Director-Incident Management

Tallgrass•Lakewood, CO

20h

About The Position

Primary purpose: The Director — Incident Management leads and governs the full lifecycle of Tallgrass’ enterprise incident investigation and management program to ensure consistent, timely, technically rigorous investigations of undesired events (including natural gas incidents and hazardous liquids and CO2 pipeline accidents). The Director, Incident Management reduces safety risk for the company by managing the effectiveness of corrective actions, communicating lessons learned, and performing proactive analysis of leading indicators, systemic risks, and learnings from previous internal and external events. The Director continuously improves the investigation function, enforces compliance with the Company Undesired Event Investigation Standard and applicable federal/state regulations (e.g., PHMSA, OSHA, EPA), and acts as a senior liaison with Legal, Asset Integrity, EHS, Operations, and executive leadership.

Requirements

Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, safety, forensic science, metallurgy, occupational health, or related technical discipline. Master’s degree preferred.
Minimum 10+ years’ relevant experience in incident/accident investigation, process safety, asset integrity or forensic investigation, including leadership of complex multidisciplinary investigations.
Demonstrated familiarity with pipeline operations (gas, hazardous liquids, CO2), PHMSA and applicable federal/state reporting requirements (49 CFR Parts referenced in Section 6), API RP 1173 Pipeline Safety Management Systems.
Required: Completion of BakerRisk Incident Investigation Training and demonstrable experience using the CATree technique. If BakerRisk training is not already held, candidate must complete within an agreed timeframe.
Proven experience with physical evidence collection, chain-of-custody, specimen handling and coordination with metallurgical laboratories
Strong working knowledge of investigative tools
Prior experience coordinating legal strategy with counsel to preserve privilege
Excellent interviewing and stakeholder management skills; ability to present findings to senior leadership and regulators.
Demonstrated project management, budget oversight and people leadership skills.
Must possess and maintain a valid driver’s license and a driving record satisfactory to the company and its insurers (for travel).
Sitting; standing; walking or moving throughout facility; driving; talking; seeing (specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus); hearing; feeling; bending or stooping; squatting or crouching; reaching; kneeling; pushing; pulling; lifting up to 25 lbs.
Must be able to sit for prolonged periods of time.
The employee is regularly required to use hands to type, touch, handle, or feel.
The employee is required to talk and hear.
The employee is frequently required to stand and reach with hands and arms.
The employee is occasionally required to walk and climb or balance.
The employee must regularly lift and /or move up to 10 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.
Infrequent overnight and weekend travel may be required.
Required to carry a cell phone and be available to respond during working and non-working hours.
The successful candidate will be required to clear a drug screen and a complete background check, including credit report for certain positions, after an offer has been extended and prior to being employed.

Nice To Haves

Preferred certifications Certified Incident Investigator (TapRooT or equivalent), Certified Safety Professional (CSP), NACE/AMPP corrosion certifications, or relevant forensic/metallurgical credentials.
Experience with pipeline integrity/asset integrity programs and PHMSA compliance.
Training/experience in digital forensics for SCADA/IT data.
Advanced root cause analysis, systems thinking and CATree expertise.
Evidence preservation and chain-of-custody procedures.
Digital evidence handling (SCADA logs, time‑stamped data) and coordination with IT.
Interviewing, witness management and documentation best practices.
Data analysis and dashboarding (Excel, Power BI or similar) for trend analysis and KPI reporting.
Crisis and incident command coordination.

Responsibilities

Proactive Risk Identification & Organizational Learning Analyze incident, near-miss, and abnormal operations trends to identify systemic risk patterns and degraded controls that could lead to future incidents
Lead periodic enterprise incident trend reviews with Operations, Engineering, and Safety leadership
Maintain centralized lessons-learned library and ensure knowledge transfer across assets and regions through PSMS, monthly safety presentations, and other avenues to prevent repeat incidents
Ensure knowledge earned is integrated into procedures, training and design
Serve as subject matter expert to Asset Integrity and Engineering on control effectiveness and operational risk
Program leadership and governance Own and continuously improve the Company’s formal undesired event investigation program in alignment with all related O&M Procedures, API RP 1173 recommendations, and 49 CFR requirements.
Ensure investigation documentation is completed and retained
Establish and maintain dashboards, KPIs and executive reporting
Investigation oversight and execution Lead and/or approve investigation approach for undesired events
Select and approve the Investigation Lead and team for higher-category events in consultation with the Senior Vice President Engineering, Senior Vice President Operations and Maintenance, Vice President-Associate General Counsel Chief Operations Compliance Officer, and other executive leaders.Ensure investigations follow prescribed methodologies that may include CATree and other appropriate structured tools (5-Whys, What‑If, logic trees)
Ensure investigations follow the scientific method and the Company workflow
Conduct periodic quality reviews of investigation outputs for consistency and rigor
Legal, regulatory, and external engagement Coordinate legal notification and privilege strategy with Vice President-Associate General Counsel Chief Operations Compliance Officer. for Category 2-3 and sensitive investigations
Serve as primary investigation technical liaison for regulators, insurers, and third‑party experts as needed.
Team selection, training and capability development Maintain enterprise investigator readiness (roster, training, deployment protocols)
Define and maintain investigation team selection criteria (cross‑functional representation, SME inclusion, independence).
Lead and mentor cross-functional investigation teams during incident response and analysis
Ensure Investigation Leads complete BakerRisk Incident Investigation Training and that teams are conversant with CATree and required RCA techniques; maintain training cadence.
Manage budgets and external contract investigators.
Fact finding, interviews and documentation Oversee witness management, initial statements and formal interviews
Ensure robust timeline development and iterative refinement
Supervise development of causal factor identification, root cause analysis, SMART recommendations, action items and incidental findings
Corrective action tracking and effectiveness Ensure action items are aligned to root causes, approved by the appropriate executive (VP Ops, SVP Ops & Maintenance, SVP Engineering) and tracked to closure
Validate effectiveness of corrective actions, document closure and identify repeat or degraded controls
Escalate overdue or ineffective actions
Emergency response interface & readiness Participate in on-call rotation for incident response and travel to field sites to lead or support on‑scene investigations; coordinate with Emergency Response and Incident Command as needed
Ensure investigators coordinate with OCC for SCADA / digital evidence and with IT for secure handling of digital records.
Support emergency preparedness improvements based on event learnings
Near Miss Program management Own and continuously improve Company near miss reporting programs
Process near miss reports to ensure timely creation of effective corrective actions and communication of hazards to appropriate groups as needed
Evaluate trends to ensure risks from identified patterns and themes are mitigated
Continuous improvement leadership Embed plan-do-check-act into incident management processes
Benchmark against industry best practices
A strong process safety mindset and approach to managing our assets and people.
Ability to effectively communicate and listen.
Establish an environment of leadership accountability.
Strategic Thinker: Ability to translate details into bigger picture implications driving the business forward, challenging the status quo.
Understands industry, market, and organizational dynamics with the intellectual horsepower to handle growing complexity and ambiguity.
Aligns the right resources to the task at hand; foresees and plans around obstacles.
Create an environment of ongoing training and learning to maximize performance of investigation leads and team members.
Consistently challenge each aspect of the operational process to improve safety.
Must be able to take an unpopular stand if necessary for the betterment of the Company.
Must encourage a transparent and healthy debate while seeking the best alternative.
This leader is looked to for direction in a crisis, faces adversity head on, and is energized by tough challenges.
Builds Trust and Credibility: Makes decisions based on organization’s values - actions are consistent with company’s core values.
Ability to set clear vision - role models a growth mindset and shares mistakes widely for others to benefit and embraces a learning mentality.
Drive proactive cross-functional alignment and collaboration internally with key stakeholders in Operations, Engineering, Commercial and Project Teams to optimize the delivery of services across all assets.
Proven ability to influence across organizations without direct hierarchical ownership of teams.
Responsible for developing and maintaining professional relationships with both internal and external clients.
Accomplishment of performance goals in line with the company’s long-term and short-term objectives.
Demonstrate and enforce the highest professional integrity, ethics and safety discipline.
Demonstrate and reinforce a culture of regulatory compliance.
Deal with a wide variety of people with tact, courtesy and professionalism.
Speak clearly, both in person and by telephone, using a high level of verbal skills and listen carefully.
Maintain a regular, dependable attendance and a consistently high level of performance.
Will work non-traditional hours as needed.
Maintain a high regard for personal safety, for the safety of company assets and employees, and the general public.
Other daily, weekly, monthly or special project duties as identified and defined.
Other duties as assigned.