Practical Safety. Real Controls. Better Work.
Where To Start
Health and safety consulting across the sectors where the risk is real. A technology practice helping New Zealand businesses of any kind put AI to work properly. And NeuroSafe, designing safety that works for neurodivergent people.
Technology
AI training, custom apps and agents, and safe adoption for any New Zealand business. Privacy, security, and integration with the systems you already run.
Explore →Inclusive Safety
Neurodivergent safety consulting and software. Designing work, training, and documents around how people actually read, focus, and process, so safety lands for everyone on the team.
Visit NeuroSafe →Consulting · Sector
Site-specific safety plans, audits, task-level risk assessment, toolbox training, and supervisor coaching that holds up under site pressure.
Explore →Consulting · Sector
Farms, orchards, and growers. Vehicles and machinery, agrichemicals, working with animals, and inductions that land with seasonal teams.
Explore →Consulting · Sector
Machine guarding and isolation, hazardous substances, forklift and pedestrian separation, noise and health monitoring across every shift.
Explore →About ProperSafe
ProperSafe is a New Zealand health and safety consultancy based in Upper Hutt, Wellington. We work with contractors, growers, manufacturers, and operations teams who are tired of compliance theatre and want systems that genuinely protect people and performance.
We are not a paperwork business. We are a thinking business. Our work starts with understanding how work actually happens, not how procedures say it should, then we build controls that fit.
ProperSafe is led by Tom Jones, a Senior Health & Safety Advisor with over 20 years of field experience across New Zealand. Tom is a Senior Member of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM) and holds a Senior H&S Advisor role with Greater Wellington Regional Council.
The same method drives the other two. NeuroSafe applies it to neurodivergent safety, designing work and documents around how people actually read, focus, and process rather than expecting everyone to cope with the same format. Visit NeuroSafe →
And it drives our technology work. Five years hands-on with AI, a background in digital media, psychology, and multimedia, and a suite of apps designed and shipped in-house mean we can help any business adopt AI without the years of trial and error it took us. See Safety Tech & AI →
Our Approach
Too many safety programmes default to the bottom of the hierarchy. PPE gets issued, a form gets signed, and the hazard remains entirely in place. This is not safety. It is the appearance of safety.
ProperSafe focuses on the top three. Every engagement starts with an honest audit of where your current controls sit, then we work methodically upward, eliminating, substituting, and engineering the risk out wherever the work allows.
Where administrative controls are genuinely the right answer, they still have to work. That is where NeuroSafe and our Safety Tech & AI practice come in: documents people actually read, and systems that keep a control alive instead of leaving it in a folder. See Safety Tech & AI →
The result is a workplace where people are protected by design rather than reliant on individual vigilance in every moment. That is what practical safety looks like.
FAQ
A health and safety consultant helps a business identify its real risks and put practical controls in place to protect workers and meet its legal duties. At ProperSafe that means getting on site to understand how work actually happens, then building H&S systems, risk assessments, and training that people genuinely use rather than paperwork that sits in a folder.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 requires every PCBU to manage risks to workers and others so far as is reasonably practicable. It does not mandate hiring a consultant, but most businesses without in-house expertise use an H&S advisor to meet those duties properly. ProperSafe helps NZ businesses understand exactly what reasonably practicable means for their operation and put it into practice.
Compliance is about satisfying paperwork and legal requirements, while genuine risk control is about actually removing or reducing a hazard so people are protected by design. Many programmes default to issuing PPE and signing forms while the hazard stays in place, which only looks like safety. ProperSafe is engineering-led and focuses on the top three levels of the hierarchy of controls, eliminating, substituting, and engineering risks out wherever the work allows, rather than defaulting to procedures and PPE.
ProperSafe works alongside construction teams from pre-construction planning through to incident investigation. That includes site-specific safety plans, task-level risk assessments, site audits, toolbox training, and supervisor coaching. The focus is on controls that hold up under real site pressure, not documentation that diverges from what happens on the ground.
ProperSafe works with NZ businesses across construction, manufacturing, agriculture and horticulture, infrastructure, and environmental services. The approach is tailored to each sector's critical risks, from cranes and machinery on site to quad bikes, agrichemicals, and seasonal teams on farms. The business is based in Upper Hutt, Wellington and serves clients throughout New Zealand.
Contact
Whether you need a full safety system build, a one-off audit, or just a second opinion on a risk, we are easy to reach and quick to respond.