Health, Safety & Wellbeing Director - Rail

About the role

Balfour Beatty is looking for an influential and forward-thinking Health, Safety & Wellbeing Director to provide strategic leadership and help shape outstanding HS&W performance across our Rail business.

Working closely with senior leaders, project teams, clients and supply-chain partners, you'll translate our Build to Last and Zero Harm ambitions into clear strategies and practical business plans. You'll provide expert guidance on emerging risks, evolving legislation and industry best practice, ensuring our policies, standards and management systems remain robust and forward-looking.

This is a highly impactful role in which you'll lead change across a complex organisation, develop high-performing teams and influence decision-making at every level.

The location for the role is UK flexible and can be based from any of our hub offices.

What you'll be doing

• Lead the development and delivery of Health, Safety & Wellbeing strategies and business plans.


• Drive our Zero Harm priorities and champion consistently high standards across the business.


• Shape industry-leading policies, standards and systems in response to emerging risks and best practice.


• Partner with senior leaders to assess and address HS&W risks and opportunities.


• Lead and develop the HS&W team, aligning resources with business and project priorities.


• Oversee site assurance, incident reporting, investigations and performance monitoring.


• Ensure lessons from incidents and reviews are shared and embedded across the organisation.


• Provide clear governance and performance reporting to senior business and project leaders.


• Embed client, joint venture and supply-chain requirements within plans and tender responses.


• Build trusted relationships with clients, regulators, industry bodies and other key stakeholders

Who we're looking for

• Senior leadership experience within health and safety, including developing high-performing teams.


• A proven record of delivering sustainable improvements in health and safety performance and culture.


• Strong technical understanding of health and safety risk management and the hierarchy of controls.


• A sound understanding of occupational health and workplace wellbeing.


• Experience in construction or another complex, safety-critical sector.


• Strong executive influencing, communication, coaching and mentoring skills.


• Experience of leading within complex, multi-stakeholder and matrix environments.


• The ability to balance competing priorities and resolve operational and commercial challenges.


• Experience of developing and presenting strategic proposals to clients and executive teams.


• An adaptable, collaborative approach with a strong focus on continuous improvement

Why work for us

Day in, day out, our teams deliver some of the UK's most ambitious, exciting and meaningful projects; developing, building and maintaining the vital infrastructure that supports national economies and strengthens communities.

Why join us?

As if contributing to and supporting work that makes life better for millions wasn't rewarding enough, we offer a full range of benefits too. You'll have the freedom to shape the package that's right for you and your life. Here are some of our key benefits:

- Smart working, giving you more flexibility such as staggered start and finish times, with up to 40% remote working, where roles allow.
- 25 days paid annual leave (pro rata)
- Family friendly policies which include 28 weeks full pay for maternity/adoption leave and four weeks full pay for paternity/partners leave
- Pension, share incentive plan, volunteering leave, recognition schemes and much more...

About us

Balfour Beatty works at the heart of the UK's rail networks - designing, enhancing and maintaining thousands of miles of the railways that connect communities and underpin growth.

From feasibility studies, planning and design through to implementation and asset management, we provide multi-disciplinary rail infrastructure services across the lifecycle of rail assets. Our expertise covers electrification, track, power, civils, specialist rail plant, railway systems and technologies.

Diversity and inclusion

At Balfour Beatty, we want everyone to be able to thrive and achieve their full potential, regardless of their identity or background. We're making great progress through our Value Everyone DEI Action Plan, but we know we've got more to do. Find out more about our values and DEI initiatives.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for this role will be offered an interview.

We are committed to our processes being barrier-free and will support adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Please let the recruiter for this role know if you require any adjustments.

We're looking to continually improve our recruitment process, so if you have any feedback, please share this with us via candidaterecruitmentenquiries@balfourbeatty.com