Simone Comello

Health, Safety & Environment Leader | Trust. Coaching. Zero Incidents. | Transforming Industrial Safety Through People, Data and AI

Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

About

Dynamic leader with over 20 years of experience in Health, Safety, Environment, and Security (HSSE) management, driving performance and cultural change across Manufacturing, Logistics, Oil & Gas, and Construction industries. Based in Switzerland over the past 9 years, I have successfully led strategic HSSE initiatives for multinational companies, achieving measurable improvements in safety performance, risk reduction, and regulatory compliance. I specialize in building strong safety cultures, leading diverse global teams, and implementing innovative, data-driven strategies to foster continuous improvement. 20+ years in HSE Management System development 12+ years leading multicultural teams 12+ years in contractor HSE management 10+ years in incident investigation 8+ years in emergency and crisis management

Experience

  • Area EHS Manager | Central Production Units (CPU) - EMEA at Sika
    Apr 2025 - Present · 1 yr 4 mos

    Area >2600 Employees | 8 Countries | 20 Factories Member of the CPU Extended Leadership Team 1) Driving a unified Environment, Health & Safety vision across a complex international manufacturing footprint. 2) Ensuring strategic alignment with centralised objectives, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation through proactive leadership and operational excellence

  • Holcim (Switzerland)
    • Head of Health & Safety - PoC Security & Resilience | Central Europe West
      Dec 2022 - Mar 2025 · 2 yrs 4 mos

      CHF 1.2B Turnover | Cluster >2500 Employees | 4 Countries | 6 Cement Plants | 120 Sites Member of the Holcim Central Europe West Leadership Team Driving Transformational Safety Leadership & Results 1) Strategic Impact: Developed and implemented a H&S strategy to boost senior management field engagement by 60% and cut serious injuries by 3x in two years. 2) Operational Leadership: Drove 100% HSE Scorecard completion and "High" cluster performance for two years running. 3) Inclusive Team Builder: Led a team of 25 professionals from 9 nationalities across 100+ sites in 4 countries. 4) Resilience Advocate: Ensured secure operations as Group Security and Resilience PoC, strengthening emergency response planning and crisis management

    • Health & Safety Optimization & Implementation Manager
      May 2022 - Nov 2022 · 7 mos

      1) Ensured compliance with industry regulations, risk management, and safety program implementation, introducing initiatives that improved compliance rates by 20% in one year. 2) Analyzed and reported on HSE metrics, developing a data-driven dashboard to monitor and enhance HSE performance across 21 business units in 4 countries

  • Regional Safety Engineer (Country Safety Representative) at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    Feb 2021 - May 2021 · 4 mos

    New Region - AWS - Switzerland Supported the launch of a new Infrastructure Region as Country Safety Representative;

  • Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) AG (Zürich Metropolitan Area)
    • Health & Safety Lead
      Sep 2019 - Jul 2020 · 11 mos

      $4.2B Gas Pipeline Project | 900 km Onshore-Offshore | >6000 team members | 4 Countries - Led the HSE team achieving World Class H&S Performance: 52M man-hours | 150 Million km | ZERO (!) Serious Injuries 1) Functional manager to in-country H&S teams, which include expatriates and local nationals; 2) Provided overall H&S leadership and support to the country H&S teams, including EPC contractors; 3) Leading continuous improvement , strategies, risk assessments and programs to proactively identify H&S hazards and risks, H&S legal compliance, H&S best practices, heading the Incident Investigation program;

    • Corporate Health, Safety & Environment Coordinator - PoC Crisis Management
      May 2017 - Sep 2019 · 2 yrs 5 mos

      1) Coordinated the Corporate Country HSE Managers in delivering excellent HSE deployment; 2) Developed the company HSE Management System (policies, standards, audits, contractors assessment, learning/training program, budget, Crisis & Emergency Management, etc ); 3) Responsible for Crisis Management, developing the strategy to ensure a robust Crisis Management System.

  • Health, Safety & Environment Manager - Project Manager (Varna) at STL Oil&Gas Services
    Jul 2014 - Apr 2017 · 2 yrs 10 mos

    South Stream Offshore Project – 900 km Offshore Gas Pipeline - Project Value: Euro 2.2 Billion 1) General organisation of the activities inside three different locations, managing a team of 30 people; 2) Stimulated with the necessary HSE Leadership, a new HSE culture along with the workforce (moving from a reactive to a proactive approach) in less than 24 months;