A career as a construction Health & Safety Supervisor is all about ensuring that those working on a construction site of any type or scale are following the correct health & safety policies and procedures. Let’s take a look at what a career as a Health & Safety Supervisor involves and where your career can take you.
What does a Health & Safety Supervisor do?
While a Health & Safety Supervisor may take on additional roles, their primary job in their health & safety career must be to promote and actively enforce safer construction sites. They are generally responsible for:
- Developing, implementing and enforcing policies to reduce the risk of accidents
- Ensuring that the policies in place on the site are in line with national statutory obligations
- Being responsible for adopting new standards and communicating them clearly within the construction environment
- Strictly implementing a reporting procedure on any incident, accident, injury or fatality that occurs on a construction site and documenting thoroughly the procedures that were followed, or not followed, in the case in question
- Inspecting site conditions to see if there are active hazards and working with supervisors and site management to make sure the site is as safe as is possible at all times
Responsibilities
As a construction Health & Safety Supervisor, you will need to be certified by the Health & Safety Authority and actively participate in events such as the national Construction Safety Week and ensure that SafePass procedures are being followed. As part of your career, you will need to be in frequent contact with:
- Site manager
- Foreperson
- Documents controller
- Civil engineer
- QA/QC engineer
- Construction labourer
- Bricklayer
- Roofer
- Glazier
- Tiler
- Plumber
- Building services engineer
- Mechanical engineer
Professional Qualifications
A construction Health & Safety Supervisor must be certified to the proper level with the Health & Safety Authority and must also hold a SafePass and relevant First Aid qualifications. CPD is part and parcel of your career as a construction Health & Safety Supervisor so you will be expected to attend and complete courses on an annual basis and successfully what you have learned into the construction environment in which you work.
How your Career can Develop
If you’re working in this field, you may initially hold other supervisory roles on the site but as your experience in this area develops you will be able to develop your career with exposure to larger projects. These will challenge your knowledge and require you to upskills but as you continue to advance your health & safety career you can ultimately become involved at leadership level within the sector and even at national level in terms of health & safety policy and lobbying.