In this Career Inspiration Video, we hear from Kari Sprostranova, Health, Safety and Wellbeing Director for Mace Construction on what attracted her to the profession, why it is an exciting role, the biggest industry changes during her career, and what she believes the future health and safety professional looks like.
So, I'm Kari Sprostranova, I'm the Health, Safety and Wellbeing Director for Mace Construction. Mace is a very large tier one contractor, but also has a very large consultancy business that works internationally.
What attracted you to work in health and safety?
It is really interesting. I started working for an airline, and I was travelling around the world working with their ground services team, helping them with customer service. And I was approached by the company to say, whilst you're out there, would you consider looking at health and safety, which I've never really given any thought to, but I said, why not? I'm out overseas, so why not learn something different? And I realised that I had a real passion for it, and I thought, well, if I'm going to do health and safety, where is it I'm going to get my best training and learning from? And it was the regulator, the Health and Safety Executive. So, I changed my career completely because I was so passionate about health and safety, and went to work for the Health and Safety Executive. I got some fantastic training, they allowed me to go to university, and get my postgraduate in occupational health and safety. And I stayed with them for 14 years actually, working my way up to Principal Inspector in their construction division. And then I just had this passion to really drive change and work with the industry to help people understand that it wasn't just a regulator's job to improve health and safety, but we had an ownership for ourselves. So, I had this fantastic opportunity to go and work for a large tier one contractor in the construction industry. And there's so much to learn, and I guess from the HSE had a real opportunity to go lots of different ways in health and safety, because there's such a broad spectrum. But I wanted to make a difference, and I wanted to go to an industry that I felt needed the support and engagement from health and safety professionals, and also somewhere that was going to change all the time. And the construction industry definitely offers me that challenge.
Why is working in the construction sector an exciting role?
I think as an industry we are really innovative, and nothing proved that more than Covid, we came together as an industry, and we found different ways that keep working. And I think just how we can keep designing buildings, and really improving. And then from a safety and health point of view, what the implications of that, it changes all the time, and we're encouraging people to think differently. So, at the forefront of health and safety is to keep understanding what the legislation does and what the requirements are, and how we can build that into keeping people safe as we innovate.
During your career what have been the biggest changes to the health and safety industry?
So much change has happened, and we've got still the same framework to enable that to happen, but we've moved away from being very process, delivery and forms and clipboards is the kind of view of how people had the health and safety people, to really being part of everyday decisions. I think my biggest impact has been helping my business understand that I don't lead on health and safety, they do. And I'm just really there to help them understand what the parameters are, and to help them think differently, but not to find all the solutions for them. They have those solutions, I'm just the enabler.
What will the future health and safety professional look like?
I think they have to be really able to adapt, and I try and look at our industry at the moment, we are moving much more to modular buildings, modern methods of construction. There'll be much more AI technology, and it might even get to the stage where the health, safety, wellbeing professional doesn't actually walk the park, so to speak. They're actually looking at it on screens, and we use technology to help us understand behaviours, and processing and design and build. So, I think they're going to have to be really adaptable, but it's also understanding that it doesn't stop risk, it just changes risk, the modern methods of construction, so how they can help the business bring on that journey.