Suzanne Kilpatrick feels like she started her career in safety as a child. She grew up on a ranch and helped her parents at an agricultural feed store where she gained experience with confined spaces, powered industrial trucks, chemicals, moving parts, pinch points, and more. When she discovered safety as a field of study, it was the perfect fit.
Suzanne started her professional career in safety at CompSource Oklahoma, now known as CompSource Mutual Insurance Company, as a safety consultant. She traveled throughout the southeastern section of Oklahoma visiting businesses of all types, learning their operations, providing training, and helping them develop programs. After about five years with CompSource, she accepted a position with the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) as a safety specialist in their Facilities Services department. She then took a three-year detour to Texas School for the Deaf to serve as their risk manager before heading back to UT Austin for a safety coordinator position with Project Management and Construction Services (PMCS).
Currently, she works as the Campus Occupational Safety Manager in Environmental Health and Safety at UT Austin. She manages a team of safety professionals who are focused on injury prevention, asbestos, lead, and mold identification, industrial hygiene sampling, and exposure control device testing.
For our latest Faces of EHS profile, we sat down with Suzanne to discuss lessons learned, setting the tone for safety, and the importance of making others feel heard.
Q: How did you get your start in the field?
Growing up in the country and in a feed store helped prepare me for a career in safety, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. When I went to college, I considered a major in psychology, chemistry, or English. I was still undecided, and on my last semester of general education requirements, when I took my first “Intro to Safety” course, it just clicked. About two weeks into the semester, I remember thinking, “You can get a degree in common sense?!” and that was that. I decided to major in occupational safety and health. I soon learned that not all safety is common sense, and the farther I’ve gotten in my career the more apparent it has become that safety is not common sense at all. This field has allowed me to incorporate all of those other fields I was interested in. Psychology, chemistry, and writing are each a big part of a career in safety.
Q: Who has been your biggest influence in the industry?
I’ve been lucky to work for some amazing people who have been huge influences in my career. The first was my first boss, Steve Compton. Steve was patient with me as I was learning, but also pushed me out of my comfort zone. He is the reason I now love public speaking. He taught me the importance of communication, report writing, and preparedness, but also friendship and support both professionally and personally.
Another big influence on my career is my current boss, Andrea McNair. Andrea has pushed me to the limits professionally. She encouraged me to continue learning, and supported me as I studied and became a Certified Safety Professional and Certified Industrial Hygienist. I also just completed my master’s degree in occupational safety and health, and I never would have made the time to pursue a graduate degree without Andrea being my cheerleader. Andrea is a natural teacher and has taught me so many specialized topics that I never would have known without her. She has given me a completely different perspective on safety.
Q: What’s your best mistake and what did you learn from it?
When I was working in the construction industry, I focused on shifting the culture from reactive to proactive. Without a ton of extra time, I tried to get safety news out in an efficient manner. What better way to do that than creating a newsletter? Our department consisted of a fairly large number of project managers and construction inspectors who all managed contracted projects, but we also had a team of construction shops that could perform smaller projects without hiring a contractor. My focus for the newsletter was for the project managers, but I didn’t make that clear. I had published a handful of newsletters with really good feedback, so I continued with the effort. I wrote a newsletter about safety culture, and in it there was an article about productivity, quality, and safety. There was one sentence under quality that read “Making crafts people aware that they should accomplish their tasks according to a standard (e.g., the contract specifications) is an important aspect of getting the job done right.”
I was so focused on getting this information to project managers, I hadn’t considered how it may be interpreted by our in-house construction trades. Not long after it was published, I got an email from an angry trades professional because this sentence was interpreted as me saying the trades didn’t know what they were doing. It was in this moment that I realized the power our words have. All the effort I had put in to change the safety culture could be undone by a sentence.
I apologized and explained my intent, and luckily, we were able to move forward without it affecting our working relationship. The good thing is that they were reading the newsletters. They were really interested in safety and were taking time to digest all the information I was giving them. This was a big lesson in knowing your audience, all of your audience.
Q: What’s your favorite and least favorite part about working in the industry? Would you change anything?
My favorite part about working in the industry is building relationships with people. Being able to influence without authority is key to being a successful safety professional. Building connections with people helps them see you as a collaborator and not an authority figure. Occupational safety is about caring for people and helping them stay safe. Once I’m able to make it clear that I’m not there to get anyone in trouble but am there to help, people start to open up. Making someone feel heard, especially when it comes to safety, can completely pivot their attitude towards work.
There isn’t much I don’t like about working in my role. I guess if I had to pick something, it would be bottlenecks. There are a lot of things we try to push forward, and they are gaining momentum until they get caught in a bottleneck. That bottleneck can be upper management, purchasing, vendors, decision making, etc. I don’t like to lose momentum once we get something moving, so this can definitely become a frustration in my job.
The thing I would change in my industry is just better safety awareness. I’m surrounded by a super-intelligent group of faculty and staff, but safety isn’t always at the forefront of their minds. Incorporating safety into decision making when determining who occupies what spaces, purchasing new tools or equipment, or just general work practices would make a huge difference in preventing incidents.
Q: What are your thoughts on safety culture? How can company leaders make safety a value within their organization?
I’m of the belief that people generally want to do the right thing and make safe decisions. No one wants to get hurt at work. I have found that workers are likely to cut corners and take shortcuts when they are under production pressure. This is especially true when performance evaluations use metrics such as number of projects closed or something similar to determine raises.
Company leaders set the tone for safety. They can look closely at the messaging they are using around safety and what they are expecting workers to do. I would challenge any leader to literally work beside their employees for a week. This will highlight safety challenges that are faced and areas that need improvement. Putting a focus on safety education is always beneficial, but I also strongly encourage taking a step back to thoroughly evaluate a challenging task. Performing a risk assessment will help identify the potential and severity for that task if something goes wrong. Company leaders should encourage this type of behavior knowing that a failure during a task could result in a significant amount of lost time and costs.
Q: What safety concerns or issues do you think need more prioritization in EHS programs?
Industrial hygiene needs to be prioritized in most organizations. As safety professionals, we are typically really good at the obvious visible hazards, but those that are unseen exposures can sometimes be overlooked. Chronic chemical exposures can result in adverse health effects years down the line. The person exposed may not have any symptoms for years before a problem develops. Industrial hygiene is often challenging and a lot of work, but it is such an important safety topic that has the potential to influence quality of life even after retirement.
Q: How will new safety technologies influence the work being done by EHS professionals?
There are so many new technologies that will greatly improve our goals as safety professionals. The ability to collect real-time data through Bluetooth devices and wearables gives safety professionals the opportunity to make real-time changes to work practices. I’m a very metric-driven person, so having really good data to support our recommendations would be helpful. I could see where real-time monitoring of noise, for example, would allow a safety professional to educate the employee on their greatest exposure areas throughout the process instead of waiting for a report.
Q: What are you most proud of?
I have accomplished a lot of goals over the past five years that I’m very proud of. I think the most rewarding was becoming a certified industrial hygienist. Studying for that exam gave me access to so much information I didn’t know before and a deeper understanding of exposure potential and control methods. I also just finished my master’s degree while working full time, so I’m pretty proud of that too.
It is usually the little things that make me the proudest though. I recently put together a ventilation assessment for a welding area, and the project team and facility manager went out of their way to tell me that it was well put together and how much they appreciated it. That was a shining moment!
Q: Do you have any advice for people entering the profession?
You catch more flies with honey. It is easy to go in with a hammer and try to show off all you know, but you won’t influence anyone by doing that. Think of your role as a support role. We aren’t there to keep people safe; we are there to make sure people have the tools and knowledge to keep themselves safe. Take professional risks, think outside the box, and learn as much as you possibly can. Don’t put off continuing your education, the time will pass either way.