Role Purpose
Keep the site legally compliant and protect employees, visitors and the environment. Keep equipment reliable, safe and available for production.
The role holder builds a culture of proactive safety and reliability, replaces manual/paper-based records with clear digital systems, and works closely with the Operations Director and Production team to reduce risk and downtime across the site.
This role is under the guidelines of the GradStart programme.
The graduate cannot be more than four years post graduation
Key Responsibilities
Health & Safety
- Maintain risk assessments, safety procedures and training records across the site.
- Investigate accidents, near misses and unsafe conditions, and drive corrective actions to closure.
- Maintain a live legal/statutory register of H&S obligations, licences and inspection deadlines.
- Own machine guarding, interlock and lockout-tagout compliance for all production equipment.
- Manage permit-to-work processes for contractors and high-risk tasks (hot work, working at height, confined space).
- Oversee occupational health considerations such as noise, manual handling and cold-store exposure.
- Chair the H&S committee and lead employee consultation as required under Irish legislation.
- Support emergency response planning and lead evacuation/fire drills.
- Report safety performance (leading and lagging indicators) and corrective action status to the Operations Director.
Environmental
- Track and report on environmental controls: waste, energy and water use.
- Own compliance with environmental licences and permits (e.g. trade effluent discharge, waste management, EPA/local authority conditions).
- Manage chemical and hazardous material compliance, including refrigerant gas (F-gas) regulations where applicable.
- Prepare for and host EPA/local authority inspections and compliance checks.
- Monitor upcoming environmental legislation relevant to food manufacturing and update site practices accordingly.
- Support any customer or retailer requests for environmental/sustainability data.
Maintenance
- Own planned (preventive) maintenance and breakdown response across all production and facilities equipment.
- Prioritise reliability of refrigeration/cold chain equipment given its direct impact on product integrity.
- Reduce downtime and drive equipment reliability improvements.
- Manage spare parts inventory, maintenance contractors and the maintenance budget.
- Support commissioning of new equipment and production line changes.
- Own calibration schedules for scales, temperature probes and detection equipment (e.g. metal detection/X-ray, if applicable).
- Maintain building fabric and facilities (roof, drains, pest-proofing) in coordination with pest control contracts.
- Maintain maintenance records, asset registers and service schedules, digitised via a CMMS or equivalent system.
- Work with production on root-cause investigation and reliability improvements.
Systems & Reporting
- Maintain accurate, accessible records across H&S, environmental and maintenance activity, digitising where possible to reduce manual paperwork.
- Provide regular reporting/dashboards to the Operations Director covering safety, environmental and maintenance KPIs.
- Support budget planning for compliance, training, spare parts and equipment investment.
Person Specification
Essential
- experience in an H&S, engineering or maintenance leadership role within a manufacturing environment.
- Working knowledge of Irish H&S legislation (Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005) and environmental regulatory requirements.
- Practical experience managing planned maintenance programmes, contractors and breakdown response.
- Relevant H&S qualification
- Strong organisational and record-keeping skills, able to manage safety, environmental and maintenance priorities concurrently.
- Confident communicator, comfortable exercising authority to halt unsafe work or equipment use regardless of production pressure.
- Proficient with Microsoft Office and comfortable adopting digital maintenance/compliance systems (CMMS, digital checklists).
Desirable
- Engineering trade or technical qualification (mechanical/electrical).
- Experience maintaining refrigeration/cold chain equipment.
- Familiarity with ISO 45001 and/or ISO 14001.
- Experience in a food manufacturing or similarly regulated environment.
Key Relationships
- Operations Director (direct report line)
- Production/Plant Manager and shift supervisors
- Maintenance technicians and external contractors
- Quality /QA/Technical team (where food safety/quality is owned separately)
- External bodies: HSA, EPA/local authority, insurers, equipment suppliers
Key Performance Indicators
- Reduction in lost-time accidents and overall incident rate year-on-year.
- 100% completion of statutory inspections and calibrations on schedule.
- Equipment uptime / reduction in unplanned downtime.
- Timely closeout of corrective actions arising from audits, incidents and risk assessments.
- Measurable reduction in manual/paper-based compliance and maintenance records (% digitised).
Working Conditions
Site-based role requiring regular presence on the production floor, cold stores and maintenance areas.
Pay: €30,000.00-€35,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company events
- On-site parking
- Wellness program
Ability to commute/relocate:
- Naas, County Kildare: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (preferred)
Application question(s):
- This role is under the guidelines of the GradStart programme. The graduate cannot be more than four years post graduation.
Are you more than four years post graduated ?
Work authorisation:
Location:
- Naas, County Kildare (preferred)
Work Location: In person
