Three disciplines. One person who knows your business.
One named advisor covering health & safety, quality and environmental across your business. Fixed monthly fee, agreed site days and one person maintaining the thread across all three management disciplines.
Three retained levels depending on site time and ownership.
Health & safety, quality and environmental under one advisor.
Then renews for 12 unless notice is given at least three months before term end.
This is not three consultants bundled together. The value is having one advisor who understands the operation across H&S, quality and environmental, sees where the systems overlap and remains involved long enough to follow actions through rather than simply producing another report.
Too much to manage on the side. Not enough to justify another full-time manager.
A lot of growing manufacturers reach the same awkward point. HSEQ has become too important to keep distributing around the business, but another permanent management role still feels difficult to justify.
“We don't have enough work for somebody five days a week.”
A permanent HSEQ Manager brings salary, employer costs and full-time capacity whether the business genuinely consumes that capacity or not.
“We can't keep splitting this between whoever has time.”
Safety, quality and environmental duties still need owners, audits still need running and corrective actions still need closing even when everybody already has another job.
Risk assessments, incidents and action follow-up become another part of an already full operational role.
Training matrices, certificates and evidence stay relatively organised, but nobody necessarily owns what the records are telling the business.
The ISO 9001 system keeps running, but improvement can turn into maintaining enough evidence for the next surveillance visit.
Waste, aspects, legal obligations and customer sustainability questions get handled when they become urgent rather than as one managed programme.
A surveillance audit, HSE inspection, serious near miss or new OEM customer can expose where responsibilities have become blurred. Usually the issue is not that nobody cared. It is that everybody owned a piece and nobody had the complete HSEQ picture.
One advisor holds the thread rather than responsibilities being scattered around the business.
Buy quarterly or monthly involvement rather than automatically funding five days every week.
Safety, quality and environmental decisions are managed together rather than as separate systems.
A fractional advisor closes the gap between informal internal ownership and another permanent management hire. You get a named person, agreed days and ongoing responsibility across all three disciplines without automatically adding another full-time role to payroll.
One salary does not automatically buy three equal specialisms.
Recruiting one HSEQ Manager can make complete sense where the workload genuinely needs somebody there full time. The harder part is finding one person with the same depth across health & safety, quality and environmental management.
The business is buying one person.
The indicative employment comparison used across the DBIM retained services assumes a £45,000 to £60,000 salary plus employer costs, pension, vehicle or mileage and ongoing professional development. Recruitment adds further cost in the first year.
Health & Safety
Practical workplace risk management with the technical competence to deal with machinery, substances, incidents and legal compliance.
Quality
Management of the processes, controls and corrective-action systems that determine whether the organisation consistently delivers what customers expect.
Environmental
Understanding the organisation's environmental impacts, obligations and evidence rather than treating environmental management as an ISO appendix.
Many capable HSEQ professionals have a naturally stronger discipline, whether that is safety, quality or environmental. That is not a criticism of the individual. It is the reality of trying to put several substantial technical disciplines into one permanent role. The business needs to decide whether the available depth matches the areas creating the most exposure and customer scrutiny.
Workplace risk, legal duties, incidents and ISO 45001 remain part of the same management relationship.
Process control, NCRs, audits and ISO 9001 are managed alongside the same business priorities.
Compliance, aspects, waste and ISO 14001 stay visible rather than becoming the third item on the agenda.
The argument for fractional support is not simply “£800 is cheaper than a salary.” It is whether the business needs full-time physical presence or consistent cross-discipline ownership. If the site genuinely needs someone there every day, recruit. If it doesn't, fractional support can be the more proportionate model.
Not a helpline. Not an annual report-and-leave visit.
The value of fractional support is continuity. The same advisor knows the site, the management systems, the open actions and why decisions were made in previous months.
A scheduled site day is only one part of the relationship. The advisor maintains context between visits, knows which actions are still open and understands how a change in one discipline can affect the other two.
Walk the floor
Talk to supervisors and employees, look at current activity and compare what is actually happening with what the management system says should happen.
Keep the integrated system current
Maintain relevant ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 arrangements, run the internal audit programme and make sure non-conformances are closed rather than simply recorded.
Review assessments when the work changes
Risk assessments and working arrangements should respond to changes in equipment, processes, substances and working methods, not simply an anniversary date.
Follow actions through to closure
Support investigation, establish root causes and keep corrective actions moving so the learning does not stop when the investigation form is signed.
Maintain legal registers
Monitor relevant H&S and environmental requirements and keep the business aware when changes could affect existing arrangements. Legislation moves. Someone has to notice.
Keep the training picture honest
Identify competence gaps, deliver relevant toolbox talks and short awareness sessions, and maintain a training matrix that reflects the actual requirements of the work.
Prepare, support and close out
Prepare the business for certification-body and customer audits, coordinate the evidence and make sure findings become completed corrective actions rather than recurring audit points.
Give the board a usable picture
Translate incidents, NCRs, compliance issues, overdue actions and priorities into concise reporting that senior management can understand and act on.
A recurring advisor already knows why a guard was changed, why a supplier corrective action remains open, what the last certification audit found and which environmental objective has stalled. That context makes the next site day more useful because time is spent moving the business forward rather than rediscovering the background.
The same person, month after month, who already knows why the guarding on line three changed in March and what still needs doing about it.
Regular site presence keeps the management system connected to the real operation.
Open actions remain visible between visits rather than becoming somebody else's list.
Audits, incidents and NCRs only create value when the corrective action actually gets finished.
Same advisor. Same three disciplines. Different levels of involvement.
Every Fractional HSEQ retainer covers health & safety, quality and environmental together. What changes between the three levels is site time and how much of the management system DBIM directly owns.
Every Fractional level includes the Advice Line, written appointment of DBIM as your competent person under Regulation 7, the internal audit programme across your standards, and the three-day QHSE Compliance Check at the start of each term.
Active QHSE
£800 / month Quarterly site dayA site day each quarter with ongoing support between visits. Designed around an internal person who still runs the management system day to day.
A certified business with somebody internal who runs the system day to day. DBIM adds external competence, oversight and structured review.
Embedded QHSE
£1,350 / month 1 site day every monthFull ownership of the integrated management system across all three disciplines. This is the level designed to replace the management role rather than simply support somebody internal.
A business where nobody internally owns the complete HSEQ function. Particularly relevant after losing an HSEQ Manager or where several ISO standards need ongoing ownership.
Embedded Plus QHSE
£1,950 / month 2 site days every monthTwo site days each month, or support across more than one site. Everything in Embedded plus additional capacity for improvement, culture and growth of the management system.
Larger, multi-site or more complex operations where the role needs additional time beyond routine management-system ownership.
Advice Line access and DBIM named in writing under Regulation 7.
Three-day baseline across H&S, quality and environmental at the start of each term.
Audit coverage across ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 where applicable.
Fractional HSEQ starts at Active QHSE because three management disciplines need enough time to be managed properly. If quality and environmental are already covered internally, the Outsourced Health & Safety Manager service starts at £500 per month.
Add extra site or project days when the agreed retainer needs temporary additional capacity.
Internal audits, pre-audit reviews, transition support and similar ISO day work.
Additional travel beyond the included distance is added separately.
Choose the level by how much ownership and site presence the business needs. Active supports an internal owner. Embedded takes ownership of the integrated function. Embedded Plus adds the time needed for greater scale, multi-site support and improvement work.
Compare the level of HSEQ ownership.
All three options provide the same named-advisor relationship and cover health & safety, quality and environmental. The step up is about frequency, direct system ownership and the additional capacity available for improvement work.
Advice Line access, written competent-person appointment and the three-day QHSE Compliance Check are included at every level. The table below shows where the greater management ownership starts as the retainer moves from Active to Embedded and Embedded Plus.
Active QHSE
£800 / monthEmbedded QHSE
£1,350 / monthEmbedded Plus QHSE
£1,950 / monthCore oversight, audits, advice and review while day-to-day system ownership remains inside the business.
Full HSEQ management-system ownership for businesses that do not have that role internally.
Greater site time for multi-site work, culture, further standards and improvement projects.
The step between tiers is about ownership, not access to a better advisor. Every level uses the same integrated HSEQ approach. The difference is how much of the system DBIM owns and how much time is needed inside the operation.
For businesses that need HSEQ ownership, without another full-time role.
Fractional HSEQ works best when the duties are substantial enough to need proper ownership but the operation does not genuinely need somebody in the role five days a week.
The core fit is manufacturing, engineering and warehousing businesses with roughly 10 to 500 employees, particularly where ISO standards, customer expectations and operational risk have grown beyond what an informal internal arrangement can comfortably manage.
You maintain one or more ISO certifications
ISO 9001, ISO 14001 or ISO 45001 already exists, or the business is working towards its first certification and needs someone to hold the system together afterwards.
You've lost an HSEQ Manager
The systems, audits, risk controls and customer requirements have not disappeared, but you do not want to rush into replacing the headcount before understanding what the role genuinely requires.
Customer expectations have stepped up
Larger customers, OEM supply chains or new tender requirements are asking for a level of compliance evidence and management maturity the current arrangement was never built to provide.
Someone has the title, but not the time
HSEQ sits with an operations, quality or senior manager alongside a substantial primary role, leaving the system dependent on what can be fitted around more immediate operational demands.
The role exists, but the competence is incomplete
The internal responsible person understands the business but needs greater technical depth across H&S, quality, environmental or several disciplines together.
Sometimes a retainer is unnecessary.
Fractional support is not automatically the right answer simply because DBIM can provide it.
If the business already has capable internal ownership and simply needs another experienced pair of hands for a specific project, internal audit, pre-audit review or temporary workload spike, buy additional days instead. It will usually cost less than putting an unnecessary retained structure around work your team already owns.
Fractional HSEQ is designed to hold the management thread over time.
Use ad-hoc ISO or consultancy days where your internal team remains in control.
If the role genuinely demands someone on site every day, recruitment is likely the better answer.
The right model depends on what the business needs somebody to own. The goal is not to turn every HSEQ requirement into a retainer. It is to make sure the level of external support matches the workload, competence gap and level of management responsibility that actually exists.
Less cost. Less daily presence. More cross-discipline depth.
Fractional support is not a cheaper version of a full-time employee. It is a different operating model with a different trade-off. You give up permanent daily presence in return for an agreed level of HSEQ ownership across three disciplines.
Permanent employee
≈ £68,000 / yearIllustrative recurring cost once salary, employer costs, pension, vehicle or mileage and professional development are considered. Recruitment adds further cost in year one.
Fractional advisor
£16,200 / year£1,350 per month for one site day each month plus ongoing ownership of the integrated HSEQ system, with support continuing between planned visits.
If you need daily presence, recruit.
Fractional support only works when agreed site coverage is enough for the operation.
If the operational risk, number of sites, shift pattern, audit demand or change programme genuinely needs continuous internal HSEQ leadership, the permanent employee is the better model. DBIM would rather help you recognise that on the first call than sell a retainer that cannot provide enough presence.
The simple arithmetic between the illustrative £68,000 recurring employment cost and £16,200 for Embedded QHSE is approximately £51,800 per year. But that saving only matters if the fractional level still provides enough HSEQ capacity for the operation. If it does not, the cheaper arrangement is not the better one.
Choose the operating model before comparing the price. If the company needs somebody internally every working day, employ them. If the business needs consistent ownership across health & safety, quality and environmental without full-time presence, fractional support can be the more proportionate option.
Clear boundaries from the start.
A Fractional HSEQ retainer provides broad management support across three disciplines, but it does not make one advisor every kind of specialist. Where independent certification, technical testing, accredited training or legal representation is needed, DBIM keeps that boundary clear.
“Not included” does not necessarily mean “you're on your own”. In several areas DBIM can scope the requirement, coordinate with the right specialist and help interpret the output. The specialist activity itself, however, remains separate from the monthly retainer.
Certification itself
DBIM can build and maintain the management system, help you choose a certification body and prepare the organisation for assessment. DBIM does not certify organisations or issue ISO certificates, and has no financial stake in the certification body you choose.
Out-of-hours emergency attendance
The standard Fractional HSEQ retainer does not include guaranteed out-of-hours physical attendance. Where the business needs a separate emergency attendance arrangement, that can be discussed and scoped independently.
Accredited training
Toolbox talks and inductions are included at every Fractional level. Accredited courses sit separately. IOSH courses are arranged through an IOSH-approved training partner, while NEBOSH qualifications and first-aid training are outside the retainer.
Occupational health & monitoring
Health surveillance, air monitoring, LEV examination and detailed occupational noise assessment require specialist providers. DBIM can identify the need, brief the provider and review the findings, but the clinical or technical testing is commissioned separately.
Legal representation
DBIM can support the technical and management response to an investigation or enforcement issue, but DBIM is not a solicitor and does not provide legal representation. Where legal advice is required, DBIM works alongside the appointed legal team.
Establish what specialist input is actually needed and what question it needs to answer.
Brief the external specialist and make sure they have the operational context required.
Translate technical findings into actions, controls and management-system changes where necessary.
Your legal duties stay with the employer.
The employer remains responsible for meeting its duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and relevant supporting regulations. The external advisor provides competent assistance to help the organisation manage those duties effectively.
Regulation 7 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires employers to appoint one or more competent persons to assist them in undertaking the measures needed to comply with relevant statutory requirements. Every Fractional HSEQ tier includes DBIM's written Regulation 7 appointment.
Competent person guidance →The Fractional Advisor coordinates the HSEQ picture, but does not pretend to replace every specialist the business may ever need. Keeping those boundaries clear means the right person does the technical work while somebody still remains responsible for turning the result into practical action inside the business.
Start with the facts. Then set the priorities.
Every Fractional HSEQ retainer begins by understanding the current position across health & safety, quality and environmental. The plan comes after the baseline, not before it.
The three-day QHSE Compliance Check is included in every level and runs at the start of each retainer term. It gives DBIM and the client a factual position before time and attention are committed to improvement activity.
A 30-minute call
Free. We talk through the sites, ISO standards, current ownership and what is pressing. From that conversation we establish whether Fractional HSEQ fits and which retainer level is the sensible starting point.
Retainer begins
The support begins on the agreed date with a fixed monthly fee, agreed site days and a 12-month initial term. DBIM becomes the named advisor and the retained relationship formally starts.
QHSE Compliance Check
Three days across health & safety, quality and environmental. The aim is to establish what is already working, what is missing and where the business is exposed before deciding what needs attention first.
Twelve-week plan
The baseline becomes a practical plan: what gets fixed, in what order and who owns each action on the client's side. Immediate exposure is separated from longer-term improvement so the first quarter remains manageable.
Quarterly review
Progress is reviewed against the plan each quarter. Priorities can move as incidents occur, audits land, customers change their expectations or the operation itself changes. The plan stays live rather than becoming an onboarding document nobody revisits.
A factual view across H&S, quality and environmental rather than assumptions about where the gaps sit.
Immediate exposure is separated from lower-priority improvements so everything is not treated as equally urgent.
Actions have owners and priorities, creating something practical for DBIM and the client to manage together.
The initial retainer runs for 12 months. It then renews for another 12 months unless notice is given at least three months before the end of the current term. At the start of each new term, the three-day QHSE Compliance Check runs again so the priorities for the next year are based on the business as it looks then, not the position from 12 months earlier.
Assess first. Prioritise second. Then keep reviewing. That creates a retained relationship built around the real position of the business rather than spending the first few months working from assumptions.
Before you decide, here's what to know.
The main questions are usually about what Fractional HSEQ actually owns, whether H&S-only support would be enough, and which of the three retained levels fits the business.
01 What does a fractional HSEQ advisor actually do?
A Fractional HSEQ Advisor covers health & safety, quality and environmental management across the business on an agreed level of retained support.
That can include walking the site, running the internal audit programme, maintaining management-system and legal-register arrangements, reviewing risk, supporting incidents, preparing for certification and customer audits, and keeping corrective actions moving.
The important difference from project consultancy is ownership. The relationship continues after the audit or site visit, so open issues remain part of somebody's actual workload until they are resolved.
02 How is this different from an outsourced health and safety manager?
The main difference is scope.
The Outsourced Health & Safety Manager service covers health and safety. Fractional HSEQ covers health & safety, quality and environmental as one retained arrangement.
If health and safety is the only genuine gap, the H&S-only retainer is usually the more proportionate and less expensive service. Fractional HSEQ makes sense where the business wants one advisor joining the three disciplines together.
03 Which retainer level fits us?
Active QHSE at £800 per month is designed for a business where somebody internally still manages the system day to day and DBIM provides quarterly site involvement, audits, advice and external oversight.
Embedded QHSE at £1,350 per month is the Recommended level when DBIM needs to own the integrated management system. It is the level most comparable to replacing the management role rather than supporting an internal owner.
Embedded Plus QHSE at £1,950 per month provides two site days per month and additional capacity for improvement projects, supervisor work, further standards and multi-site support.
04 Can we change level later?
Yes. The plan is reviewed quarterly, and additional days can be added at £450 per day where the workload temporarily needs more capacity.
The standard retainer runs for 12 months and then renews for another 12 unless notice is given at least three months before the end of the current term.
Renewal is the natural point to review whether the regular retainer should move up or down a level based on the actual workload and progress over the previous year.
05 Why does every term start with the QHSE Compliance Check?
Because the first priorities should be based on evidence rather than assumptions.
The QHSE Compliance Check takes three days across health & safety, quality and environmental and is included in every Fractional level at the start of each term.
It establishes a factual baseline, identifies gaps and creates the prioritised action picture used to build the first twelve-week plan. The check runs again at the start of each renewed term so the next year's priorities reflect the business as it looks then.
06 Does this cover ISO certification?
DBIM can prepare and maintain the management system, run internal audits, support corrective actions and prepare the organisation for external certification assessment.
DBIM does not certify organisations or issue ISO certificates. Certification remains an independent activity undertaken by the certification body selected by the client.
DBIM can help the business choose a suitable certification body and prepare for its assessment, but has no financial stake in which certification body is selected.
Quarterly site day with internal day-to-day ownership.
Monthly site day with full integrated-system ownership.
Two monthly site days with additional improvement capacity.
If the right level is not obvious before the first call, that is normal. The starting point is understanding who currently owns HSEQ, which standards and obligations are in scope and how much site presence the operation genuinely needs.
Work out whether you need a hire or a fractional role.
If you're weighing up permanent recruitment, have just lost an HSEQ Manager or have reached the point where three management disciplines need one clear owner, thirty minutes should be enough to establish whether Fractional HSEQ fits the gap. If the business genuinely needs somebody there every day, we'll say so.
Three disciplines, one named advisor and a QHSE Compliance Check at the start of each term.
Get in contact →Keep the management systems, audits, risks and actions moving while you decide what replaces the role.
Compare the actual HSEQ workload with the cost and capacity of another permanent management position.
Bring H&S, quality and environmental together rather than distributing the responsibilities across several roles.
Fractional HSEQ clients are primarily supported across Greater Manchester and the wider North West. Appointments elsewhere in the UK can also be considered where the agreed site-day pattern and travel work sensibly for both sides.
The objective is the right level of ownership, not automatically the largest retainer. If Active QHSE is enough, keep it there. If the business needs Embedded ownership or Embedded Plus capacity, we'll explain why. And if the job genuinely requires a full-time HSEQ Manager, recruitment is the better answer.