Director, Health & Safety

DSV•Lancaster, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Director, Health & Safety – NASA Region is the senior regional leader accountable for implementation, governance, and performance of the Health & Safety function across DSV’s in-scope Contract Logistics and Data Centre operations throughout North and South America. The role is based in the DFW area and reports to the Global Director of HSSE, Quality & Compliance, with a dotted line as described in the posting. It translates global Health & Safety strategy, management systems, and customer requirements into consistent regional execution while ensuring compliance with applicable federal, state, provincial, and local legislation. The Director leads and develops the regional Health & Safety team, including Regional Safety Managers, and establishes clear accountabilities, performance expectations, and consistent ways of working across countries, sites, and operational portfolios. The position owns regional governance, performance monitoring, operational risk oversight, incident escalation, investigation assurance, audits, and corrective-action effectiveness. It provides authoritative leadership to regional and site operations, challenges unsafe practices, escalates material risks, and ensures appropriate controls are implemented. As the senior regional Health & Safety representative, the role works closely with regional business leadership, site management, the Global Director of HSSE, Quality & Compliance, and customer Health & Safety leadership to maintain regulatory compliance, meet contractual requirements, strengthen safety culture, and deliver sustained improvements in operational safety performance. The Director sets regional priorities within delegated authority, can invoke stop-work or stop-task escalation in applicable circumstances, and provides regional performance reporting and improvement plans.

Requirements

Degree in Occupational Health & Safety, Safety Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Health, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant professional education and experience where accepted by DSV.
Recognised professional Health & Safety qualification appropriate to the role and local requirements.
Typically 10+ years of progressive Health & Safety experience, including substantial leadership responsibility in complex operational environments.
Experience leading a multi-site Health & Safety function across multiple countries, states, or jurisdictions.
Experience directly managing, developing, and holding other Health & Safety professionals accountable for performance.
Experience in logistics, warehousing, distribution, supply chain, manufacturing, data centres, or comparable high-risk operational environments.
Strong working knowledge of applicable US federal and state requirements and, where relevant, Canadian, Latin American, and other regional legal requirements.
Experience with incident escalation, investigation assurance, root-cause analysis, corrective-action management, and lessons learned.
Experience managing customer audit programmes, presenting to senior customer stakeholders, and delivering against customer-specific requirements.
Experience implementing and assuring Health & Safety management systems, ideally aligned with ISO 45001 principles.
Experience supporting new site launches, new business implementations, operational change, and risk-based assurance programmes.

Nice To Haves

Additional qualifications or training in incident investigation, auditing, risk management, or management systems.
Experience implementing and assuring Health & Safety management systems aligned with ISO 45001 principles.

Responsibilities

Lead implementation of global Health & Safety strategy, policies, standards, and mandatory programmes throughout the NASA Region; develop and execute an aligned regional plan and own the regional governance framework.
Set expectations and verify consistent execution across regional and site teams; advise and challenge business and operational leaders on risks, compliance gaps, and safety performance; represent the region in global governance and customer or business reviews.
Directly manage, coach, and develop Regional Safety Managers; set objectives and performance expectations, conduct reviews and meetings, monitor delivery, address underperformance, and manage team capability, capacity, recruitment, onboarding, talent development, and succession planning.
Ensure effective implementation of Health & Safety policies and programmes; oversee risk assessments and improvement initiatives, verify critical controls, review risks from new business and operational changes, and ensure appropriate pre-start-up safety reviews and operational readiness assessments.
Oversee controls for material handling equipment, pedestrian and vehicle segregation, dock safety, lifting and movement of heavy equipment or server racks, contractor activities, permit-to-work interfaces, and other relevant high-risk tasks.
Conduct or oversee risk-based site visits, promote hazard identification and near-miss reporting, and ensure findings and control gaps are addressed.
Ensure timely reporting and escalation of incidents and other reportable events; oversee classification, notification, investigation, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and lessons learned; lead or oversee significant and high-potential incident investigations.
Monitor incident trends and recurrence, develop regional prevention plans, and support regional responses to serious incidents and emergencies, including executive and customer updates.
Develop and maintain a risk-based regional audit, inspection, and assurance programme; conduct or oversee audits and compliance reviews; coordinate readiness for customer audits and regulatory inspections; and oversee legal and other compliance obligations.
Verify management-system and customer-standard implementation; monitor corrective-action plans, challenge overdue or ineffective actions, and address systemic weaknesses across sites.
Serve as the senior regional Health & Safety interface for designated key customers; ensure customer requirements and contractual commitments are implemented, participate in customer governance and reviews, provide reports and presentations, and coordinate responses to customer findings.
Identify training and competency needs; maintain training matrices and verification processes; ensure onboarding and induction address applicable requirements; coach leaders and promote worker consultation, engagement, proactive reporting, and sharing of effective practices.
Verify site emergency plans, roles, contacts, and arrangements; oversee drills and exercises; provide Health & Safety leadership during significant incidents and emergencies; and support crisis management and business continuity.
Own the regional Health & Safety scorecard; monitor leading and lagging indicators; prepare regular reports, dashboards, and presentations; agree and track improvement objectives; and verify that actions result in sustained performance improvement.
Set regional Health & Safety priorities and direct Regional Safety Managers within delegated authority; require corrective action and evidence of effectiveness; escalate material risks and non-compliance; and recommend resources, operational changes, risk controls, readiness, and work resumption decisions.