Construction Safety Officer Job Description, Duties, and Responsibilities

This post presents exhaustive information on the construction safety officer job description, including the main duties, tasks, and responsibilities they typically carry out.

It also provides the major requirements that candidates for the construction safety officer role are usually asked to satisfy to be qualified for hiring.

What Does a Construction Safety Officer Do?

The primary responsibility of a construction safety officer is to ensure all the workers at the construction site are working in a safe environment and are following all correct safety procedures.

The construction safety officer job description commonly entail collaborating with contractors in locating sources of potential hazards on project sites, including toxic materials, potential electrocution, and structural threats to human life, and finding ways to reduce or completely eliminate such hazardous threat from the sites.

Safety officers spend a lot of their time on or around job construction sites to ensure safety. They must be knowledgeable and abide by all relevant safety policy and procedures.

Their other roles might involve ensuring things are safe at the job site, conducting safety audits and inspections on the site

Their work description also involves developing, enforcing, and implementing policies that reduce the risk of accidents and any other tasks assigned by their organizations.

Construction Safety Officer Job Description Example/Sample/Template

Construction safety officers perform various functions to ensure a safe environment for workers at a project site.

The major tasks, duties, and responsibilities construction safety officers perform are shown in the job description example below:

• Conduct daily environmental and safety audits
• Inspect and examine all health and safety related complaints, workplace accidents, outbreaks of diseases, the spill of hazardous toxins or poison
• Search for physical, biological, and chemical workplace hazards
• Investigate the construction site to ascertain equipment, production, and material processes do not pose a safety or health hazard to employees, work guests, and the general public
• Create, evaluate, and implement health and safety programs and strategies
• Work closely with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
• Write daily safety and health reports or injury logs and ensure they are completed and submitted to relevant government agencies
• Train and advice employers and all relevant stakeholders on issues of workplace safety and environmental protection
• Creating different frameworks that will reduce accidents and improve workplace safety
• Verify the adequacy and safety of all work proposed tools and equipment
• Review and approve all subcontractors’ safety plans
• Train and run drills and exercise with workers on how to manage an emergency situation.

Requirements – Skills, Abilities, and Knowledge – for Construction Safety Officer Role

If you are seeking to work as a construction safety officer, some firms, especially the large companies, may require that you to have a college degree.

However, if you are applying to small to medium scale construction companies, you might not be expected to have a college degree if you have relevant construction work experience.

Here are additional requirements most firms hiring for the position of construction safety officers commonly set:

• Minimum of two years’ experience in construction safety
• Ability to communicate excellently in both oral and written format
• Strong listening skills to be able to get valuable information from employees
• Profound knowledge of industry standards and regulations (OSHA)
• Good organizational and record-keeping abilities – the ability to maintain good record of all safety-related activities
• Ability to climb heights using ladders or scaffolding. A significant amount of construction works are done at heights above ground level which requires the safety officer to be able to access the work to evaluate it
• Profound knowledge of company project work. This will assist the construction safety officer to design and implement effective safety solutions
• Good team player, Self-confident, motivated, and independent individual
• OSHA 10 and 30-hour certification and OSHA OTI Certification are added advantage.

Conclusion

If you are an employer needing to recruit for the construction safety officer position in your company, you will need to publish a detailed description of the role to be able to attract the best qualified candidates.

The sample job description and the entire content of this post can assist you to easily and quickly create a comprehensive description of the duties and responsibilities you require prospective hires to perform on the job.

And if you are interested in the construction safety management career, this article will also be useful to you.

You will learn what you need to know about the roles and functions of a safety officer in the construction industry, which will help you make informed decisions about the career.