Avetta's Wyatt Bradbury, named ASSP's 2026 Safety Professional of the Year, is helping rewrite a key standard
The safety professional now helping shape one of North America's most important occupational health and safety standards was, days after speaking with Canadian Occupational Safety, named the American Society of Safety Professionals' 2026 Safety Professional of the Year.
Wyatt Bradbury, CSP, CHST, CIT, Principal of Health and Safety at Avetta, serves as the company's lead representative on the ANSI Z16 committee, alongside Scott DeBow, CSP, ARM, Avetta's Director of Health, Safety and Environmental. The committee is responsible for the Safety and Health Metrics and Performance Measures standard, one of the most widely referenced frameworks for evaluating occupational safety performance in North America.
ASSP recognised Bradbury for his leadership and technical expertise, including work to improve PPE standards for women and development of Avetta's Safety Maturity Index and Cultural Maturity Index.
Why Avetta belongs in the room
Avetta operates as a global supply chain risk management platform, collecting safety and health data from hiring clients and suppliers worldwide. That scale of data gives the company a perspective few can match when defining how safety performance should be measured.
"We are one of the primary collection sources of safety and health information," Bradbury said. "We supercharge anything any individual can collect within themselves, just because we have access to so many different perspectives and it all comes into one place."
Simplifying a standard that got too complex
The Z16 standard operates on a five-year revision cycle. Last updated in 2022, it is now in an 18-month working period ahead of an expected 2027 release. The committee's priority is pulling back from the rigidity of the current version.
"The standards committee admits that the 2022 version got a little bit complex: a lot of formulas, a lot of rigidity," Bradbury said. "We want to bring some flexibility back so that no matter the size of organization, it's something that they can use."
A central debate is prescription versus openness: should the standard specify which measurement frameworks to use, or define the categories (leading, lagging, business impact) and let organisations choose? Bradbury favours openness, so mature organisations can use advanced approaches like ASTM E2920 or SIF-related methods, while smaller teams can work with familiar tools.
The committee is also working to better connect management system standards, including ISO 45001's Section 6.2 and Z10's Section 6.3 on targets and objectives, to a practical measurement system. "Those are great goals, but they don't necessarily automatically equate to something you can measure," he said.
Making the business case
Bradbury is pushing the profession to embrace business impact metrics more fully, figures that tie safety performance directly to organisational outcomes.
"Are you driving up employee retention? Are we supporting a reduction in absenteeism? More people at work, as associated with some sort of safety and health measure, helps the business be more profitable," he said. "Availability, retention, absenteeism reduction are ones that we need to start really tying ourselves to as a profession."
A message to Canadian safety leaders
Bradbury was clear on what he wants Canadian practitioners to take from this work.
"Safety is not a competitive advantage. We all need to be pursuing what we think could be the best ideas. Don't write it off just because it says America in the title. A rising tide floats all boats."
