r/SafetyProfessionals

I’ve only ever worked construction, but I wonder what manufacturing, government, bio, and mining is like!

Share your stories plz!

I am in my 7 th sem of bsc chemical engineering... I wanna do a masters in Heath and Safety, I want to start doing it from now what should I do and how ?

I’ve been HSE with my current company for about 8.5 years, but with the company over 13 years in different capacities, I’ve moved from advisor to supervisor to manager within the HSE department overseeing an HSE team of admin, advisors and coordinators. I was approached by an industry competitor offering me a position as a division HSE manager, initially the pay offered was more and looked to be less responsibility (so less stress) so it was appealing.
My company recently counter offered after I put in my notice for a corporate level position for more money. We are a smaller company and are more so would be establishing this corporate safety level so I don’t have a lot of frame work to go off of. I am open to that and love making things my own but wondering if anyone has guidance on either courses, or books or other information ideas that would help me to be able to bring more to the table for this move?

I was researching recently and was confused if that's really needed.

Answers from multiple countries would be appreciated. Gaps and limitations if any would be helpful too.

Sorry for the long read, just need some advice.

I’m looking for advice from safety professionals who have either made the jump into consulting full-time or have managed both worlds.

I’m currently a Safety Director for a general construction contractor in the south. It’s a good job with solid pay, benefits, and stability. I enjoy what I do and have built a good relationship with my employer.
On the side, I own a safety /staffing consulting company that’s been growing faster than I expected. We currently have an on-site contract where one of my safety professionals is already working full-time. The client now wants to add a second full-time safety professional to the same project.

This is where I’m stuck.

I could hire another consultant to fill that second position, which would allow me to continue working my W-2 job while making a profit from both consultants.

Or, I could leave my Director position and personally fill that second role myself. Financially, this would be much more lucrative because I wouldn’t be paying another consultant’s wages, which would dramatically increase cash flow and allow me to reinvest more money into growing the business. My thought is that having that additional capital could help me hire more people, pursue larger contracts, and scale the company much faster than I could while keeping my W-2 job.

The obvious downside is giving up the stability, benefits, and guaranteed paycheck that come with being a Safety Director.

For those of you who own consulting/ staffing businesses or have been in a similar position:

Would you have worked the second contract yourself or hired another consultant?

At what point did you know it was time to leave your W-2 job?

Did personally working contracts help you grow your business faster, or did it end up limiting your ability to focus on growth?
Looking back, what financial or business milestones made you confident enough to make the leap?

Thank you!

I filed an OSHA report on the company I formerly worked for (who was a contractor for a different company, and operated on their site) regarding managing acidic/corrosive drums with little safety equipment, no protocols for spills and chemical accidents in transport trucks/vans, and gave the information I could to OSHA. I have two questions:

1. Even though this was filed to my former employer, would the contractor also be affected? This is because they’re still on their facility, and perform services for them at their facility.
2. How would OSHA follow up?

How is anyone moving up in this industry!? I've been in construction safety for roughly 6 years now. Ive got OSHA 500 and CSP (several other smaller certs but the two "big" ones) My current company does not care in the slightest about actual safety and expect me to just clean up messes (figuratively, not literally) and keep up compliance documents. My direct supervisor has no safety experience or knowledge and only has the job because she's the owner's daughter. I've applied for probably 2 dozen jobs with 0 traction. Maybe because im not willing to travel anymore unless im getting a 6 figure salary. Im also not working 6-7 days a week for salary. Every job that has shown interest wants to pay $60k or less or has insane expectations for hours worked. Its disheartening that I might have to walk away from this career because I literally cannot afford to keep making $65k a year. Am I being unreasonable? Is $30/hr really where a fully credentialed safety professional tops out?

Didn’t see as much as what I thought would be on there, but glad I finally got this certification! (First attempt but I have wanted to get it for a while).

Primarily used pocket prep and attended the prep course at the ASSP safety conference, which helped a lot and came with it’s own study booklet with lots of practice questions. Watched a couple of the John Newquist videos here and there and made some of my own flashcards.

Oh boy, do I have a story to share with you...

Well, I was doing some remote troubleshooting with an on site tech today and he both entombed himself inside an industrial compactor and electrocuted himself with 480V 3-phase power. In the same call.

So, he calls me for tech support as the industrial compactor isn't working correctly. The call gets transferred over to me as I'm well familiarized with this type of equipment. We're going through a bunch of things trying to get it to work. At one point he goes to go into this compactor, puts his phone down, and walks into it. Now for the life of me, I don't know why he put the phone down for this, but he did. I hear the creak and slam of the door followed by him pounding on the walls of the machine and screaming. The door latched closed behind him, trapping him inside. I'm panicking, trying to pull up his main offices phone number to call them to get someone out there to save him. Thankfully, someone else heard him and rushed over there and let him out.

He gets back on the phone with me and is audibly shaken. Dude just keeps going "I could have died" over and over.

This however wasn't the end of the stupidity. Once he calms down and we continue, at one point we get it working, but the motor is running backwards. So, I tell him to swap the legs on the power. This brilliant man doesn't shut off the power. I hear AAAAAAA followed by a brief silence. I'm calling out for him, asking if he's alright, and thinking "fuck, this man just killed himself". He comes back and laughs saying oops, "I forgot to shut off the power".

WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU FORGOT TO SHUT OFF THE POWER?!?!

It's 480V 3-phase industrial power. This kills people. Instead of shutting it off at the discount and locking it out, this man had the bright idea to just grab the lines with his hands while they were live.

Thankfully he's fine. Thankfully. I swear he has a death wish.

After I got off the phone, I had to take a break before telling my boss. The amount this guy spiked my anxiety and blood pressure.

Edit: Because it keeps coming up, there's a few things I want to add

1. It was locked out prior to the shock. We had to turn it back on to test it.

2. He didn't secure the door open properly. He needed to go in it to check some mechanical components. I didn't know the door wasn't properly secured, I though it was.

3. there was no power to it when the door closed. He just locked himself in. Still a scary experience being locked inside equipment.

4. He did take a break after being locked in. He wanted to continue, and seemed like he was in a good head space to do so. I asked several times if he was sure.

5. He knew to lock it back out before touching lines. It had been locked our prior to us testing functionality. I can't control the man's actions.

My employer is in need of an arc flash study. Our facility has never done one and we have gotten 3 quotes. Two are approximately 40k and the other is 10k. The two are actual studies and the third is using the table method. My uppers are obviously interested in cost savings. Im trying to convince them that it is not the same thing and especially since we’ve never had a proper study we should do that. Any suggestions on how to win this argument?

Looking at getting into Occ Health & Safety Program at Western University because of the co-op component. Wanted to see if there's anyone who's in the program or who has completed the program -- pls feel free to reply or send me a dm!

Also I'm a registered/licensed practical nurse in Ontario and looking to get into health and safety as my second career, how can I start getting my foot in the door while I'm transitioning into the field? Would love to hear some suggestions and recommendations!

Hello EHS family,

I am reaching out for some help on the best way to rescue pallets stuck in our warehouse flow racking. This usually is caused by the cheap pallets our vendors are allowed to use with no pushback from product management. I have already exhausted the route of more robust pallets while getting nowhere so please do not recommend that as it will not happen.

Our flow racks are the track variety (not roller bars) and pallets consistently break from forklift abuse or just due to the weight of the material on the pallets. It is mainly rolls of a plastic film we use for our product that weighs anywhere from 1700-2500 lbs depending on the thickness of material.

Once a pallet breaks, the pallet gets hung up in the flow racking requiring rescue from our maintenance team. Due to the configuration of racking there are no ideal tie off spots and it is the biggest risk we currently have in our plant.

TIA for any comments or solutions!

Hey everyone,
After months of applying, interviewing, and trying to break into the safety field, I finally landed my first full-time Safety Professional position, and honestly I’m both excited and a little nervous.

A little about me:
27 years old
About 9 years of construction experience
OSHA 30/510 certified
EM 385-1-1 40 hr certified
First Aid/CPR/AED certified
Experience working on federal construction projects and around heavy equipment

I’ll be working on a large construction project where safety is a major focus.
I know having certifications and field experience is one thing, but actually being the safety guy is another. I don’t want to be the person everyone rolls their eyes at, but I also don’t want to be afraid to enforce the rules when something isn’t safe.

For those of you who’ve been doing this for years:
What are some things you wish someone had told you during your first few months?

What mistakes do new safety professionals commonly make?

How do you build credibility with craft workers and supervisors without coming across as arrogant or power-hungry?

What habits helped you become a better safety professional?

Are there any books, certifications, or skills I should start working toward now?

I’m genuinely excited about this opportunity and want to make the most of it. Any advice, stories, or lessons you’ve learned over the years would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I'm injured and can only work online. Am I dreaming to think I can get an entry level remote job with just a cert not crsp? From what I see, I don't think its possible. Hopefully I'm just unaware

Help any information is helpful so I have my bachelors in Occupational Health & Safety I been at Amazon as an Safety Specialist for 4 months it’s an Ok job but once I get my year In want to transfer out to blue Collar any jobs you guys know of that I can get into with my experience from Amazon? What job titles should I be looking for?

I have the 45001 and 45002 standard, ive also been thru the training and im certified.

Now im with an organization that wants to take all their old playbooks, etc. And turn everything into a full ISO SMS.

Ive got the basic steps down, but it would be so hopefully if I had another SMS to reference just to see an example of the structure and format, etc.

Please let me know if anyone has one or would be willing to help with a few questions.

I’m a new Safety professional and construction and management just got rid of buying pallets of water bottles for our workers. They provided water filling stations and water bottles to the guys but they don’t always come to the shop every morning so people are bringing water but running out on site. I’m just trying to come up with the best solution for a construction entity with either bringing back the water bottles that we just bring cases to the job and put them in coolers or does it make sense that each Foreman manages a water jug that’s filled with ice to have a water cooler on site. What is industry best practice?

I’m doing an audit of all our elevated surfaces, and noticed that we have a couple of tiny landing platforms on a silo. The way these landing platforms are constructed, IMO it would make the task of hooking/unhooking a harness more dangerous, and access is restricted to even put a gate. It’s worse for anyone who is a big back, I’m not sure you could even open the gate and physically get through it. Since there are cages on this setup it’s old school engineering, but I’ve been tasked with putting entry gates or chains on everything and I’m stumped. Are there any clarifications on this or specific guidance through ANSI maybe? Everything I’m finding seems to suggest it’s a requirement.