Joe Schwed

Joseph (Joe) M. Schwed is Vice President, Construction Safety at Related. He is part of a team overseeing construction safety at the Hudson Yards project in mid-town Manhattan, NY. When completed this will be a 28-acre site with over 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space.

Schwed has over 20 years of experience and was previously the Port Authority of NY & NJ World Trade Center Site Safety Director responsible for ensuring risk management activities are coordinated among Port Authority, Silverstein Properties, and contractor safety teams involved in the Lower Manhattan World Trade Center Redevelopment. The concern for the safety of men and women working on mega-projects helped Joe to focus his efforts to develop and implement safety and health management systems, written operating policies, and procedures for programs such as incident investigation, lockout/tagout, confined space entry, US-OSHA record keeping, and numerous related areas. Prior to that he was the Corporate Manager of Global HSE Operations for Honeywell International, Morristown, NJ. During his time there, Joe led comprehensive safety audits of construction sites, chemical plants, and manufacturing facilities in the USA, Australia, Asia and Europe.

An ASSE professional member for over 20 years, he was President of the NJ Chapter and served as Area Director for the Metropolitan Area overseeing the operation of two NJ Chapters and two NY Chapters. He received the ASSE’s NJ Chapter and Region 8 Safety Professional of the Year awards.

Schwed was the recipient of a National Institute of Safety and Health (NIOSH) scholarship grant for his higher education. He is a former Chairperson of the NJ State Industrial Safety Committee and was an Emergency Medical Technician. Currently, he is in his second term as President of the Safety Executives of New York which focuses on improving worker safety in NY. He has presented on Six Sigma, Measuring Safety Performance and How to Manage Safety at a Multi-Billion Dollar Construction Site at professional development conferences.