A New Adventure in OHS…

I know it’s been some time since I last posted on the Canadian Safety Blog. I’ve had a busy time over the last few months or so and have started a new working life…a new adventure.

As you know, I started up a new private safety consulting business – Safety Forge Consulting – in December of last year.  It had been my hope to start off on my own in a new venture for 2010.  I took the plunge and soon Safety Forge Consulting was born.

The first few months of 2010 were exciting and new.  I was very busy with my marketing plan and the creation of my personal brand.  I was active on the web and started to dabble with social media.  I even posted a few articles about the creation of my business on this blog. Not only was I blogging, but I was also tweeting.  I also spent some time expanding my local (Edmonton) network by joining a terrific Meetup Group here in the city.  I was really enjoying this change in my career, but alas was finding that playing with the web and going out for networking lunches wasn’t paying off for me in the short term.

I was having a speed to revenue issue which was resulting in a lack of eating issue.

Fortunately, while I was starting up the business I was also keeping my options open.  I had a few job interviews and finally in March I landed a wonderful job with a large post secondary education institution in Edmonton.  The role is terrific – with a focus on workplace safety, security and emergency management.  The organization is quite large in the community, its stable and has a wonderful diversity in terms of facilities, operations and people.  Since the end of March I’ve been getting the lay of the land and looking forward to making an exciting contribution to my new team.

My hope is to keep the Safety Forge brand alive, through this blog and other social web avenues, but I am not actively seeking external occupational health and safety consulting opportunities.  My business website (www.safetyforge.com) has been shelved and the url now is redirected to this blog.

On reflection, I think the lessons learned and the experiences from Safety Forge are incredibly valuable to me and may help others considering the life of a private health and safety consultant. I’ll be posting soon about some of those valuable lessons.

Thanks for listening!

Cause safety to happen today in your workplace…Andrew…a Canadian Safety Guy