Craig Critchley
Strategic Operational Risk Leader
Hire this person
Send a job offer directly to this candidate
About
Strategic Operational Risk Leader with more than 25 years of experience across highly regulated industrial operations. Proven track record of developing enterprise-wide safety cultures, strengthening governance frameworks and driving organisational performance improvements across business functions. Experienced in partnering with Boards, Executive Leadership Teams and operational business units to align risk management, compliance, and operational excellence with corporate objectives.
Successfully led transformation programmes, delivering significant reductions in injury rates, strengthening ISO-certified management systems and supporting commercial growth through project bids and client engagement.
Experience
Global Senior QHSE Manager - BWSC - Global
(2022-01)
Provide strategic leadership for Quality, Health, Safety, Environment and Operational Risk across BWSC's global portfolio comprising power generation assets, service operations and corporate functions. Advise the Board and Executive Leadership Team on organisational risk, governance, compliance, sustainability and performance improvement initiatives. Lead development and implementation of global QHSE strategy aligned with corporate objectives and business growth plans. Drive organisational culture programmes focused on leadership engagement, workforce empowerment and continuous improvement. Oversee enterprise-wide management systems, assurance programmes and compliance frameworks across multiple international jurisdictions. Support commercial growth through client engagement, tender reviews, acquisitions, project mobilisation and due diligence activities.
Ensuring Legal
Compliance across a diverse portfolio including projects in Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America.
- Partnered with the Executive Leadership Team to implement a global QHSE transformation strategy across 15 power generation facilities, engineering service department and support functions, reducing LTIF from 3.8 to 0.4 and TRIF from 10.3 to 2.4 while strengthening organisational accountability and safety culture
- Sourcing replacement Incident Reporting and Auditing Software, delivering a customised package and training across all regions including Danish and Japanese language modules
- Led company-wide governance review and transformation of the integrated management system, creating a platform for operational standardisation, meeting the standards of ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 frameworks
- Drove a sustained campaign to embed QHSE Observation across all areas of the business delivering a 62% improvement over an 18-month period
- Initiated Behaviour Based Safety programme with courses delivered to over 85% of the global workforce, including development of in house QHSE Values and Standards behavioural safety package
- Improved the management and reporting of engineering and supplier quality non-conformities by implementing a standardised process with over 950 events registered in a 12-month period
- Acted as executive QHSE lead during major bid and due diligence activities, ensuring risk, compliance and operational capability requirements were successfully integrated into commercial proposals
Technical Environmental Health and Safety Manager - Viridor Energy - Runcorn EFW - Runcorn
(2012-08 - 2021-12)
Day to day responsibility for a 1.1 million tonne per annum Energy from Waste facility managing all EHS aspects including legal compliance, traffic management (circa 250 HGV movements per day), contractor setting to work, occupational health, and wellbeing. Site liaison with Environment Agency and Halton Council including routine regulatory compliance meetings, permit/planning condition audits and local liaison forums. Actively manage all site environmental, health, safety, quality, security and GDPR aspects, gathering data from across departments for KPI information. Produced and presented executive-level QHSE performance reporting to Board stakeholders, providing strategic insight on operational risk, compliance and business performance.
Principal
Contractor's Health and Safety lead during notifiable CDM projects for unit overhauls. This encompasses the overseeing of all contracting works including scaffolding, refractory demolition, high voltage system inspections and other related activities. Line manager for business support team consisting of EHS, Logistics, Document Control and Administration roles.
- Established a high-reliability operational culture that achieved over one million working hours and 1,000 consecutive days without a lost-time injury while delivering seven consecutive zero-harm major shutdown projects
- Led operational and technical engagement in the successful defence of significant environmental litigation, protecting organisational reputation and demonstrating robust compliance and governance arrangements
- Creation and implementation of an integrated management system achieving ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 and 50001 accreditations. First in company to attain 45001 and 50001 standards
- Management of fleet-wide permit to work project, included training of 30 new Senior Authorised Persons and installation of NISOFT permit management software across 8 ERF facilities on time and under budget
- Gap Analysis and development of group safe systems of work included Heat Stress Management, Management of Change, Process Safety, Hot Work Procedure, Red/Yellow Card Policy, and Dropped Object Prevention
Production Co-ordinator / Health & Safety Co-ordinator (Secondment) - Eon
(2009-10 - 2012-07)
- Day to day management of a 40MW gas fired CCGT facility including consumables tracking and operational budget management
- Performance improvement planning to optimise plant efficiency and availability through triad season
- Planning site outage schedules working in conjunction with central engineering teams
- Senior Authorised person duties including High Voltage up to 33kV
- Ongoing H&S management of a 40MW CCGT gas fired power station and a 43MW CHP facility
- Root cause analysis of all H&S incidents
- Creation and implementation of site-specific Local Management Instructions derived from central group procedures
- Coordinating with the company central H&S team to ensure the site was fully compliant and to implement both company and self-created initiatives
Operations Support Engineer - Scottish & Southern Energy
(1998-03 - 2009-03)
Provided operational, engineering and compliance leadership within CHP power generation facilities, developing expertise in operational risk management, contractor governance, environmental compliance and asset reliability that formed the foundation for progression into senior leadership positions

