Redlands Group: “Who you partner with becomes a reflection of you” Dylan Short CHSC CRM
Managing Director
The Redlands Group Inc.

I feel very strongly that who you partner with becomes a reflection of you and your individual performance. I met Bridget through the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE). She’s attended conferences in Canada for five years, and we met through some mutual friends. Bridget had an opportunity with Kal Tire*, a Canadian-based tyre corporation with franchisees who deliver to retail and commercial clients through a series of fixed stores and mobile units. Bridget was approached by them to put together a search for a Safety Management System.

Bridget has some fantastic experience, not only in selecting systems but in utilising them and in knowing what system quality characteristics are necessary within an organization. If you’ve never used a system before it’s difficult to be able to imagine the things that you want versus the things you don’t, and the types of functionality you’re going to want to have. Each system provider will boast about being able to do a variety of functions, however you might not need them all, and part of the difficulty is actually being able to do a comparison. To meet the client’s needs, we were able to partner and leverage Bridget’s systems knowledge with my knowledge on regulatory and standards requirements to deliver the client recommendations for decision making.

I work in a similar partnership with other individuals and organisations on a regular basis. While I get asked to partner on various projects, I choose those partnerships carefully, in part because I feel very strongly that who you partner with becomes a reflection of you and your individual performance. Primarily I look to be able to engage in projects where I can understand and see a successful outcome. Bridget was able to describe the project scope, including the roles and responsibilities and the expectations of the client. It made for a very simple decision as she did her homework to be able to help the client understand what success would look like.

In this case, we had a client who had a low level of knowledge about their own system requirements. A lot of the discussion was around what should it look like, what they as an organisation needed, and what were the possibilities for the future. They started out with a very short list of internal requirements, and Bridget really took them through everything to be able to say here’s a number of additional opportunities, that while you might not want to do that on day one, here’s where you can actually utilise this system to help you in the future. You could see very quickly the client was at ease during the conversation.

I would absolutely recommend Bridget for this type of work. She has very good communication skills and is a very personable individual who is able to help understand a client’s needs and then deliver on whatever it is she’s promised to be able to do. She has an honest approach because she genuinely wants what is best for the client.

*Kal Tire are an international tyre distributor, operating globally, primarily in Canada, the US, the UK and Africa. This project was undertaken for the Canadian retail division. After a process of investigation, Bridget recommended two Health and Safety systems, detailing the relevant functionality of each, and Kal Tire selected one of those two.