EHS Manager

Job Description

Job Description

Job Summary
Client manufactures energetic nitrocellulose-based products where prevention of energetic material ignition is a fundamental operating priority. The Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Manager is the site leader responsible for continuously improving the safety systems that protect employees, the community, and the business through hands-on ownership, visible leadership, disciplined follow-through, and sustained culture change.

Client is striving toward a goal of zero energetic material ignitions. Achieving this requires more than regulatory compliance. It requires strong process safety, industrial safety, environmental stewardship, rigorous change management, and a culture in which employees and leaders understand hazards, follow standards, speak up, stop work when necessary, and take personal ownership for safe execution.

The EH&S Manager partners closely with Production, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, Human Resources, Facilities, Security, Materials, Planning, and Program leadership to embed safety into how work is designed and performed. Client believes that safer, more stable, and better-controlled processes improve quality, reliability, productivity, schedule performance, and employee engagement. This leader is expected to help the organization demonstrate that connection through measurable results.

Primary Responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the site EH&S management system and annual safety strategy, with progress toward zero energetic material ignitions as a primary operating objective.
• Lead, coach, and develop the Safety and Environmental team; establish clear expectations, build technical and leadership capability, and hold the function accountable for timely, high-quality execution.
• Maintain a strong and visible presence on the manufacturing floor, routinely observing high-risk work, engaging supervisors and employees, verifying that critical controls are effective, and ensuring gaps are corrected promptly.
• Lead safety culture and change-management efforts so that leaders and employees understand hazards, follow standards, exercise stop-work authority, report concerns, learn from events, and take ownership for safe execution.
• Ensure compliance with applicable federal, state, local, Department of Defense, ATF, OSHA/Cal/OSHA, EPA, DOT, NFPA, and other safety and environmental requirements affecting the site.
• Lead applicable Process Safety Management and energetic-material safety systems, including Process Hazard Analyses (PHAs), Management of Change (MOC), pre-startup safety reviews, Quantity-Distance controls, safe storage and handling, and ignition-source/static-control requirements.
• Ensure EH&S requirements are incorporated before implementation of new products, materials, equipment, automation, capital projects, process changes, production restarts, and other changes that can alter site risk.
• Own and continuously improve critical high-risk work-control systems, including lockout/tagout, confined-space entry, hot work, machine safety, electrical safety, and other permit or control systems applicable to site operations.
• Lead root-cause investigations for injuries, near misses, fires, energetic-material ignitions, environmental events, and significant unsafe conditions; ensure corrective actions address systemic causes and are verified for sustained effectiveness.
• Own industrial hygiene and occupational-health systems, including applicable exposure monitoring, lead controls, respiratory protection, hearing conservation, PPE, ergonomics, medical surveillance, and partnership with Human Resources on compliant return-to-work processes.
• Own the site environmental compliance management system, including applicable hazardous-waste, air, wastewater, stormwater, spill-prevention, permitting, reporting, inspection, and recordkeeping requirements.
• Lead emergency preparedness and response systems, including fire, spill, medical, rescue, evacuation, drills, and coordination with local emergency-response organizations.
• Use a disciplined risk-management process to prioritize EH&S resources and improvement activity toward the site’s highest-consequence hazards and recurring risk exposures.
• Partner with Production, Engineering, Maintenance, and Quality to eliminate or engineer out hazards, improve process stability, and design safer processes rather than relying primarily on administrative controls or PPE.
• Integrate safety into daily management systems, standard work, leader standard work, visual management, process reviews, and continuous-improvement activity so safety is managed as part of operational excellence.
• Track and communicate leading and lagging safety and environmental indicators, trends, significant risks, corrective-action status, and resource needs to site leadership with clear recommendations.
• Serve as the primary site contact for regulatory inspections and safety/environmental agency interactions; ensure findings and commitments are resolved completely and on time.
• Manage EH&S resources, outside technical support, and departmental priorities in a manner that improves risk reduction, responsiveness, and the effectiveness of the site safety system.
• Maintain the highest ethical standards, even when challenged from above.
• Understand and live by client’s ethics and business conduct policies.

Key Performance Expectations

• Demonstrate sustained progress toward zero energetic material ignitions, including elimination of repeat ignition mechanisms and timely closure of high-consequence corrective actions.
• Reduce serious safety risk and injury exposure through prevention, stronger controls, improved standards, and leader/employee engagement rather than through under-reporting or administrative classification.
• Maintain effective PHA, MOC, pre-startup review, high-risk-work, industrial-hygiene, environmental, and emergency-response systems with timely and sustained corrective-action closure.
• Achieve strong regulatory and environmental-compliance performance and prevent repeat findings or recurring systemic deficiencies.
• Build a stronger safety culture demonstrated by visible leadership, employee participation, stop-work ownership, learning from near misses, and disciplined follow-through by supervisors and managers.
• Demonstrate that safety-system improvements improve process stability and support better quality, reliability, productivity, and production performance while reducing operational risk.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Safety, Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Industrial Hygiene, or a related technical discipline; equivalent advanced education and directly relevant experience may be considered where appropriate.
• Minimum of 7 years of progressive EH&S experience in industrial manufacturing, including leadership responsibility; experience in a high-hazard manufacturing environment is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience leading safety-culture change, change management, and measurable improvement of safety systems through hands-on leadership.
• Strong working knowledge of process safety, PHA, MOC, incident investigation/root-cause analysis, industrial safety, environmental compliance, and risk management.
• Excellent communication, coaching, and people-development skills with the ability to influence Production, Engineering, Maintenance, Quality, and senior leadership.
• Highly desired: experience in an energetics-related field and familiarity with applicable Department of Defense explosives-safety requirements, including DoD 4145.26, and process-safety practices for explosives and pyrotechnics manufacturing.
• Professional certification such as CSP, CIH, CHMM, or equivalent is preferred but not required.
• Must be dependable, responsible, accurate, action-oriented, and comfortable spending significant time in the manufacturing environment across shifts as needed.

Client Competencies
Demonstrate the client competencies expected of a senior leader, including timely and high-quality decisions, managerial courage, delegation, development of direct reports, process management, change leadership, business acumen, learning agility, planning, priority setting, conflict management, cross-functional influence, and a relentless drive for results.

Education & Professional Work Experience Requirements

• Must be authorized to work in the U.S.
• To conform to U.S. export control regulations, applicant should be eligible for any required authorization from the U.S. Government.

Work Hours
4/10 workweek; this leadership role requires flexibility to support all operating shifts, high-risk work, regulatory activity, and emergency response as business needs require.

Exciting opportunity securing new business for electric motors, starter generators, and related technologies within our current and future aerospace and defense industries.

Company Description

Exciting opportunity securing new business for electric motors, starter generators, and related technologies within our current and future aerospace and defense industries.