Qesh Specialist

Overview:
Americold - Helping our customers Feed the World

**Here at Americold Whitchurch we are now recruiting for a QESH Specialist**

As the responsible coordinator, your primary task is to ensure that the site meets all standards and policies, including legislation and customer requirements, concerning quality and food safety. It is essential to maintain a constant audit-ready state. You will oversee and manage environmental, health, and safety (EHS) issues and activities at the site level, ensuring compliance with legal and company EHS standards. Additionally, you will contribute to improving EHS-related processes on-site.

You will also be responsible for managing the company's Quality Management System, including HACCP, and providing technical support to other departments through education, advice, and problem-solving. You will be expected to cultivate a positive food safety culture within the organization and act as the primary technical contact for all customers, suppliers, and third-party relationships, including certifications and accreditations. Finally, you will lead both internal and external audits.

Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
- Degree-level education in Food Sciences or equivalent, with a proven track record as a technical specialist in a high-turnover food or fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) environment.
- Previous experience working in a similar role of safety and quality with expert knowledge.
- Fundamental experience as a food safety certification auditor.
- Maintaining food safety certification is essential and should be documented.
- Minimum of 5 years' experience in the food industry.
- Ability to confidently deliver presentations to large groups of people.
- Interdepartmental reporting relationship with site general managers.

**Responsibilities**:

- Responsible for ensuring compliance with Food Safety systems, including BRC, ISO14001, FSC and ISCC.
- Lead for BRC, ISO, environmental and customer audits.
- Manage and maintain systems, ensuring adherence to requirements and leading cross-functional teams to ensure compliance.
- Establish and Implement processes and procedures to improve food safety, health and safety, environmental systems, hygiene, work instructions, document control, change control, internal auditing, pest control, specifications, and supplier approval.
- Site lead for the hygiene, food safety and GMP, environmental and health & safety improvements
- Ensure systems are in place to meet current certification, customer and legal requirements.
- Responsible for completing customer questionnaires and dealing with customer enquiries.
- Form a HACCP team to oversee the site's system review, implementation, and compliance.
- Site HACCP, TACCP and VACCP lead ensuring the use of appropriate review procedures and adequate document control.
- Collaborate with the site to ensure audit compliance and implement QESH improvement initiatives. Foster a strong partnership with customers and on-site personnel to develop and execute a plan to reduce complaints. Investigate complaints thoroughly, identify root causes, and implement appropriate corrective measures.
- Handling and resolving customer/site-related QEHS issues. Provide support for operational issues.
- Identification and delivery of continuous improvement opportunities to improve the QESH systems and site performance.
- Maintain all site accreditations and certifications.
- Coordinating EHS activities across departments and supporting EHS management systems.
- Securing training of relevant staff in EHS, such as manual handling, fire safety training and permit-to-work training.