John Hynes
BEng(Hons) MSc(Eng)

John Hynes has been working to improve the fall protection industry for 20 years.

Having achieved a degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s by research in construction materials, John, spent several years working as a Civil Engineer, mainly in the Nuclear and Petrochemical sectors.

In 1998, John was asked to join HCL Safety, the UK’s largest fall protection contractor as Technical Manager. At this time, much good work had been achieved in the design of products, but a clear and consistent approach to the design application was still in its infancy and John set about creating internal processes and systems to improve this approach.

In 2004 John moved to Bacou-Dalloz (now part of Honeywell) to lead on the design of engineered fall protection systems across Europe and to support the UK sales team with project work. This involved design work for new products and the development of design and management systems, as well as the development and delivery of training for staff, partners and clients.

From 2010 to 2011, John worked for Heightec, a small UK-based manufacturer of Height Safety equipment, focussed on rope access, utilities and emergency services access teams. The role of Group Technical Manager was wide-ranging, including; product design, intellectual property protection, certification and documentation.

Following this John was approached to join to Kingspan, a World-leading building products company who were keen to improve and increase their presence in the Global fall protection market. This commercially demanding role again called for clear direction to be created and disseminated on the best application of fall protection solutions, to a very commercially sensitive building envelope market.

In 2016, John was invited to join Fixfast, a smaller building products company who have distribution rights to some unique work at height systems but could see the need to increase their technical and commercial capabilities. In his role as Head of Safe Access, John created many design and management processes to support the business objectives.

Then in 2018, John set-up his own consultancy business, Autumnal Services, which in 2020 merged with Higher Safety. This combined consultancy remains focussed exclusively on safe work at height issues and provides a range of independent consultancy and training services to a wide and varied client base, including architects, contractors, product manufacturers and building managers. Due to John’s deep and varied experience he can provide a more advanced level technical support than is generally available from manufacturers or installers operating in the fall protection sector.

Through-out his time in the fall protection sector John has been involved with European, National and Sector standards bodies and/ or associations. He has spent time on PH/005 Personal Fall Protection at the British Standards Institute (BSI), working on the development of various European and British standards related to work at height. He has also provided support and guidance to various fall protection contractors on legal and technical issues related to relevant regulations, directives and standards. These have involved both a general approach and also following specific incidents.

John is currently one of the leading advocates of the British Safety Industry Federation Height Safety Group (BSIF-HSG), where new professional processes, technical standards and qualifications are being developed for the fall protection industry. He has taken the lead in bringing fall protection contractors into the BSIF-HSG and has developed the Code of Conduct for members of the group. This focus on contractors who install permanent fall protection and access systems has led to the development of improved processes for the specification and design of such systems.

Autumnal Services Website can be found here.