Overview
Gilbane Building Company is seeking a Project Safety Director to provide senior health, safety, and wellbeing leadership for a large, complex construction project in Clay, New York.
This highly visible role requires more than technical safety expertise. The Project Safety Director will serve as a trusted advisor to project leadership, the client, trade partners, and the workforce, driving clear expectations around planning, risk management, accountability, and field execution.
The ideal candidate will have demonstrated experience leading safety on large, complex construction projects and partnering with highly engaged clients with rigorous safety, reporting, documentation, and operational requirements. This leader must be equally effective in executive client meetings, project planning sessions, and the field, engaging directly with superintendents, trade partners, forepersons, and craft workers.
Using Gilbane’s R3 approach: Recognize, Respond, Respect, the Project Safety Director will translate safety expectations into consistent, disciplined project execution throughout the project lifecycle.
Responsibilities
Project Safety Leadership
- Serve as the senior health and safety leader for the project, providing strategic direction and maintaining a visible and influential leadership presence with Gilbane, the client, trade partners, and workforce.
- Partner directly with the Project Executive, Project Manager, Superintendent, and other project leaders to integrate health and safety into project planning, procurement, scheduling, logistics, execution, commissioning, and closeout.
- Establish clear expectations for project leadership and trade partners while creating an environment in which health and safety is viewed as an operational responsibility, not solely the responsibility of the Safety team.
- Model strong field leadership through consistent presence, engagement, coaching, and intervention.
- Build credibility with field leadership and the workforce by demonstrating strong construction knowledge, practical judgment, and the ability to distinguish between administrative compliance and meaningful risk reduction.
Client Leadership & Relationship Management
- Serve as Gilbane's principal project-level health and safety representative with the client and other key external stakeholders.
- Develop productive working relationships with highly engaged, sophisticated clients, including organizations with safety programs, procedures, reporting requirements, and expectations that may extend beyond Gilbane's standard requirements.
- Navigate differing Gilbane, client, contractual, and regulatory requirements and work collaboratively with project leadership to establish clear, practical, and executable expectations.
- Demonstrate the confidence and executive presence necessary to challenge expectations constructively, resolve disagreements professionally, and protect Gilbane's interests without compromising health and safety.
- Anticipate client concerns and emerging issues and address them proactively before they escalate into project-level conflicts.
- Present project safety performance, critical risks, incidents, trends, corrective actions, and improvement strategies to senior Gilbane and client leadership.
- Maintain credibility during difficult conversations and high-pressure situations, including significant incidents, regulatory interactions, client escalations, schedule pressure, and disagreements regarding acceptable risk.
Risk Management & Operational Execution
- Lead implementation and execution of Gilbane's project-specific Health and Safety Plan and applicable client requirements.
- Lead the project's application of R3, Recognize, Respond, Respect, with particular emphasis on identifying critical risks, establishing effective controls, and verifying those controls before and during work. Gilbane's current framework specifically places R3 throughout the project lifecycle.
- Ensure significant health and safety risks are identified early enough to influence means and methods, logistics, procurement, sequencing, scheduling, and trade partner planning, rather than relying primarily on field correction after work begins.
- Maintain particular focus on high-energy and serious-injury-and-fatality potential exposures and the effectiveness of Direct Controls.
- Lead and/or oversee critical-risk planning, High-Energy Control Assessments (HECAs), High-Energy Control Standards (HECS), pre-task planning, inspections, and field verification.
- Evaluate changing conditions, non-routine work, rework, sequencing changes, and emerging project risks, ensuring controls are reevaluated when conditions change.
- Work directly with project operations and trade partners when unacceptable risk is identified and ensure appropriate corrective action is implemented before affected work proceeds.
Planning, Preconstruction & Trade Partner Integration
- Participate actively in preconstruction, procurement, constructability, logistics, schedule, and work-planning discussions to identify risk before it enters field operations.
- Review scopes of work and trade partner safety qualifications and provide input regarding significant or unusual project risks.
- Partner with Purchasing and project leadership to ensure appropriate health and safety requirements are incorporated into trade partner expectations and agreements.
- Establish clear safety expectations with trade partners before mobilization, including staffing, planning, training, documentation, critical-risk controls, and field leadership expectations.
- Engage directly with trade partner executives and senior operations leadership when project performance or risk requires leadership-level intervention.
- Verify that project planning remains aligned with actual field execution and intervene where a gap exists between the planned controls and work being performed.
Performance, Assurance & Continuous Improvement
- Establish and maintain a disciplined system of project inspections, verification activities, audits, observations, and performance reviews.
- Analyze leading and lagging indicators, inspection results, critical-control performance, incidents, corrective actions, and emerging trends to identify areas requiring intervention.
- Move beyond reporting metrics by translating information into specific operational actions for project leadership and trade partners.
- Regularly communicate project health and safety performance, significant exposures, emerging risks, and improvement priorities to project and client leadership.
- Lead appropriate incident reviews and ensure corrective actions address underlying system and operational conditions, not simply immediate causes.
- Promote organizational learning by identifying lessons that should be incorporated into future planning and operations.
Team Leadership & Development
- Lead, mentor, develop, and hold accountable the project's health and safety professionals.
- Establish clear roles, responsibilities, expectations, and priorities for project Safety team members.
- Evaluate project safety staffing needs as the project evolves and recommend adjustments based on workforce, project risk, scope, schedule, complexity, and contractual requirements. Gilbane's current project framework similarly connects project and trade-contractor safety staffing to workforce, risk, scope, and contract requirements.
- Develop Safety team members into effective leaders, coaches, and operational partners, not solely compliance specialists.
- Coach project superintendents, managers, engineers, and trade partner leadership in effective risk recognition, planning, intervention, and accountability.
- Create an environment where employees and trade partners are expected and empowered to raise concerns, stop work when appropriate, and challenge conditions that create unacceptable risk.
Regulatory & Contractual Compliance
- Ensure project compliance with applicable Federal, State, and Local health and safety regulations, Gilbane requirements, contractual requirements, and applicable client standards.
- Maintain current knowledge of regulatory developments and industry practices affecting project operations.
- Manage interactions with OSHA and other regulatory authorities in coordination with appropriate Gilbane leadership.
- Support regulatory inspections, investigations, documentation, corrective actions, and associated project responses.
- Identify conflicts or gaps between regulatory, owner, Gilbane, and trade contractor requirements and work with leadership to establish an appropriate path forward.
Qualifications
EXPERIENCE/EDUCATION
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Safety, Occupational Health, Construction Management, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant construction safety leadership experience.
- 10+ years of progressive construction safety experience, including significant responsibility on large or complex projects.
- Demonstrated experience leading health and safety on large-scale construction projects with significant operational complexity.
- Demonstrated experience successfully managing relationships with demanding or highly involved clients, including organizations with mature internal safety organizations and project-specific requirements.
- Demonstrated ability to influence Project Executives, Superintendents, Project Managers, client representatives, trade partner executives, and field supervision.
- Strong working knowledge of applicable OSHA construction standards and construction risk-management principles.
- Demonstrated experience with significant construction hazards including, as applicable, cranes and lifting operations, excavation and trenching, electrical and hazardous energy, working at heights, mobile equipment, material handling, temporary structures, and other high-energy work.
- Demonstrated ability to lead effectively during high-pressure situations including serious incidents, client escalations, regulatory activity, and significant operational risk.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively from craft-level conversations through executive presentations.
Preferred
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP).
- Construction Health and Safety Technician (CHST).
- OSHA 30-Hour Construction.
