Director of HSE – Fabrication & Manufacturing

About Loenbro

Loenbro is a trusted, long-term construction lifecycle partner to thousands of customers across the U.S. Our market spans all industries and our service offerings include Critical Electrical, Mechanical & Structural, Soft Crafts, Inspection, Underground Maintenance and Installation, and Fabrication. Our expertise lies in simplifying the complex and establishing long-standing relationships with our partners. We have a national presence but a local approach—every customer benefits from our capabilities and our care.

At Loenbro, we don't just offer jobs—we build careers grounded in integrity, teamwork, excellence, and purpose. Join a team where your expertise is valued, your growth is supported, and your work helps expand the reach of the critical infrastructure that powers communities across the nation.

Job Summary

The Director of Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE) – Fabrication & Manufacturing provides strategic and operational HSE leadership across Loenbro's fabrication, manufacturing, and prefabrication network. Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing, this role is responsible for developing, implementing, and continuously improving a standardized, fit-for-purpose HSE management system that supports Loenbro's strategy to build a scalable, high-performing manufacturing organization.

The Director will work in close partnership with shop management, operations, quality, engineering, project teams, and Corporate HSE to establish practical standards that protect employees while supporting safe, efficient, disciplined, and repeatable manufacturing operations. This position is expected to be highly visible in the shops and to build credibility through engagement with the people performing and leading the work.

A critical responsibility of this position is partnering with the SVP of Manufacturing and operational leaders to foster a culture grounded in Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles. The Director will reinforce that people make mistakes, error is predictable, systems and organizational conditions influence behavior, learning is essential, and leadership response to failure matters.

Success requires strong technical HSE knowledge, operational credibility, systems thinking, and the ability to translate regulatory and industry requirements into practical standards that improve both safety and operational performance.

Essential Job Responsibilities

HSE Strategy & Leadership

- Develop and execute the Fabrication & Manufacturing HSE strategy in alignment with the overall business strategy, Loenbro requirements, and applicable regulatory obligations.

- Serve as the primary HSE advisor to the Senior Vice President of Manufacturing and the Fabrication & Manufacturing leadership team.

- Establish an HSE operating model capable of supporting a multi-site manufacturing organization, continued growth, new facilities, acquisitions, and increasingly complex end markets.

- Integrate HSE considerations into operational planning, facility design, equipment selection, production processes, productization, capacity expansion, and acquisition integration.

- Establish clear HSE expectations, accountabilities, governance, and performance measures across all Fabrication & Manufacturing facilities.

- Maintain strong alignment with Corporate HSE while ensuring requirements are practical and appropriately tailored to fabrication and manufacturing operations.

Standardization & Fit-for-Purpose Best Practices

- Lead the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of standardized Fabrication & Manufacturing HSE policies, procedures, standards, and work practices across the network.

- Assess existing facility practices, identify gaps and leading practices, and establish common standards while recognizing legitimate differences in operations, equipment, workforce, and risk.

- Develop practical standards for material handling; pipe storage and stacking; rigging and lifting; overhead cranes; welding, cutting and hot work; machine guarding; hazardous energy control; powered industrial trucks; electrical safety; compressed gases; industrial hygiene; PPE; chemical management; housekeeping; working at heights; emergency response; and contractor safety.

- Ensure standards meet applicable regulatory requirements and recognized industry practices while remaining understandable and executable at the shop-floor level.

- Partner with Operations, Engineering, Quality, and Supply Chain to incorporate HSE into shop layouts, equipment, tooling, material flow, workstations, production planning, and work methods.

- Establish a controlled process for issuing, communicating, training, auditing, and periodically reviewing F&M HSE standards.

Human & Organizational Performance (HOP)

- Partner with the SVP of Manufacturing and shop leadership to establish HOP principles as a foundational element of the Fabrication & Manufacturing safety and operational culture.

- Reinforce the principles that people make mistakes, error is predictable, organizational systems influence behavior, learning is essential, and leadership response to failure matters.

- Help shift the organization from a primarily event-driven safety model toward proactive understanding of how work is actually performed and the conditions that create or increase risk.

- Develop leadership capability to respond constructively to incidents, near misses, errors, stop-work events, and employee concerns.

- Promote learning teams, operational learning reviews, pre-job discussions, field and shop engagement, and other methods that involve the people performing the work in identifying risk and developing solutions.

- Encourage employees to identify weak signals, raise concerns, stop work when appropriate, and participate openly in learning without fear of inappropriate blame.

- Ensure investigations look beyond individual actions to understand system conditions, organizational influences, equipment, processes, planning, supervision, and other contributing factors.

- Balance accountability with learning by distinguishing human error and system-induced behavior from reckless or intentional disregard of established requirements.

Shop Leadership Partnership & Employee Engagement

- Build strong working relationships with fabrication and manufacturing managers, supervisors, foremen, and frontline employees.

- Maintain a visible presence within manufacturing facilities and regularly engage employees where work is performed to understand normal work, constraints, and emerging risks.

- Serve as a coach and operational partner to shop leadership rather than functioning solely as a compliance or enforcement resource.

- Help managers translate HSE expectations into practical daily operating behaviors and effective frontline leadership.

- Support shop leaders in conducting effective safety meetings, pre-task planning, observations, learning discussions, stand-downs, and corrective-action follow-up.

- Develop operational ownership of safety so that HSE provides expertise, coaching, assurance, and systems support while line leadership remains accountable for safe execution.

Risk Management & Operational Assurance

- Develop a risk-based approach for identifying and managing critical fabrication and manufacturing hazards and high-energy exposures.

- Establish consistent facility HSE assessments, audits, inspections, risk reviews, and operational assurance processes.

- Develop leading and lagging indicators that provide meaningful visibility into HSE performance, exposure, control effectiveness, and emerging risk.

- Identify recurring risks and systemic trends across facilities and lead network-wide corrective actions where appropriate.

- Ensure corrective actions are appropriately prioritized, assigned, tracked, verified for effectiveness, and closed.

- Support new facility start-ups, expansions, equipment installations, process changes, acquisitions, and integration activities from an HSE perspective.

Incident Management & Operational Learning

- Establish consistent expectations for incident and near-miss reporting, high-potential event identification, investigation, causal analysis, corrective action, and communication.

- Lead or facilitate significant incident and high-potential event reviews and ensure appropriate executive visibility.

- Focus investigations on what happened, how work normally occurs, what conditions influenced the outcome, and what system improvements can reduce future risk.

- Identify lessons that should be shared across the manufacturing network and verify that meaningful improvements are implemented.

- Partner with leadership to ensure responses to incidents reinforce trust, accountability, learning, and continuous improvement.

- Track recurring event themes and use organizational learning to influence standards, training, engineering controls, supervision, planning, and work design.

Training & Workforce Development

- Establish an HSE training framework appropriate for fabrication and manufacturing employees, supervisors, managers, and leaders.

- Identify regulatory, technical, task-specific, and leadership training requirements by role and exposure.

- Develop HOP and operational-learning training for Fabrication & Manufacturing leadership.

- Partner with Operations and HR to incorporate HSE expectations into onboarding, qualification, supervisor development, craft training, and leadership development.

- Ensure training is practical, field-oriented, and relevant to the hazards employees encounter in actual fabrication and manufacturing work.

- Develop and coach HSE personnel supporting the Fabrication & Manufacturing organization and establish consistent expectations for their role as operational partners.

Environmental & Regulatory Compliance

- Ensure Fabrication & Manufacturing facilities maintain compliance with applicable federal, state, and local HSE requirements.

- Partner with appropriate internal and external resources on environmental permitting, waste management, hazardous materials, air emissions, spill prevention, and other facility environmental obligations.

- Maintain effective processes for regulatory inspections, required records, reporting, corrective actions, and agency interactions.

- Monitor changes in regulations and industry requirements and translate them into practical actions for the manufacturing network.

Performance & Continuous Improvement

- Develop and maintain a Fabrication & Manufacturing HSE scorecard with meaningful leading and lagging indicators.

- Analyze trends across incidents, observations, near misses, high-potential events, employee feedback, audits, and operational data.

- Benchmark practices against relevant fabrication, manufacturing, construction, and industrial best practices.

- Partner with Quality and Operational Excellence to integrate HSE into continuous-improvement initiatives and management systems.

- Provide regular HSE performance, risk, organizational-learning, and improvement updates to the SVP of Manufacturing and other senior leadership.

- Use HSE data and employee feedback to identify opportunities to improve work design, reliability, quality, productivity, and employee experience.

Key Performance Indicators

- Reduction of serious-injury and high-potential exposure through effective critical-risk controls.

- Consistent implementation and audit performance of standardized F&M HSE policies and procedures.

- Leadership and employee participation in HOP, learning teams, operational learning, and proactive risk identification.

- Timely closure and verified effectiveness of corrective actions.

- Quality and timeliness of incident investigations and organizational learning.

- Regulatory compliance and environmental performance.

- Training and qualification completion for required roles and critical tasks.

- Improvement in leading indicators, employee engagement, and safety-culture measures.

- Successful HSE integration of new facilities, acquisitions, equipment, and processes.

Key Qualifications

Required

- 10+ years of progressive HSE experience within fabrication, manufacturing, industrial construction, energy, heavy industry, or a comparable environment.

- Demonstrated experience leading HSE programs across multiple facilities, operating locations, or business units.

- Strong working knowledge of OSHA requirements and recognized industry practices applicable to fabrication and manufacturing environments.

- Demonstrated experience developing and implementing HSE policies, procedures, standards, management systems, and assurance processes.

- Strong knowledge of high-risk fabrication activities including welding, lifting and rigging, cranes, material handling, machine safety, hazardous energy control, powered industrial equipment, and industrial hygiene.

- Experience conducting incident investigations, causal analysis, risk assessments, audits, and corrective-action programs.

- Demonstrated ability to influence operational leaders and frontline employees and to build strong partnerships without relying solely on positional authority.

- Strong written, verbal, facilitation, coaching, and executive communication skills.

- Ability and willingness to travel regularly among Loenbro fabrication and manufacturing facilities.

Preferred

- CSP, CIH, CHST, ASP, or similar professional HSE certification.

- Formal training or practical experience implementing Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), Learning Teams, operational learning, or similar contemporary safety approaches.

- Experience developing HSE systems within a growing, decentralized, or transforming manufacturing organization.

- Experience supporting nuclear, mission-critical, power, semiconductor, advanced manufacturing, or other highly regulated industrial markets.

- Experience integrating newly acquired facilities or standardizing HSE practices across previously decentralized operations.

Education

- Bachelor's degree in Occupational Safety, Environmental Health, Engineering, Industrial Technology, Construction Management, or a related discipline preferred; equivalent significant industry experience may be considered.

Leadership Competencies

- Operational Credibility — Understands how fabrication and manufacturing work is actually planned and performed.

- Visible Leadership — Spends meaningful time in the shops engaging employees, supervisors, and managers.

- Partnership Mindset — Works with operations to solve problems rather than operating as a separate compliance function.

- Learning Orientation — Seeks to understand why outcomes occur and how systems can be improved before assigning corrective action.

- Practical Judgment — Develops standards that appropriately manage risk while allowing the business to execute efficiently.

- Influence & Communication — Effectively engages craft employees, supervisors, managers, executives, customers, and external stakeholders.

- Systems Thinking — Recognizes the interaction among people, processes, equipment, organizational systems, and leadership decisions.

- Continuous Improvement — Uses operational learning and performance data to make work safer, more reliable, and more efficient.

Success Profile

Success in this role will be demonstrated through a consistent Fabrication & Manufacturing HSE operating system across Loenbro facilities; strong partnerships between HSE and shop leadership; improved identification and control of critical risks; increased leadership and employee engagement in operational learning; effective adoption of HOP principles; timely resolution of systemic issues; and measurable strengthening of the safety culture as the Fabrication & Manufacturing business continues to scale.

The objective is not simply compliance. The Director of HSE will help create a manufacturing organization where safe work, operational discipline, employee engagement, learning, quality, and productivity reinforce one another.

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands and work environment described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Work Environment:

- Combination of office/remote work and frequent travel to fabrication and manufacturing facilities; travel of approximately 40–60%, based on business and facility needs.

- Regular, hands-on presence on shop floors and at fabrication facilities to engage employees, supervisors, and shop leadership where work is performed.

- Exposure to typical fabrication and manufacturing shop environments, including noise, dust, welding fumes, moving equipment, and other industrial hazards while touring facilities.

- Regular engagement with employees, shop leadership, and executive leadership, which may require regional and national travel by air and ground transportation.

This role requires compliance with all applicable safety regulations, personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements, and Loenbro's Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) policies.

Benefits

Loenbro offers a competitive salary, comprehensive benefits package, and rewards to those who join our team:

- Medical, dental, and vision insurance

- 401(k) retirement plan with company match

- Performance-based bonus plan

- Long-term Incentives

- Paid time off (PTO) and holiday pay

- Life and disability insurance

- Professional development and training opportunities

- Employee assistance program (EAP)

Benefits eligibility may vary based on employment classification and hours worked.

Guided by Core Values (LEAD) , grounded in grit and a commitment to excellence , Loenbro betters our families, customers, and local communities. If you're ready to be part of a company that LEADS by:

- L iving with Integrity

- E xceeding Expectations

- A cting with Urgency

- D elivering Excellence

…we want to hear from you.

Loenbro is an Equal Opportunity Employer