In the past I have headed up one of the largest blue chip tyre manufacturers and retailers in the UK. My remit at Goodyear Dunlop included all areas of the company where I had overall responsibility for both Safety and the Environment.
Originally in 1988 I started in the manufacturing environment, building tyres at the giant Goodyear plant in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. I moved into health and safety in 2000 and quickly found I had discovered my "calling" moving quickly through the ranks to the top job in the UK in about five years. This gave me the opportunity to begin to implement my vision of overall risk reduction through both behavioural and workplace change. The process begins with moving Health and Safety up the agenda and giving it a level importance equal to that of profit and loss. Crucial to the change within a work place has to be an overall objective that all must work towards. I believe workplace risk reduction has to be tangible to the work force and be driven by them, this enables the process of behavioural change to begin, with the full backing of all concerned to tackle some of the behaviours we see and ignore daily. Using this technique has in my experience produced astonishing results within very challenging areas, and has undoubtley prevented injuries and very possibly deaths.
I have experienced nearly all aspects of health and safety including guarding, noise monitoring, auditing etc etc. But have enjoyed moving from a reactive Health and Safety Management system to a proactive one probably the most. My understanding and support for Occupational Health and its merits within the workplace cannot be underestimated and have witnessed some of the life changing impacts it can have on an individual level and how it lowers absence rates over the whole business.
Another involvement of mine has been to work with some great organisations and industry bodies for accident prevention, including the British Tyre Manufacturers Association and panels to review HSE documentation such as HSG 62 and its replacement HSG 261.
Despite all of the above successes it still gives me great satisfaction to work with individuals and groups and coach them into a better understanding of health and safety within their workplace. It still remains my primary objective to work in proactive health and safety environments to reduce risk to both the employees and business. I look forward to working with you.
