The Role
Position Title: Global EH&S Director
Work Location: Deerfield
Position Summary
- Establish, implement, and audit the company’s global EH&S strategy, systems, and standards.
- Reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer, the Global EH&S Director works closely with site leadership and corporate functions to ensure strong regulatory compliance, effective management of high-hazard chemical manufacturing risks, and continuous improvement in safety and environmental performance.
- A critical component of the role is strengthening the organization’s safety approach beyond regulatory compliance toward a proactive, prevention-focused safety culture. The successful candidate will have meaningful experience implementing behavior-based safety (BBS) programs and building leadership and employee ownership of safety.
- The position requires significant practical experience with OSHA and EPA regulations, preferably gained within chemical, specialty chemical, petrochemical, refining, or other high-hazard manufacturing environments.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Develop and implement a global EH&S strategy aligned with the company’s operational and business objectives, including EH&S review of capital projects, design standards, and acquisitions.
- Establish global EH&S policies, standards, management systems, metrics, and expectations, aligned with recognized frameworks such as Responsible Care/RC14001 and ISO 14001/45001, while ensuring effective execution at the site level.
- Serve as the principal EH&S advisor to the COO and senior leadership team regarding significant safety, environmental, regulatory, and operational risks.
- Establish clear accountability and decision rights for EH&S performance throughout the organization, from senior leadership through plant management, supervisors, and frontline employees.
- Develop leading and lagging EH&S indicators (for example, TRIR/DARTprocess safety event rates, notices of violation, corrective-action closure, and near-miss reporting) and provide regular performance and risk reporting to the COO and executive leadership, including significant risks, compliance gaps, overdue corrective actions, and emerging regulatory issues.
Safety Culture & Behavior-Based Safety
- Lead the development and implementation of a comprehensive behavior-based safety program across manufacturing locations.
- Build a safety culture in which employees actively identify hazards, report near misses, intervene when unsafe behaviors or conditions are observed, and participate in improving workplace safety.
- Define leadership expectations for visible safety leadership, including management safety observations, employee engagement, field presence, and corrective-action follow-through, and implement safety observation and feedback processes that identify at-risk behaviors and reinforce safe behaviors.
- Use BBS data, near-miss information, incident trends, and leading indicators to identify systemic risks and improvement opportunities, and ensure that behavioral safety complements, and never substitutes for, strong engineering controls, process safety systems, operating discipline, and regulatory compliance.
Occupational Safety and OSHA Compliance
- Provide corporate leadership and technical expertise regarding OSHA regulations, in particular PSM and injury and illness recordkeeping and reporting requirements (29 CFR 1904).
- Ensure effective programs covering all life-critical procedures and core occupational safety requirements.
Process Safety
- Provide leadership for process safety management across chemical manufacturing operations, including compliance with OSHA PSM (29 CFR 1910.119) and EPA Risk Management Program (RMP, 40 CFR Part 68) requirements.
- Ensure appropriate implementation of PSM and RMP program elements, including employee participation, process safety information, process hazard analyses, operating procedures, training, contractor management, pre-startup safety reviews, mechanical integrity, hot work permits, management of change, incident investigations, emergency planning, and compliance audits.
- Drive effective use of methodologies such as HAZOP, What-If analysis, LOPA, and other appropriate process hazard assessment techniques, including facility siting, safety instrumented systems, and reactive chemistry hazard evaluation where applicable.
- Manage fire, explosion, and combustible dust hazards, including hazardous area classification and applicable NFPA standards.
Environmental Compliance and EPA
Provide leadership and technical oversight of environmental compliance programs, with strong working knowledge and practical exposure to U.S. EPA regulations applicable to chemical manufacturing.
Areas of responsibility include the following federal programs and their state counterparts:
- Air (Clean Air Act): Title V operating permits, New Source Review/PSD and other air permitting programs; NESHAP/MACT and NSPS requirements, including leak detection and repair (LDAR); emissions reporting; and RMP (CAA §112(r), addressed under Process Safety)
- Water (Clean Water Act): NPDES and stormwater permits, industrial pretreatment and POTW discharge permits, and Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) requirements
- Waste: RCRA hazardous waste requirements
- Chemicals and releases: TSCA; EPCRA (including TRI and Tier II reporting); and CERCLA/EPCRA chemical release reporting and regulatory notifications
Provide oversight of environmental permitting, compliance reporting, emissions management, waste management, wastewater, and environmental monitoring.
Incident Investigation and Risk Reduction
- Establish rigorous standards for reporting and investigating injuries, environmental incidents, process safety events, spills, releases, and high-potential near misses.
- Ensure significant incidents undergo appropriate root-cause analysis rather than stopping at immediate causes or operator behavior, identifying systemic causes involving equipment design, procedures, training, management systems, organizational factors, and leadership.
- Ensure major process safety events, serious injuries, and high-potential near misses receive prompt executive visibility, investigation, and corrective action.
- Ensure lessons learned are communicated and applied across all relevant facilities.
Auditing, Compliance Assurance, and Regulatory Engagement
- Develop and manage a risk-based global EH&S audit program.
- Conduct or oversee periodic audits of manufacturing locations covering regulatory compliance, process safety, occupational safety, environmental performance, and corporate EH&S standards, working with Legal on audit privilege and voluntary self-disclosure decisions.
- Maintain a single system to track corrective actions arising from audits, incidents, inspections, and regulatory findings through verified completion, with escalation of overdue items.
- Lead preparation for, and response to, OSHA, EPA, and state agency inspections, investigations, and enforcement matters, supporting sites and coordinating with Legal.
Organizational Capability
- Develop the capabilities of plant EH&S leaders and professionals through training, coaching, technical support, and clear performance expectations.
- Establish minimum competency standards for site EH&S personnel.
- Work closely with Operations, Engineering, Manufacturing Excellence, Supply Chain, Human Resources, Legal, and other functions to integrate EH&S into everyday business decisions.
- Build effective relationships with regulatory agencies, external consultants, insurers (including loss-control engineering), industry organizations, and other external stakeholders.
- Monitor proposed and emerging federal and state EH&S regulations, assess their impact on operations, and advocate for the company’s interests through industry organizations where appropriate.
- Implement and maintain EH&S information systems for incident, audit, management-of-change, and corrective-action management, and provide EH&S data and support for sustainability reporting, customer audits, and customer questionnaires.
Education & Experience
Required:
- Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Safety Engineering, Industrial Hygiene, Environmental Science, Chemistry, or a related technical discipline.
- A minimum of 12 years of progressive EH&S experience, including substantial experience in chemical manufacturing or another high-hazard process industry.
- Demonstrated leadership experience across multiple manufacturing locations, including leading and developing EH&S teams and managing budgets.
- Strong practical experience with OSHA regulations and process safety management (OSHA PSM and EPA RMP), with a strong understanding of chemical manufacturing hazards.
- Strong working knowledge and practical experience with EPA environmental regulations affecting chemical manufacturing operations, including Title V air permitting.
- Demonstrated experience implementing or significantly improving a behavior-based safety program within an industrial organization, ideally across multiple facilities with measurable results.
- Experience leading significant incident investigations and root-cause analyses.
- Experience interacting directly with OSHA, EPA, state environmental agencies, or equivalent regulatory authorities.
- Experience establishing EH&S metrics, management systems, auditing programs, and corrective-action processes.
- Ability to communicate complex regulatory and technical issues clearly to senior executives and operating personnel.
- Ability and willingness to travel regularly to manufacturing locations.
Preferred:
- Professional certifications such as CSP, CIH, CHMM, or CCPSC, or a Professional Engineer (PE) license.
- Experience operating within a global specialty chemical organization.
- Experience with emissions-control and other environmental capital projects within the chemical industry.
Pay
The estimated base pay range for this position is: $180,000 to $200,000 annually. Actual pay will be determined based on education, certifications, experience, qualifications, skills and geographic location. This position is eligible to participate in a short-term incentive program.
Benefits
Vantage offers a comprehensive benefits package to eligible employees, including:
Vantage (non-Union)
· Medical, HSA, dental, vision
· FSA (limited purpose, dependent care, and commuter/parking)
· Life and AD&D insurance
· Accident, hospital indemnity and critical illness insurance
· Short- and long-term disability
· EAP, identity theft protection
· Paid time off, Parental Leave
· 401(k) with company match
Equal Employment Opportunity
Vantage is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other protected category.
About Vantage
Vantage provides natural solutions to our customers’ technical performance and marketing needs through a unique combination of chemistry, application expertise and service. Underpinned by our broad portfolio of formulations, ingredients and actives that are built on a backbone of sustainable oils, fats and their derivatives, Vantage targets selected markets and applications including personal care, food, surface treatment, agriculture, pharma, and consumer and industrial performance. Vantage is headquartered in Deerfield, IL., operates in 11 countries worldwide and employs more than 1,000 talented professionals focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences with every interaction.
We are a dynamic people-centered organization where you’ll be part of a collaborative global team. Embracing our cultural diversity, we learn from each other to constantly improve, adapt and iterate. We value the voices and talents of our colleagues, empowering them to drive their unique ideas to completion. We’re convinced that exceptionally motivated employees produce outstanding results, and we celebrate them by fostering a culture of recognition, development, learning, excellence and shared achievement. Most importantly, we know you’re going to like it here. For more information visit: vantagegrp.com or LinkedIn/vantage.
