John is a health and safety specialist with experience working with multinationals in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. He provides a broad consultancy service to clients wishing to understand and meet their health and safety obligations.
Complementing the work of our legal teams, John provides specific guidance on the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and the responsibilities of directors and officers under this legislation. He helps boards and senior leadership teams drive best practice and build health and safety governance capability, including due diligence. He assists clients to develop and implement both audit processes (to understand their significant risks/hazards) and reporting regimes (to meet the due diligence requirements). He also supports businesses with major incident investigations.
John has in-depth experience of the health and safety environment. Prior to joining MinterEllisonRuddWatts, he was Group Safety and Wellbeing Director for Lion, supporting the senior leadership team in delivering continuous improvement in the health and safety of their staff. As part of that role, he spent five years working in the health and safety environment in Australia, ensuring that Lion’s directors and officers fully understood their obligations under the Model Health and Safety legislation and providing guidance on how to carry out their due diligence duties.
He continues to promote that same focus on building a strong safety and wellbeing culture to senior leaders and directors in New Zealand. John provides his clients with practical tools to help them meet their obligations by demonstrating leadership within their organisations. He works to understand their businesses and industries so that his advice is tailored and practical. His industry experience includes working with multi-national food and beverage businesses, construction companies, government agencies, educational facilities, the film industry, and small to medium businesses (SMEs).