Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Job Description, Key Duties and Responsibilities

Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Job Description, Key Duties and Responsibilities

This post provides complete information on the job description of an environmental health and safety engineer, to help you understand the duties, tasks, and responsibilities they are commonly expected to perform.

It also shows the major requirements recruiters commonly expect individuals seeking the environmental health and safety engineering job to fulfill to be hired.

Please, continue reading to increase your knowledge of the environmental health and safety engineering career:

What Does an Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Do?

Environmental health and safety engineers are responsible for facilitating environmental safety, health and strategy in an organization and also ensure compliance with all Federal, State, and Local SHE policies and standards relevant to the organization.

The environmental health and safety engineer work description requires them to lead and implement projects that help their site, plant, or factory to achieve its EHS goals.

They also function as a technical resource in developing/revising training programs and providing expertise on all SHE-related issues within the operations.

They also offer guidance to site team on risk assessment and risk prediction to mitigate risk of task-based activities as well as facilitate safety team meetings, problem solving teams/meetings and EHS planning meetings within the organization.

They actively contribute to establishing company-wide best practices and standards for EHS and help champion a culture that promote environmental health and safety focusing on leading indicators that can deliver world class EHS culture.

The environmental health and safety engineer job description also involves assessing operations and initiating programs to ensure compliance with applicable EHS policies, regulations, principles, and practices.

It also entails providing support in the identification, analysis, and control of occupational hazards requiring the application of engineering knowledge, skill, and abilities.

Environmental health and safety engineers are also responsible for the analysis of proposed occupational safety policies, guidelines, and standards to establish their consistency with accepted engineering principles and practices and recommend technical changes as required.

They coordinate and audit the plant/factory incident investigation process to identify, eradicate or control hazardous conditions resulting from human error, and equipment and machine operations which may lead to human injury and property or product damage.

They also seek to identify pre-injury trends during audits, verify compliance with established safety/health procedures, and recommend appropriate actions.

After performing audits, the environmental health and safety engineer is also responsible for a follow-up on suggested corrective actions, and must also use injury exposure and incidents as parameters to measure progress toward the attainment of factory/plant safety goals.

Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Job Description Example/Sample/Template

The core responsibility of the Environmental health and safety (EHS) engineers is to minimize a variety of risks to their companies.

They carry out audits to identify these risks, ascertain ways to mitigate them, and also establish their environmental impacts using both observations and tests.

The specific tasks, duties, and responsibilities of an environmental health and safety engineer are listed in the job description sample below:

• Responsible for managing and eradicating EHS operational risks and hazards to ensure an accident/ hazard free/echo friendly work environment
• Responsible for utilizing data to lessen environmental footprint and increase sustainability
• Ensure At-risk-behaviors and At-risk-conditions are addressed
• Track all corrective measures to ensure they are effective and completed speedily
• Provide support in managing the EHS Rewards and Recognition Program
• Responsible for developing the EHS annual site budget to control fixed and variable cost expenditures
• Work together with Line Managers/supervisors when coordinating investigation of incidents and injuries to achieve accurate and timely completion
• Provide feedback on operational safety and environmental performance regularly. Support the SHE Pillars, associated sub-committees
• Support the company’s framework for site and employee safety teams and provide instruction and training to supervisors on EHS framework initiatives
• Provide EHS reports such as OSHA, RCRA, SARA, and EPA reports per scheduled deadlines.

Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Job Description for Resume

If you are writing a new resume as one who has worked before as an environmental health and safety engineer or are currently working in that position, you can create the professional experience section of the resume by adopting the job description example above.

You can apply the duties and responsibilities given for the environmental health and safety engineer position above in describing your work experience in your resume.

Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Requirements – Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities for Career Success

If you are seeking the job of an environmental health and safety engineer, here are major requirements most employers may expect you to meet to be hired:

• Education: A minimum of B.S. /B.A. degree in Engineering, Environmental, or Natural Sciences, or in other related technical discipline
• Knowledge: Employers seek engineers with at least 2-5 years of experience in a manufacturing plant EHS coordination level Safety; familiarity with accident investigation and prevention; applied ergonomics expertise, and in-depth understanding of EPA and OSHA regulations. It is also vital that they have a good understanding of root cause analysis for investigation of incidents
• Team building/relationship building skills: An environmental health and safety engineer must have people skills to establish relationships with people at all levels in the organization. It is important that they can stimulate others to take action and work towards the EHS goals of the organization
• Result-orientation: One of the responsibilities of an EHS engineer is to conduct audits and incidents investigations. But it is not enough to identify the root cause of problems; they must so have a sense of urgency to follow-up on corrective measures to implementation and drives on the right issues
• Communication skills: EHS engineers also need exceptional verbal and written communication skills to successfully conduct trainings, facilitate team meetings, update people on safety-related issues, and provide relevant reports
• Computer skills: They also require proficient computer skills, especially in applications such as Excel, databases, Word, Lotus Notes, and web-based systems.

Environmental Health and Safety Engineer Salary

The average salary for an Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Engineer in the United States fall in the range $51,000-$98,000. But the majority of people within this occupation earn around $67,978 annually.

Conclusion

If you are a recruiter or HR manager hiring for the environmental health and safety engineering position, you can write the perfect description of the role in your organization by applying the sample job description given above as a template.

You will also find this post useful in learning about the environmental health and safety engineer functions if you are interested in starting a career in that field.