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FLYING HIGH Achieving Chartered status during maternity leave was just one among many impressive achievements for Karen Godfrey – safety, health and environment manager at Morgan Sindall Construction (Yorkshire and North East). INTERVIEW JOCELYN DORRELL
passionate advocate for raising female representation in her profession and industry – she’s an IOSH mentor and a member of the Women in Health and Safety Group – Karen’s CV includes some impressive achievements. Not only did she gain IOSH Chartered status while on maternity leave with her first child in 2012, but in 2018 she was named Best Woman in Health and Safety at the Women in Construction and Engineering Awards, a pivotal moment for her professionally and personally. ‘I was completely shocked when I won,’ she recalls. ‘It was a complete game changer for me, a real watershed. In my opinion, women often aren’t good at shouting about what they’ve done, but pulling together the submission for the award made me realise that actually I’d achieved a lot. I’m now much more likely to put myself forward and try things I’m uncertain about.’ It’s this confidence that Karen hopes to nurture in women entering the profession, alongside her belief that health and safety professionals should be strategic enablers, working within senior management teams rather than alongside them.
Strategic skills It was a module on the Health and Safety at Work Act in Karen’s master’s degree in management and business law that sparked her interest in health and safety. She wrote her dissertation on corporate killing legislation – specifically its effects on the construction and rail industries – which helped secure her first job: a graduate health and safety role at Balfour Beatty Rail. She has since worked for a number of tier 1 contractors, including Mansell Construction Services, as a safety, health environment and quality (SHEQ) adviser, manager and auditor. ‘The first project I worked on was Heathrow Terminal 5, so I couldn’t have asked for a better start!’ she says. ‘But with a project so large, you couldn’t see the real impact you were having. I moved to the rail industry, but it is so highly regulated that
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