Canary in a Coal Mine

"If safety is number one, okay, all your employees are gonna stay home and wrap themselves in bubble wrap. And guess what? Bye bye, company." Dylan Laser, Director of Safety at Kinsley Construction. OK, everyone, this episode challenges one of the most familiar phrases in our industry, and honestly, it might change how you think about safety altogether. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety...

"My whole goal is to drive operational excellence, but operational excellence is part of EHS, or EHS is part of operational excellence, if you do it appropriately. It shouldn't be siloed and separate. It should be together." - David Payton, VP of EHS at TSC Construction OK, everyone, this episode goes straight at one of the most persistent failures in our industry: treating safety like a standalon...

"You don't just train everybody one time and say, okay. Everybody's good. You don't need any more training. You have to constantly be reminding people." - Brian Biancavilla, Director of EHS at Trelleborg Engineered Coated Fabrics OK, everyone, this one cuts straight to the heart of what actually separates real safety leadership from safety theatre. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Ri...

"You don't wanna just walk in and say, okay, here's your new program, now implement it. You gotta figure out, does it work? Why is it working other places? Why isn't it working here?" - David Leff, VP and Board Member at Sustainable Ohio OK everyone, this one cuts right to the heart of what’s broken in how we approach safety, and how to fix it. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk M...

"Safety is relationship management. That's what it comes down to. It's being able to connect with people and understand their needs and what they wanna see and how they wanna see it and responding to them." - Tom Garske, President, Garske Consulting OK, everyone, this one’s for the builders, supers, and owner-operators who are running lean teams and still trying to do safety the right way. In this...

"I don't care if the people are safe. I care if the people care to be safe. And that might be a play on words, but they've gotta get it. When they get it, your job's done." - Stew Murphy, Director of EHS at Mactac NA OK, everyone, this one’s for the leaders who know safety isn’t a scoreboard, it’s a mindset. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Stew Murph...

"If you're genuine about adhering to your code of ethics and applying that, you just try and find people of good character and good integrity." Kate McGee, Director of Health and Safety at Pennoni OK, everyone, this one’s for the leaders trying to scale safety across big, complex teams without adding layers of noise or bureaucracy. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I...

"Our philosophy is behavior-based. We focus on the why and not the what, and we feel that having the human element really is where you can have an impact." Steve Catherman, VP of Safety at Tecta America Commercial Roofing OK, everyone, this one’s for the leaders who are growing fast and feeling that pressure to “keep the safety culture together,” while everything around you scales, shifts, and som...

"The first thing that I wanted to do, I aligned our leadership and our organization to create a framework of trust where every year we build upon people telling us more and more near misses." Matt Barnes, Director of Environmental, Health, and Safety at MD&A OK, everyone, this one’s for the safety pros who know that real leadership doesn’t come from policies, it’s forged from building trust in the...

"It actually costs more time and money to do it unsafe in the end, once you've had an incident, than to do safety directly." - David Doggette, Director of Safety at LPX Group Okay, safety leaders, this one’s for anyone trying to scale safety across multiple sites, teams, and regulations without losing focus on what really matters: your people. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Ma...

"Language is inextricably linked to life, and when we address it holistically, we actually find that you can drive safety and retain the talent." Monique Lewis, Founder and CEO of Next 2 Native Language Learning OK, everyone, this one’s for everyone leading diverse teams while tackling multilingual challenges on the job site. The right words in the right language and context go a long way towards...

"Every one of our potential customers talks about safety with us. It's actually a part of our conversation, and it will just take one incident, and our license to operate goes away." Karim Ibrik, COO at Rondo Energy OK, everyone, this one’s packed with insight and real-world impact. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Karim Ibrik, COO of Rondo Energy, to...

"I always reference what I call the three e's - educate, empower, and enforce. The older and more mature I get, the more I realize that enforcement works better if you're more positive than negative." Colby Davis, Safety Director, Ervin Cable Construction OK, everyone, this one is packed with wisdom and heart. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Colby Da...

"We have to get to the point in safety in general across the construction industry, where the safe choice is always the easy choice. And, I mean, I hate to say it, we're not there yet." - Chris Daniels, Senior Safety Director at Mortenson. Safety excellence requires making the safe choice the easy choice, especially in a high-risk construction environment. On this episode of The Canary Report: Saf...

"Safety should be about getting people home, and it should be about the people, not about meeting the bare minimum because the law says we have to." Ecudemio Gutierrez, Director of Safety at DC Water. OK, everyone, if you really care about the people who work for you and getting them home safe every day, this episode is for you. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit...

"Creating an environment where people feel comfortable to report said near misses is critical." - Jo Pina Hello and welcome everyone. For a start, this one’s packed with rich insights you can use and apply right away at your workplace, and on a personal level, I’ve waited a long time and looked forward to meeting Jo Pina on this week's episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management. Jo is...

"Safety doesn't start on the ground. It doesn't start on the roof. It starts right here, and to me, safety starts with mental health.” Jeanne Boyd Curtis OK, everyone, this one is packed with wisdom and heart. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Jeanne Boyd Curtis, COO of Boyd Bone Dry, to explore what it really takes to build a safety-first culture in c...

"Mind-blowingly so, every three hours, there is a person or vehicle that negatively encounters railroad equipment. Every three hours." Crystal Blasius OK, everyone, this one is powerful. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Crystal Blasius, Director of Safety Investigations at Amtrak, to unpack her incredible journey from answering a newspaper ad to resha...

"What we know about suicidality is that it's almost always a combination of a lack of hope and a lack of connection." - Josh Vitale We are celebrating Construction Suicide Prevention Week, and this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management podcast is dedicated to everyone undergoing mental trauma with the plea to please reach out for help, just know that you’re not alone. I am your ho...

"A bad process will beat a good person every time, and about 85% of the variability in safety that we have is due to the processes and not the people." Blake Baldwin That’s how strongly Blake Baldwin feels about the urgent need to update safety processes and de-risk the working environment. This week on The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, host Michael Zalle welcomes Blake to explore how s...

What if the key to safer job sites isn’t more rules, but more humanity? In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, host Michael Zalle sits down with Hal Wheatley, Corporate Safety Director at Manhattan Construction Group, for a frank conversation about what it really takes to lead safety well. Hal shares how his transition from ministry to safety leadership taught him that gen...

Treating safety as just a compliance box to check is a mistake, especially at scale. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, host Michael Zalle sits down with Heather MacDougall, former Vice President, Worldwide Workplace Health & Safety at Amazon, to talk about leading 9,000+ safety pros across 1,000+ sites, navigating the chaos of COVID, and reshaping how we think about r...

What if the key to better safety leadership isn’t more rules, but better listening? In this episode of The Canary Report, host Michael Zalle welcomes Tim Page-Bottorff, HSSC Senior Director at JLL and a Marine Corps veteran, to break down what it really takes to transform workplace safety culture. Drawing on decades of experience, Tim shares why “Stop, Collaborate, and Listen” isn’t just a lyric,...

Confined spaces in underground infrastructure are nothing like factory floors, and treating them the same is a mistake. In this episode of The Canary Report, host Michael Zalle sits down with Dennis Pivin, Director of Health, Safety, and Environmental at NASSCO, to talk about building better safety cultures, why simulators matter, and how to actually get executives to listen. It’s about worker-fir...

Sustainability is only real when it works for people, business, and for the planet. In this episode of The Canary Report, host Michael Zalle talks with Alana Spencer, VP of Sustainability at Clayco, about what it takes to drive practical, measurable sustainability in construction and real estate. Alana shares how to align sustainability with business goals, where to start, what often gets missed,...