HSE Lead

HSE Lead - SC Cleared
Plymouth
Dockyard

Job Specification Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced HSE Lead to provide strategic and operational leadership across health, safety and environmental matters throughout the project lifecycle.

The role is particularly focused on risk management, with responsibility for ensuring that health and safety risks are identified, understood, assessed and effectively controlled from the earliest stages of design through to construction, commissioning and handover.

The successful candidate will be able to bridge design-phase risk management with construction and constructability considerations, working collaboratively with designers, engineers, contractors and project leadership to ensure that safety is embedded into project decisions rather than treated as a standalone construction activity.

Key Responsibilities Risk Management & Design Safety

• Lead the identification, assessment and management of HSE risks throughout the project lifecycle.
• Provide specialist HSE input during concept, design and detailed design phases, ensuring significant risks are identified and addressed at source.
• Review designs, methodologies and engineering proposals from an HSE and constructability perspective.
• Challenge design decisions where they introduce avoidable or disproportionate health and safety risks.
• Ensure appropriate consideration is given to design risk, residual risk and foreseeable construction, maintenance and operational risks.
• Facilitate and contribute to design risk assessments, HAZID/HAZOP workshops, constructability reviews and other risk-management activities.
• Ensure risk registers are maintained, actively managed and integrated into project decision-making.

Constructability & Construction Risk

• Work closely with construction teams and contractors to ensure design intent can be delivered safely and practically.
• Identify potential conflicts between design requirements, construction methodology and safe systems of work.
• Review construction methodologies, temporary works, sequencing and logistics from an HSE perspective.
• Ensure risks identified during design are effectively communicated and controlled during construction.
• Support the development and implementation of appropriate construction-phase risk controls.

HSE Leadership

• Provide visible leadership on HSE matters across the project.
• Establish and maintain a strong safety culture based on risk ownership, proactive intervention and continuous improvement.
• Provide authoritative HSE advice to the Project Director, design team, engineering functions and construction leadership.
• Monitor HSE performance and provide clear reporting, assurance and recommendations to senior management.
• Ensure compliance with applicable legislation, standards, client requirements and project procedures.

Assurance & Governance

• Develop and implement project HSE strategies, plans and assurance programmes.
• Undertake audits, inspections and assurance reviews to verify that risk controls are effective.
• Monitor leading and lagging HSE indicators and identify emerging trends.
• Investigate significant incidents and ensure lessons learned are incorporated into project processes and design.
• Ensure appropriate HSE documentation, records and evidence are maintained throughout the project lifecycle.

Key Skills & Experience
The ideal candidate will demonstrate:

• Significant experience in a senior HSE role within major projects, engineering, construction or infrastructure.
• Strong experience in risk management and risk-based decision-making.
• Proven ability to influence HSE outcomes during the design and planning phases, rather than solely during construction.
• Strong understanding of design risk management and constructability.
• Experience working collaboratively with multidisciplinary design and engineering teams.
• The confidence to challenge technical and project decisions where significant HSE risks exist.
• Strong understanding of construction methodologies, sequencing and practical site constraints.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence at both technical and senior-management levels.
• A proactive approach to identifying emerging risks and implementing effective controls.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.

Qualifications

• NEBOSH Diploma or equivalent HSE qualification.
• Relevant professional membership, such as IOSH, desirable.
• Relevant technical, engineering or construction qualification, desirable.
• Appropriate experience in design risk management and construction HSE.
• CDM knowledge and experience, where applicable.

Personal Attributes
The successful candidate will be:

• Risk-focused - able to understand the difference between identifying a risk and actually managing it.
• Influential - capable of challenging and influencing designers, engineers, contractors and senior stakeholders.
• Practical - able to translate risk assessments into realistic and effective controls.
• Collaborative - comfortable operating across design, engineering, construction and project-management teams.
• Proactive - anticipating risks before they become incidents or project constraints.
• Decisive - willing to intervene and escalate where risk is not being adequately controlled.
• Commercially aware - understanding how effective risk management supports safe, efficient and deliverable project outcomes.

Core Success Measure
Success in this role will be demonstrated by the ability to embed HSE risk management into project decision-making from design through construction, ensuring that significant risks are identified early, properly understood, owned by the appropriate stakeholders and reduced to an acceptable level before work proceeds.