Health, Safety & Environment Manager - Hawke's Bay Airport

Overview

This position is ideal for experienced leaders in Health, Safety & Environment management looking to grow their careers within operational settings. Hawke’s Bay Airport is a vital regional gateway that maintains regional connectivity. Ensuring this critical infrastructure remains safe, compliant, and environmentally sustainable is essential for all its stakeholders.

Role Context

The airport is a fast-paced and highly regulated environment where operational excellence, safety, sustainability, and relationship management are crucial. This newly established role blends two significant areas: health and safety across airport operations, and environmental stewardship overseeing management of land, water, and biodiversity.

Key Responsibilities

Reporting directly to the CEO, you will ensure the airport operates with full compliance to regulatory and environmental standards as well as industry best practices. A strong emphasis on operational risk management and ongoing improvements will be core to your role. You will lead in cultivating a positive safety culture, enhancing organisational capabilities, and provide both strategic and operational oversight over comprehensive health, safety, and environmental initiatives, including noise control, waste management, emission reductions, water management, and stewardship of biodiversity, wetlands, and land management projects.

Team and Leadership

You will oversee a small, highly committed team. This role requires a blend of hands-on involvement and strategic leadership, spanning responsibilities from managing incidents and risks to producing governance-level analyses and representing the airport at industry forums and events. There is significant opportunity to develop leadership skills through broad exposure across operational, strategic, and leadership responsibilities.

Candidate Profile

The successful candidate will demonstrate strong interpersonal skills, capable of engaging and influencing a broad spectrum of stakeholders including frontline staff, executive leadership, and Board members. Experience in leading health, safety, environmental, and risk management within complex, regulated sectors is essential. While experience in aviation, transport, infrastructure, or utility sectors is advantageous, it is not mandatory.

Opportunity

This role offers the chance to lead dual portfolios in health and safety and environmental management within a forward-looking organisation. Additionally, it provides the unique opportunity to safeguard and shape the future of one of Hawke's Bay's most important infrastructure assets.

Contact Information

For further details or confidential inquiries, contact Rachel Cornwall or Haylee Foskett at Populous People at 06 875 8446.