What an HSE coordinator does on a diving project

Published 21 September 2026 · 9 min read · 1,817 words

In the org chart of a diving project there's a role that confuses newcomers: the HSE coordinator. They show up in meetings, sign paperwork, ask awkward questions and can stop a job, but they don't give orders to the diver or decide how the dive is run technically. Understanding exactly what they do, and where their authority starts and ends, is part of knowing how to work in this trade.

The letters stand for health, safety and environment, and they describe the scope of the role well: everything to do with people not getting hurt, not getting ill and not damaging the surroundings, without getting into how the work is technically carried out. That separation is deliberate, and it's the key to everything else.

Two separate authorities, not a hierarchy

The usual confusion is thinking the HSE coordinator sits above the diving supervisor. They don't, and it would be dangerous if they did. Technical authority over the dive belongs to the supervisor: they're the one who knows the tables, the equipment, the state of the gear and the capabilities of their team, and who answers for the decision to put someone in the water. Diluting that responsibility across a committee would destroy the chain of command that keeps the operation safe.

What the HSE coordinator has is something else: authority over the system. They verify that the conditions under which the work was authorised exist, that the equipment is as declared, that competencies are proven, and that the agreed controls are being applied. If any of that isn't being met, they can refuse or withdraw the permit, and the work stops. They don't decide how to dive; they decide whether the conditions are there for someone else to authorise it.

This dual-authority setup works when both sides respect it. A supervisor who sees the coordinator as an administrative nuisance, and a coordinator who tries to run the underwater operation, produce the same result: a project where safety becomes a negotiation instead of a method.

Before the project: the work nobody sees

Most of the value an HSE coordinator adds is generated before anyone gets in the water. In the preparation phase it's their job to build the scaffolding the whole operation will later rest on.

That includes the risk assessment for the full scope of work, done with the people who are actually going to carry it out, not in an office. A useful risk assessment identifies the real hazards of that specific job — pressure differential at an intake, electrical risk on a structure with impressed-current cathodic protection, vessel traffic, objects falling from deck, water contamination — and sets out controls that can be verified. A useless one lists generic items and ends up as a signature.

It also includes checking competence and fitness: that everyone holds the certification the operation requires, that medical certificates are current, that sea survival and site access training is up to date. And equipment auditing: that the diving system holds a valid certification, that equipment audits are closed out, that the recompression chamber is operational and tested, that breathing air quality tests are recent and from the actual system that will be used.

Finally, the emergency plan. Not the generic document, but the one that actually applies: who does what if there's an unconscious diver, where the reference hyperbaric centre is, how long it takes to get there by each available route, who calls whom and by what means if the primary one fails. An emergency plan that hasn't been rehearsed with the team who'll carry it out isn't a plan.

During the project: presence, permits and useful friction

Once the operation is under way, the work changes in nature. The coordinator manages the permit-to-work system, the mechanism by which each task is authorised under specific conditions with isolations verified. On industrial installations or energy plants this is especially critical: there's no diving on an intake, a discharge, or near rotating equipment without lock-out and isolation checked physically, not just declared over the phone.

They take part in the daily meetings and the briefings before each task, not to repeat slogans but to check everyone understands the same thing. They walk the deck. They watch how work is actually done, which is almost never exactly as written. And they pick up on what people mention in passing, which is usually the best source of information on emerging risks that exists on a project.

This is where the hardest part of the role shows up: independence. A project runs under schedule and cost pressure, and that pressure gets passed down, whether deliberately or not. The HSE coordinator is, structurally, the counterweight to that pressure. To be that, they have to be able to say no without their job depending on the person they're saying it to. When the organisation doesn't give them that independence — because they report to the project manager, because their contract renews based on client satisfaction, because the culture punishes whoever slows things down — the role becomes hollow and only the paperwork is left.

Incidentes: contener, preservar, entender

When something goes wrong, the coordinator follows a clear sequence. First, that the response works and no one remains exposed: that's the supervisor's and the plan's job, and the coordinator's role is to make sure it's being carried out and nothing is missing. Second, preserve the information before it disappears: the state of the equipment as it was left, panel logs, video and comms recordings, statements taken early and separately.

Third, the investigation. Its orientation defines the company's culture. An investigation that looks for the individual responsible always finds one, closes the file, and guarantees the incident happens again, because no one will tell the real story next time. One that looks to understand what conditions in the system made that error possible — procedure design, shift patterns, schedule pressure, training, equipment — produces changes that actually work. The industry's history, from the major offshore accidents down to the minor incidents that never leave the company, says the same thing: failures are systemic.

There's also a category of events that leave no one hurt and that are the most valuable material there is: near misses. Whether they get reported depends entirely on whether the team trusts that reporting carries no cost. Building that trust is probably the most important and least visible task of the HSE coordinator.

A real career path for the diver

For someone who has been in the water and is looking for continuity when the body or circumstances change, HSE coordination is one of the segundas carreras best-fitting options. The reason is credibility: a coordinator who has been a diver knows how to tell a control that actually works from one that only exists on paper, understands why a crew tired at the end of a rotation skips steps, and can't be talked round with false technical explanations. The team notices, and listens.

What needs to be added to that base is formal training in prevention, knowledge of the management systems the sector's clients use, and a skill that doesn't always come with an operational background: writing and communicating clearly with people outside the trade. The professional certifications in the sector and the industry events are good points of reference for guiding that transition, and the natural stepping stone is usually a spell as an onshore superintendent or as a client representative, where you learn to look at the operation from the outside without losing your feel for it from the inside.

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Published 11 September 2026 · By Arthur More, professional saturation diver

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