Health & Safety Lead

Role overview

The Health & Safety Lead will be based onsite in County Cork and will own the planning, coordination, and delivery of health and safety activities across the site from early preparation through to completion. The role covers the full lifecycle of the workstream, including design, planning, installation, integration, commissioning, performance testing, and readiness for operations, while ensuring compliance with all relevant health and safety legislation, regulations, and standards.

Health & safety planning, design, and compliance

• Identify risks, impacts, and site requirements at an early stage, and assess the technical and commercial practicality of preventative controls.
• Make sure tender documentation reflects all internal and external health and safety standards.
• Work with regulatory authorities to maintain compliance across the site.
• Put environmental, health, and safety policies, procedures, and programmes into practice.
• Track regulatory changes and update site processes accordingly.
• Contribute to the Pre-Start-up Safety Review (PSSR) and coordinate the follow-up postmortem meeting.
• Ensure all site safety records, maps, and related documentation are properly secured and maintained.
• Evaluate health and safety capital expenditure (CAPEX).

Audits, inspections, and reporting

• Keep records accurate, complete, and ready for audit at all times.
• Prepare and submit environmental reporting as required.
• Carry out risk assessments, review and approve prevention plans, and prepare the coordination plan.
• Develop, communicate, and maintain health and safety documentation, procedures, and instructions.
• Conduct health and safety audits on the work site.
• Ensure all site access and entry activities comply fully with health and safety rules and procedures.

Site safety management, training, and culture

• Manage changes that materially affect health and safety.
• Create and deliver safety inductions and training, and support behaviour-based safety initiatives onsite.
• Record and investigate incidents and health and safety events.
• Provide environmental, health, and safety training to onsite staff.
• Encourage safe work habits and greater environmental awareness.
• Support safety committees and facilitate regular safety meetings.
• Design and implement corrective actions and preventative improvement plans.

Cross-functional collaboration

• Partner with Operations, Quality, R&I, Maintenance, and Supply Chain teams to ensure health and safety readiness for trials, changeovers, and operational transitions.

Operational readiness and decision support

• Develop or approve health and safety SOPs, training materials, and plans as needed.
• Provide clear progress updates, risk summaries, commissioning readiness status, and mitigation actions to the Project Director and leadership team.
• Support strategic and operational decisions with timely technical input and relevant data.

Experience and qualifications

The role requires a tertiary qualification in Occupational Health & Safety, Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering, or a closely related discipline. Candidates should bring more than 10 years of experience in construction health and safety leadership for projects above €50 million, along with supervision experience in manufacturing environments, ideally within food manufacturing. A strong working knowledge of local, national, and EU environmental, health, and safety regulations and compliance expectations is essential.

Skills and capabilities

Successful candidates will need strong leadership and influencing ability, with the confidence to coach across all levels and functions. A proactive mindset, strong risk awareness, excellent attention to detail, and disciplined record-keeping are also important. Technically, the role calls for proven greenfield site planning and design experience, exposure to regulators, involvement in audits or inspections, solid incident and trend analysis skills, and an added advantage if you have worked on sustainability or energy-related initiatives.

Additional information

This is an onsite full-time leadership position based in County Cork, Ireland. No salary, vacancy count, start date, or duration information was provided in the source.