Spotlight on CSSE Members
Dan Suess
For 22 years, Dan Suess worked for a petrochemical company in the Greater Toronto Area. He began his career as an instrument mechanic within the industry, but pivoted to health and safety after a tragic event that took the life of a colleague. “His death really turned a corner for me in terms of the importance of focusing on health and safety. Of course, in the petrochemical industry, health and safety has always been paramount, for obvious reasons, but that particular incident really raised it to a higher-level profile for me. And that’s when I chose to become an environment, health, and safety manager within the company.”
Dan moved on from the company and started his own business, Success on Safety, which provides health and safety training, consulting, and measurement and sampling. Some of his first clients were an environmental abatement company and a couple of construction companies. Through some of the connections he made at his business, he was offered a role as a consultant trainer at the Pulp and Paper Health and Safety Association (PPHSA). “So I pursued that and pretty much put my own business to the side. The PPHSA later became Workplace Safety North, and I continued working for them.”
He retired after 17 years with this company, and moved to St. Thomas, where he resumed his Success on Safety business.
Dan has been a member of the CSSE since 2004, in both the Toronto and Hamilton chapters. When he moved to London during the COVID-19 pandemic, the local chapter was not holding events because of the pandemic, so he joined the Rose City Chapter in Windsor. “I attended as many meetings as I could, and then helped to restart the London Chapter.”
Dan is unequivocal about the value that the CSSE brings to its members. “It brings together a network of other health and safety professionals and practitioners — it helps members connect with other members and learn from each other. The variety of sessions that have been run by the various chapters — the information sessions as well as the health-and-safety-day events that they held — are key to these connections. And my ability, through the CSSE, to connect with health and safety equipment manufacturer and suppliers has also been tremendously valuable, both for me personally and also for my business.”
Dan is excited about the changes underway at the CSSE (and in fact has been an active participant in the reorganizing process) because he believes that “it will further allow people to be connected with a much wider range of health and safety professionals than they may have been in the past. I think this new structure will allow more of that networking and cross-pollination, if you wish, of information and sharing learning and experiences that we can all benefit from.”
He’s cognizant, though, of the challenges that may arise. “One of the challenges I foresee is the level of engagement and the interest in maintaining a community focus or community of interest. I think some members may be worried about the fact that that might get lost or that their interests may not be maintained. The more this process evolves, though, the more he thinks that folks are really starting to come around, they see that not only will this local focus remain, but that a much broader focus on connection will really benefit them, that it will be a tremendously powerful thing.”