ALUMNI PROFILES...WHERE THEY ARE NOW
Guy Silvey
SENDING WORKERS HOME...HEALTHY
Turner Construction’s slogan is: “Every worker goes home from each of our jobs, every day.” In the western United States, it’s Guy Silvey’s job to make sure those workers go home healthy. He oversees all of Turner’s environmental health and safety activities in the region. His wide-ranging scope includes employee and subcontractor safety, compliance with codes and regulations, industrial hygiene, fire protection, workers’ compensation, environmental compliance, and loss control/risk management.
From an office in Portland, he directly manages safety directors in eight business units and oversees a professional safety organization of 50 managers. His job involves “solving a different problem every day.” This includes providing leadership in health and safety in “a field that traditionally does not support this type of culture.”
Before coming to Turner in 2003, Silvey worked for the computer chip manufacturer, Intel, starting in environmental health and moving into regulatory management. His first job after graduating was with the University of Washington Environmental Safety and Health department as a hazardous waste technologist. He was previously an environmental support technician with the Air Force.
The UW industrial hygiene graduate program appealed to him because of its emphasis on field-based research. He said this “allows students to get real-time experience outside the typical university environment.” His thesis adviser was Dave Kalman.
He said the most important thing he learned in his undergraduate and graduate programs was that “communication between different parties is key to driving change in any organization.”
He encourages current students to seek oppor-tunities for “real-life” experience, including field trips, research studies, and internships. Instead of becoming narrow specialists, he encourages them to embrace the entire field, as “true EH&S professionals are educated in all aspects of the field, including industrial hygiene, safety, ergonomics, and toxicology.”
Job opportunities are “wide open” in construction safety and health, he said. The emphasis has shifted from injury prevention to a broader concern for occupational health and prevention of exposures such as lead, silica, and noise.