Supervisor Safety Lead requirements
These roles are intended to provide front-line safety leadership support. They are not intended to replace operational supervision, but to strengthen it.
Suitable candidates may come from either a construction supervision background with strong safety competence, or from a safety background with strong operational site experience.
Minimum qualifications and experience:
- NEBOSH Construction Certificate, NEBOSH General Certificate or equivalent safety qualification preferred.
- Where NEBOSH is not held, candidates must hold a relevant construction supervisory qualification, such as NVQ Level 3 or Level 4 in Occupational Work Supervision, Construction Site Supervision or equivalent.
- CSCS Gold Supervisor card, Black Manager card or equivalent recognised construction supervisor/manager card.
- Strong previous experience working in a live construction supervisory role, ideally within major infrastructure, heavy civils, tunnelling, structures or lifting.
- Strong understanding of daily briefings, task briefings, POWRA, RAMS, permits and point-of-work control.
- Experience working closely with supervisors, general foremen, works managers and site delivery teams.
- Experience challenging unsafe work, poor behaviours and weak control measures in a live site environment.
- Strong IT skills, including basic reporting, action tracking and Microsoft Office.
Role requirements:
- Work closely with supervisors, general foremen and works managers at the point of work.
- Support daily briefings, task briefings and POWRA quality.
- Challenge poor standards and unsafe behaviours in a constructive but firm way.
- Support stop work decisions where controls are not in place or the work has changed.
- Check that teams understand the task, the controls, the permits and the emergency arrangements.
- Identify interface risks between trades, plant, lifting operations, access routes and adjacent works.
- Coach supervisors and gangs on setting people to work, rather than simply reporting issues.
- Escalate weak signals, repeated poor practice and unresolved actions.
- Maintain simple, clear records of observations, interventions and follow-up actions.
Candidate behaviours
We are not looking for people who simply walk around with a clipboard. We need credible, practical and confident individuals who can work with delivery teams, influence behaviours and help improve standards quickly.
The right candidates will be:
- Visible and proactive.
- Confident but not confrontational.
- Practical and delivery-aware.
- Clear and concise in their reporting.
- Comfortable challenging supervisors, managers and subcontractors where required.
- Able to work at pace without losing control of detail.
- Focused on improving standards, not just recording non-compliance.