General Purpose:
The Vice President, EH&S provides enterprise leadership for McCarl's safety function. In collaboration with the Chief Performance Officer, this role is accountable for the strategy, organizational capability, systems, talent, and operating discipline required to prevent serious injuries, manage risk, and strengthen how work is planned, led, and executed across the company.
The Vice President leads the safety organization and partners closely with Operations leadership to ensure McCarl's safety expectations are practical, consistently applied, and embedded in daily work. The role provides executive-level leadership for major projects, significant incidents, client relationships, regulatory matters, growth opportunities, and companywide safety improvement initiatives.
The Vice President establishes the standards, systems, organizational capability, and field support necessary for Operations leaders to effectively manage safety within their areas of responsibility. The role also ensures the safety organization can identify risk, support field execution, develop leaders, measure performance, and drive continuous improvement across the enterprise.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
- Set and execute an enterprise safety strategy that supports McCarl's operating model, growth plans, risk profile, and commitment to employee well-being.
- Establish and maintain the safety management system, company standards, and performance measures, needed for consistent execution across regions, facilities, and projects.
- Translate company priorities and values into clear safety expectations, implementation plans, and measurable outcomes for Regional Safety Managers, Safety Advisors, and project teams.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of safety programs and field practices; simplify, strengthen, or replace systems when they are not producing reliable results.
- Ensure that lessons from significant events, project reviews, audits, and field observations are converted into durable improvements across the company.
Safety Organization Leadership and Capability
- Lead, develop, and hold accountable Regional Safety Managers and other assigned EH&S personnel.
- Build a scalable organization with clear role definitions, decision rights, staffing plans, development paths, and succession coverage.
- Set expectations for the safety team's field presence, technical competence, coaching quality, responsiveness, and partnership with Operations.
- Recruit and retain high-caliber safety leaders who can earn trust in demanding industrial and construction environments.
- Develop safety leaders' ability to influence without overreaching, coach frontline leaders, use data well, and distinguish system improvement from activity volume.
Field Performance and Operational Partnership
- Through the safety leadership team, ensure that field safety support is visible, practical, and focused on the conditions and decisions that create serious risk.
- Partner with Operations leaders to improve pre-task planning, work sequencing, hazard recognition, control quality, supervisory follow-through, and management of changing conditions.
- Challenge weak execution constructively and help Operations leaders resolve recurring gaps without creating a parallel chain of command for the work.
- Conduct periodic field and operational reviews to understand how standards are functioning in practice, identify systemic barriers, and direct improvement where it will have the greatest impact.
- Ensure consistent safety support and accountability across regions, operating groups, fabrication environments, and project sites.
Risk Governance, Compliance, and Incident Learning
- Provide executive oversight of serious-injury and high-risk exposures, including work at height, energy isolation, electrical work, lifting and rigging, excavation, mobile equipment, confined space, and other material risks.
- Ensure compliance with applicable OSHA, DOT, EPA, MSHA, state, local, and client requirements within the scope of McCarl's work.
- Lead or direct the company's response to significant incidents, regulatory matters, and high-consequence near misses; ensure investigations identify meaningful causes and corrective actions are completed and verified.
- Maintain a disciplined approach to risk escalation, stop-work support, executive notification, regulatory inspections, and external communications.
- Use leading and lagging indicators to identify exposure, verify control effectiveness, and guide leadership attention before events occur.
Major Projects, Clients, and Growth
- Provide executive safety leadership for major, complex, strategically important, or troubled projects, including client-facing safety commitments and recovery efforts.
- Partner with Estimating, Business Development, and Operations to evaluate safety and execution risk during pursuit, proposal, mobilization, and project startup.
- Represent McCarl's safety capability with clients, owners, contractors, regulators, insurers, and industry stakeholders when senior credibility is required.
- Ensure the company can deploy the right safety capability to major project opportunities, client consulting engagements, acquisitions, and special initiatives.
- Support consistent differentiation of McCarl's safety and performance capability in the marketplace without making commitments the operating organization cannot sustain.
Measurement, Resources, and Executive Leadership
- Set the function's budget, staffing plan, and technology roadmap.
- Provide the executive team with clear, data-based reporting on risk, field performance, significant events, organizational capability, and resource needs.
- Allocate safety resources according to risk, project complexity, organizational need, and strategic priorities.
- Lead cross-functional safety initiatives with HR, Quality, Operations, and other functions, while maintaining clear ownership and follow-through.
- Serve as the senior functional voice for safety in executive planning, major-project reviews, client discussions, and other forums requiring enterprise judgment.
Supervisory Responsibilities
Leads, develops, and holds accountable Regional Safety Managers and other assigned EH&S personnel. Builds a scalable safety organization with clear role definitions, decision rights, staffing plans, development paths, succession coverage, and expectations for field presence, technical competence, coaching quality, responsiveness, and partnership with Operations.
Work Environment & Physical Demands
- Ability to travel frequently and work in office, fabrication, industrial, and construction environments.
- Ability to walk jobsites, climb ladders or stairs, traverse uneven terrain, and wear required personal protective equipment.
- Ability to respond to significant incidents, project needs, and other time-sensitive issues outside normal business hours when required.
Qualifications:
Education
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in occupational safety, Environmental Health, Industrial Hygiene, Engineering, Business, or a related field preferred; equivalent senior-level experience will be considered.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP) and/or Construction Health and Safety Technician (CHST) credentials preferred.
Experience
- Twelve or more years of progressive EH&S, safety, risk, operations, or construction leadership experience in complex industrial, mechanical contracting, energy, utility, manufacturing, or comparable high-hazard environments.
- Five or more years leading managers or senior safety professionals and building organizational capability across multiple locations or major projects.
- Demonstrated responsibility for safety strategy, management systems, regulatory compliance, serious-incident response, and risk reduction at an enterprise or large operating-group level.
- Candidates must demonstrate substantial leadership experience in industrial and mechanical construction environments, including high-risk field operations and major projects.
- Credible experience working directly with operations executives, project leaders, clients, and regulatory agencies in high-stakes situations.
- Demonstrated ability to lead change, improve field execution, and earn trust with both senior leaders and frontline personnel.
Knowledge, Skills, and Leadership Attributes
- Deep practical knowledge of construction and industrial safety, OSHA requirements, serious-injury prevention, incident investigation, and management-system design.
- A field-first orientation: able to translate sound safety principles into practical actions that supervisors and crews can apply under real operating conditions.
- Executive presence and sound judgment; able to communicate directly about risk, resource needs, and difficult tradeoffs without becoming reactive or detached from field reality.
- Ability to lead through influence, develop leaders, and create accountability without substituting the safety function for Operations' responsibility to execute work safely.
- Strong analytical ability; able to improve risk identification, decision-making, and field performance across operating locations.
Working at McCarl's
There is a reason why McCarl's is consistently ranked among the leading industrial contractors in the country: the caliber of our people. We are committed to recruiting and retaining professional, dependable team members who are dedicated to customer satisfaction, exceptional job performance, and attention to detail. We build upon this strong foundation by offering ongoing training, career development, and opportunities for growth.
Realizing our employees go above and beyond for the company and our customers, we believe they deserve a robust benefits package. The benefits package we offer to all regular, full-time employees includes:
- Yearly discretionary bonus potential, in addition to base salary
- 100% Company paid benefits (medical, dental & vision) for employees and their dependents based on a preferred plan
- 100% Company paid S/LTD, Life and AD&D insurance for employees
- 401(k) Employee Contributions - eligible on first day of employment
- 401(k) Employer Match and discretionary Profit Sharing
- Vacation days based on service level
- 8 Paid Company Holidays
This position may be based out of our Beaver Falls, Warrendale, or McMurray office locations.
McCarl's and Affiliates are Equal Opportunity Employers. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or on any other characteristic protected by law.
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