have done some work in this area with a couple of clients and that was really rewarding.  I recently did some work in the HAZOP space, and was termed a 'Safety Engineer' by my client to their client, but my training and qualifications do not really put me in that place and while I was clearly the closest person in the room to a Safety Engineer, I am really not SQEP in that space.  I am a  certified ISO45001 auditor, and was looking at the safety engineer credentials for Exemplar Global to see if I could apply for that, or at least work towards it, but decided that it was a step too far and there just isn't the demand where I am at present.  So, Safety Management Consultant I remain....

  • but my training and qualifications do not really put me in that place

    Hi Emma,

    Really good and interesting to hear your story.

    Just as a bit of reassurance, plenty of really rather senior safety consultants have no qualifications (and perhaps not a huge amount of formal training) in safety! A huge amount of it often comes through "E" rather than "Q". I would absolutely never put anyone off getting formal training and qualifications, and making sure it is continually updated, but equally in the safety world really good on-the-job experience and mentoring can (if used carefully) be just as valuable, and be perfectly credible.

    I would perhaps caveat in that it may depend upon what is meant by "safety". Wayne's article concentrates on HSE, where it would perhaps be more expected that evidence of up-to-date formal training and qualifications are required, particularly because of ever changing legislative requirements. Whereas in functional safety it is (at least in my experience) more common that the safety engineer / manager / consultant has come from a detailed technical background (so most of their qualifications and training are purely technical) and has picked up more informally the safety engineering knowledge. 

    It's a very interesting point, I'm currently heavily involved in helping / mentoring recent graduates develop towards Senior / Principal Safety Consultant level, which has resulted in a lot of thought as to what the underpinning knowledge and understanding required for these roles actually is, and how they can best acquire it. Which in turn tends to involve us already at that level thinking about how we gained the UK&U we have. And a huge amount of it does come down to well mentored experience, and informal training - often consisting of hours reading the relevant standards and legislation to stay one step ahead of the project you're trying to support!

    Since there's a few other safety engineers / managers / consultants who lurk on these forums it'll be interesting to see if any other views come up.

    Thanks,

    Andy

  • Many thanks for your words of encouragement Andy.  I work hard to maintain my USP in Marlborough as a broader thinker. The RN roles I filled being as varied as they are, it certainly made me that.  I have a fundamental disagreement with Health and Safety New Zealand, where you can only be a registered H&S professional if you have a formal H&S qualification (engineering qualifications don't cut it), so perhaps I have focussed too much on that rather than the extensive 'E' that I have when thinking about my ability to support a range of businesses.  Being a technical and systems thinker definitely helps me when supporting the dairy industry and viticulture - neither of which I have any material experience of.