New industries, new innovations—women pioneers are everywhere. For this inspiring series, we’re asked our partner companies to submit one woman “Pathfinder” to represent their work, their products, their industry, or their values. (And often, all of the above.)
Meet Connie Driscoll, the Environmental, Health, and Safety Director at Seven Seas Water Group. Dive into her work bringing the company’s safety software into the modern era.
What path are you forging?
I am a female engineer leading the digitization of the company's global environmental, health, and safety program.
What inspired you to pursue this field?
After graduating with my bachelors degree in civil engineering, I was ready for an adventure (I grew up in Wisconsin)! I was recruited by Seven Seas Water Group and quickly accepted the opportunity to move to St. Croix (one of the U.S. Virgin Islands) as an operations engineer. I couldn't wait to be part of a team that was producing the drinking water for the island.
With three years of field experience along with learning how to navigate cultural and island challenges, I was ready for the next step. I moved to Tampa, Florida, as a project engineer. In my new role, I was able to use the field experience I gained, to design and build new reverse osmosis water plants in the Caribbean. During this time, I also volunteered to take on the safety leader role. Safety was not as prevalent of a career path during that time, but I was interested in learning more.
I expanded my knowledge of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), local safety rules and regulations along with other internationally recognized safety standards. I also took the CSP (certified safety professional) exam and passed.
In my current role as the Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Director, I am able to use all the skills I have gained in my previous roles to continuously improve our company safety culture. Each day brings a new challenge and that is what keeps this role exciting.
What’s a cool project or program you’ve developed as a result of your work in this area?
Just over a year ago, I decided to implement a new safety management software to digitize our safety management program and streamline policies, procedures, and processes across the business.
As an EHS Director for a global company with operations in 15 different locations along with future growth, manually managing safety was no longer feasible. I did a lot of research and decided to move forward with the safety-management software KPA. This software offered everything I needed and more.
In the first year using this software, I have digitized over 80 percent of our safety forms, streamlined workflows, and improved our incident rate by 100 percent.
The field teams can now easily complete safety forms from an app on their phone. We have also added QR codes to the safety equipment to simplify the process even more. With this investment, the team is able to complete most safety forms in one to three minutes.
In addition, I have incorporated other non-safety related workflows into this system to streamline compliance processes and create auditable and measurable goals.
What resources or people have been influential in your success in your field?
At our company, safety goals flow from the top down. The employees have been influential in streamlining the forms and processes through continuous improvement. The leadership team has been influential in holding their teams accountable for safety reporting, inspections, training, and other safety-related tasks. Without their support and feedback, the transition to this new safety management software would not have been this successful.
What advice would you give to aspiring professionals looking to break into and make an impact in emerging industries or technologies or at their company?
I'd tell them to do their research and find creative ways to sell the technology to their leadership team. The software I chose to implement has all the safety management tools I needed, along with tools that go beyond safety and benefit other areas of the business.
I was able to incorporate the training resources from our worker comp insurer to lower the cost as well as get a buy-in from other departments. This allowed me to split the initial cost of the software across a few departments and implement sooner.
