What does it really take to build a culture of safety across hundreds of jobsites and thousands of employees?
In this episode of Building Smarter Projects, we sit down with our Vice President of Safety & Quality, Calvin Clark, a leader whose career journey—from the tools to the top—embodies what it means to lead with safety. Calvin shares the real-life challenges, wins, and lessons from building trust, accountability, and a safety-first mindset across teams of all sizes.
🔍 In this episode, you’ll learn:
• How safety culture starts in the field—and grows company-wide
• The role of mentorship and leadership in keeping teams safe
• Why mental health is just as critical as physical safety
• How Enerfab aligns safety, quality, and productivity every day
Read the Full Transcript
Calvin: “This guy should be terminated for this.” Well, really, should he? Safety never dies, never quits. I mean, we’ve got to keep on dating. I said, “Dad, I don’t want to go to college. I want to be a bowl maker just like you.” He looked at me and he said, “You’ve lost your mind.”
[Intro Music]
Brad Birck (Chief Growth Officer): Welcome to Building Smarter Projects, a podcast dedicated to exploring the dynamic world of construction and technology. I’m your host, Brad Burke, and today I’m very excited to be talking to Calvin Clark, our vice president of safety and quality, and one of my favorite humans. How are you today?
Calvin: Clark (Vice President of Safety & Quality): I’m good, Brad. Thank you for that kind introduction.
Brad: Absolutely.
So, we talk about safety, you know, all the time. It’s our core value, it’s part of what we do, it’s ingrained in our culture, but it wasn’t always that way, was it?
Calvin: Not at all.
Brad: We’ve both been here for quite a while, and we know what it used to be like. You are an early adopter of safety. Why is safety so personal to you?
Calvin: You know, just seeing friends get hurt, you know, hearing of the incidents across the country that happen daily, and, you know, it just gets close to me. And, you know, I’m a big person that… I care about people.
Brad: Right.
Calvin: And, you know, I want to make sure that everybody’s going home at the end of the day. And that caring just comes out for me, and, you know, starting in this business at a young age and seeing my family grow in this business, that’s what it means to me is just taking care of the family, being your brother’s keeper, your sister’s keeper out on the job sites.
Brad: Well, I think your background is important to where you’ve come today because you started in the field. You started working with your hands, and so you understand how job sites work, how people work, different pressures in life that they bring with them to the job site or take home with them. So I think you just have that unique perspective, it’s just your career path. Maybe talk a little bit about how you started and how we got here today.
Calvin: I’m a third-generation bowl maker. And, you know, I graduated high school, and I’ll never forget, my dad said, “Son, where do you want to go to college?” I said, “Dad, I don’t want to go to college. I want to be a bowl maker just like you.”
Brad: What’d he say?
Calvin: He said, he looked at me and he said, “You’ve lost your mind.” And so that’s where it all started at.
And, you know, I can remember going out on my first job, a nervous wreck, you know, I get out there, didn’t know anything. And my dad told me, “Son, he said, find you a journeyman and latch on to him and have him teach you what he knows.” So, the first day I’m out there, they put a grinder in my hand — I hadn’t picked up a grinder in my life.
And so, I’m out there and I’m just… That thing’s throwing me all over that duckwork, and I’m trying to figure out what the world is going on with this. So he let me go through the entire day. I’m worn out. I get home. Mom said, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “This is the hardest day I’ve ever had in my life.”
So, I go back the next morning, and I get the same job task. “Start where you ended yesterday.” So, I go out and I pick up the grinder and the old, the old gentleman looks at me and his name was Russ Hal. Never forget, Russ come over and he said, “Hey, I watched you yesterday,” and he said, “I know that you’ve got to want to in you.”
He said, “So now let me show you the right way to do this.” So, he took me over and took me under his wing and just taught me the right way to do things.
Brad: Would you give that same advice to a person starting today?
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, the guys that’s been around, you know, the younger generation, that’s what they need. They need leadership and they need people to come to them and to teach them, to say, “Hey, this is the way we do things. This will keep you one from getting hurt, which is the most important thing. And it also will get the job done correctly as well.”
Brad: Well, what I heard from you, if you do it right, you go home, not so wiped out. You have a better product. You know, you want to come back the next day and do a good job.
Calvin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
And it… And that’s what it’s all about. You know, our people out on our job sites, you know, getting the ones that come in, they want to build up their name on the job sites. They want people to.. When they walk away from the job: “Hey, John Doe done a great job today. I mean, whoever it might be, he done a great job,” and the superintendents and the leadership, they look at that and they say, “Hey, we want this kid on our team going forward.” And that’s how you make your name.
Brad: I think about my own children, and they’re not old enough to have a grinder in their hands yet, but they know everything, right? “I know, I know, I know.” And so often, people come to the job site with that same mentality when they don’t know anything.
It’s just, “Hey, take a step back, learn from the people that know what they’re talking about. Listen, and you’re going to be so much better in the long run.”
Calvin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
You know, and we’ve saw that through the years. You know, I can remember back, Kansas City days, when I was out there on the job sites and we were just hiring people left and right, just like it is today.
Brad: Right.
Calvin: You know, we’re back to that again. You know, we’re hiring people that, hey, they may be working at McDonald’s today and be a bowl maker or a pot bidder or a craftsman tomorrow. And, you know, we’ve got to take them under our wings and teach them the right way to do things.
Brad: So how do we do that? What are we doing on these job sites to protect them, protect our customers, get them trained, get them into our culture?
Calvin: It takes a while, but we’ve also got to give them tender loving care as I call it. You know, we’ve got to take the time to make sure that we’re teaching them the right way. We’re going to take them through orientation, but also we’ve got to teach them the right way to do things when they go out there. And that’s, once again, that all comes from leadership on our job sites.
Brad: Right. I think one of the things that we’ve done is using our systems just to be able to track some of that. I mean, knowledge is half the battle. So, you got to know who on your job sites are new to Enerfab, new to the construction trade. So, I think we do a pretty good job tracking that and then giving that to our supervisors, frontline leadership out there, so they can follow up with these individuals.
So, to your point, yeah, going through the orientation, that’s the first, you know, step into getting into our culture and understanding maybe we’re different than other people they work for. Maybe we do things a different way, maybe we have a different level of care about safety than the last place they worked at.
And so, but that’s the first step, and then it’s the follow-up and making sure you’re pairing them up with, you know, qualified people like you started your whole story, you know, pair them up with someone that knows what they’re doing. Give them the guide and show them how to use the tool correctly, watch them, stop work when they don’t know what, you know, what they’re doing.
“Hey, let’s take a second. No job’s so important to get this done unsafely. Let’s just take a second, step back, let me show you how to use that tool correctly. Let me show you how to position yourself.”
Calvin: Absolutely.
And then, and the more we get into all the new work that’s coming out, with everything different than what we’re used to doing. And we’ve got to have those people, you know, we’ve got to have the people in our organization that they want to learn, and we’ve got to be willing to teach them and, you know, taking the time out, you know, it seems like a lot.
But I mean, it’s a whole lot better. They’re going to feel more wanted on our job sites, you know, we throw bodies out there. But if bodies doesn’t help us, we’ve got to have people that’s got skillset and we don’t… The way that we get there is we teach them. And, you know, our leadership on our job sites, you know, we’ve got to take out time. We’ve also got to figure out, hey, this guy is really good with a grinder, this guy might be a great welder, and not know how to use a grinder.
You know, we’ve got to be able to fit, you know, and there’s so much that goes into it. And with our people, and we’ve got great quality guys on our jobs. I mean, we’ve got some of the best leadership in the country. I put our teams up against anybody around, but the new people coming in, we’ve got to teach them. And sometimes it’s starting from square one with them.
And, you know, Kansas City back in the day, you know, I’ll never forget this one kid came in and they told him to hook up a torch. And he was… He had the hose in one hand, and he was looking at the bottle and he said, “Cal,” he said, “I’m pretty dumb. I know this hose won’t fit on that bottle.” So, I had to take him back and get him a set of gauges, took him to the tool room, and I showed him how to hook up a torch.
And he said, “That’s really simple.” I said, “A lot of this work is very simple, but there’s also stuff that will get you seriously hurt. So, ask questions. And, you know, when you’re uncertain, let’s stop, rethink it, go back to the basics, and let’s get you started in the right direction.” And that’s what makes a difference. I mean, it really does with everybody involved.
Brad: When you got to have the right tool for the right job.
Calvin: That’s exactly right.
Brad: You’ve got to have the right tool for the right job.
Calvin: You do.
Brad: Well, we, you know, we talk a lot at Enerfab about our core values. We have five of them. You embody all five, no question. Two of them are in your title, safety and quality. But I talk a lot when I’m talking to people in the industry or just even around here, I think another one, community, has made you pretty successful because as far as I’m concerned, at least when I’ve ever watched you over how many years we’ve been working together, 20 some years.
You’ve never been the guy to like, “I got you. You’re fired. Go home. Get out of here.” It’s always been like, “Hey, who’s your family? Who… Do you got kids at home? What’s going on?” Hey, and then after you get to understand them a little bit, you say, you put your PPE on for them. You know, talk about how that’s made you so successful talking, you know, appealing to the human side, not just the, “You’re fired. You didn’t have your glasses on today.”
Calvin: Well, the thing that you got to realize is everybody’s out there to make a living, okay, to support their family. And that’s the reason we all work is to support our families. You know, I’d go back and, and you know, the way that I’ve always dealt with, with the people and, and the, the personnel on our job sites is, I don’t like for anybody to say, “Hey bud. Hey man, how you doing today?”
I had a job that had 300 people on it. I could call 275 of them by their first name. And I’d go like that. Hey, that’s what it’s all about when you can call a man by his name and you know, and just being able to recognize him instead of saying, you know, “Hey man, how’s it going today?” You say, “Hey Bob, how you doing today?” That means a lot to them.
And you know, as far as, as community, you know, and people, people’s what it’s all about to me. I get up in the morning, and I worry about, I’m… First thing I do when I get out of bed of the morning is I go look at my phone to make sure that I didn’t miss a call or a text message through the night because somebody maybe done something wrong, made a mistake, you know, and we don’t want to come into this and, you know, people make mistakes. We all make mistakes. You get, you make mistakes, I make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes.
Brad: Absolutely.
Calvin: And we’ve got to think about that on our job sites, the guy made a mistake — why did he make a mistake? Did we not give him the tools that he needed? Did we not give him and discuss everything that he needed to know before he done that job? The training that he needed, whatever it might be.
But we’ve got to realize that at the end of the day, our people are what make us successful, and we have to put all of our trust in them. So, in order for us to put our trust in them and for them to trust us, we have to give them what they need, whether it’s tools, training, whatever it might be.
Brad: So how are you tracking that so that, so, you know, you come across a situation like that in your head, you’re going, okay, something didn’t go right. It’s not necessarily, it could be that person’s fault, but it’s probably not. What can we do better as an organization? So, how do you track that data and then use it to make changes in our…
Calvin: Well, we’re always looking for new ways to do things in safety and in quality. And, you know, we’re moving to ProCore, which is going to be a big thing for the safety and the quality team.
That way we’ll have a better mechanism of tracking everything out on our job sites. You know, we’re doing safety walks, we’re doing safety audits, we’re doing management observations out on our job sites. We’re now doing quality walks, and we’re doing quality audits on our job sites. And that’s just going to make us better.
And, you know, like on the management observations, you know, I get real excited about doing a management observation or even for you to go out and do a management observation. Because I like for people to pick that young guy, that apprentice, or that guy with the yellow tape on his heart hat, that we know is a new guy on our job site, and go up and talk with him and just kind of get to know him a little bit.
You know, it’s not about the questions that’s on the management observation. It’s about building that relationship and making that young man feel like that he is wanted and needed on our job sites.
Brad: And to show that we care.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Brad: Because we do.
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, that’s one thing about us as Enerfab. We care about our people, you know that. You and I, we come from the same mode, right? You know, we’re going to pat the guy on the back. You know, we’re not out there looking for what’s wrong. We’re looking for the things that they’re doing good because if you think about it, you know, yeah, maybe the guy made a mistake. But what has he done that has put him over the top that he’s doing right.
There’s so many things that he’s doing right. And maybe, yeah, maybe he took his safety glasses off for a few seconds. Big deal, right? I mean, we want him to protect himself, but there’s time that you think, you know, I’m not out to bust him for anything like that. I’m out to make sure that he’s safe, and maybe he’s got a good reason he took his safety glasses off.
Brad: Well, yeah, why did you take them off?
Calvin: Right.
Brad: Is there something else we need to address or figure out?
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, what about when you went to Sunco and you crawled in the steam drum up there, the mud drum up there, and your glasses fogged up immediately on you, right?
So, yeah, I mean, there’s just so much that goes into it. But the thing that I always tell the guys to think about, you know, you’re looking at things and you think, well, this guy should be terminated for this. Well really, should he? Should he be terminated? Yeah, if he’s 15, 20 feet off the ground and not tied off, absolutely. That’s a no brainer for us.
Brad: Right. We can’t have that.
Calvin: We can’t have that on our job sites. But if the guy’s got his safety glasses off, we talk with him, he’s got a good attitude about everything. Yeah, it’s a training moment, it’s a teaching moment.
And that’s what we need to get better at, teaching our people that, hey, this is the culture that we built through the years. And, you know, we want you to carry on our culture and be a part of it.
Brad: I think that’s a great point because I’ve seen you talk to people and then later in the day, them talking to their people, “Hey, put your safety glasses on because of X, Y or Z,” you know.
So you’re teaching them to then go teach others and to be a leader out in the field, you know, they then feel empowered.
Calvin: Absolutely, absolutely.
Brad: So you’ve brought up quality throughout this conversation a little bit in your new title, Enerfab Safety and Quality. So we’ve talked about this for a few years. We brought the safety and quality together under the ESQ monitor, moniker, sorry, Enerfab Safety and Quality.
Originally, we did that because we wanted to try to bring our quality culture up to the same level as the safety culture. But as we’re doing that, we figured there’s so many things that are so similar between those two jobs, organizations, if you will, that’s really helping us be better for our customers. And we talk a lot about how our quality is, our customer safety, and a bad quality job leads to rework.
And our stats have shown that when we have a quality issue, that is when a lot of times we have a higher chance of having a safety issue because you’re not following the plan, you’re doing things differently. So, as you are now leading, you know, we’ve memorialized this and we’ve put the two groups under, you know, our leadership of you.
What does that mean to you? And how are you seeing those changes in the quality group?
Calvin: You know, like you said, our quality is our customer safety. And you know, that’s what it’s all about because, you know, when we walk away from a job site, we want that customer to come back and say, “Man, Enerfab, they’re all over safety and quality.” And that’s what I’m instilling in our guys. And, you know, we’re going to unite even closer.
We’ve always had our safety managers meeting, this year, we’re going to pull in quality and we’re going to come up with new campaigns together. And, you know, the guys out on the field and, you know, it’s a challenge for quality and safety because, you know, we’ve not really pulled them together in the past. But now they’re real excited. You talk to the quality guys and they’re like, “Oh, wow, man, we can’t wait. We’re looking forward to this, this is where we want to be.”
And, you know, and you talk to different people around the country, there’s not very many companies that have done this — pulled safety and quality together. And I think that leading the charge, you know, and it’s not about me leading anything, it’s about my people. You know, the people that are on the safety team, the people that are on the quality team, uniting them, becoming one, and that just makes us stronger in the business that we’re in today.
Brad: I got to believe it resonates with the craft people as well because if you think about the core of who a craft person is, they want to come to work every day and they want to use their craft. They want to do a great job, they want to show what they’ve learned and this is their whole, this is what they do.
And so, they want to do a quality job and they want to be safe, so if they care about both, they’re just delivering such a great product for the owners and for themselves, their own personal brand. So, I just think it’s so important to bring those two together. And I think we’re seeing a lot of the folks out there really resonate with this, bringing it together.
It’s how you plan your day. I mean, when you’re planning your day, you’re thinking about safety because we’ve talked about that for 15 years, you know, so they know that. They think about safety when they’re planning the work. Well, you got to be thinking about quality at the same aspect as you’re planning your work, I mean, a lot of the things that can affect safety can also affect quality.
Is it a windy day? You know, could things blow in your eye? Do you need to put up some sort of shield to block so that you don’t affect your welding? You know, I mean, there’s things you’re thinking and planning, and the tools you’re going to need to do your job that day. It just makes sense to think about them together.
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, and you think about, you think about it, Brad, what about rework? You look at rework, you know, rework costs a lot of money, but also rework is when 33% of our injuries occur when we’re doing rework.
And, you know, we’ve had incidents where that we’ve had guys get knocked off ladders during rework, you know, just so much goes into it. And once again, bringing quality and safety together. Hey, we’ve got a safety plan and we’ve got a quality plan. And, you know, we’re going to work together to make sure that we’re successful on that.
Brad: Change is tough in any organization, in any part of an organization, when you want to make changes and you have a company like Enerfab that’s been around since 1901. And you’re working with, you know, crafts that have been around since the 1900s, 1800s. But you came up through these crafts, so you know how you used to do it, but you see a better way.
How do you get these guys to understand there’s a better way and how to change versus them saying, “Well, we’ve always done it that way, Calvin. Your daddy did it that way. My daddy did it that way.” And you’re like, “Yeah, we did. And we also lost people and we lost fingers.” How do you get them to change?
Calvin: It’s tough. I mean, it’s really tough to get them to change, but, you know, once we get out there and we show them how much we care about people going home at the end of the day, safe.
I mean, it’s all about your family. We want you to go home safe to your family, you’re providing for your family. Because you think about it, you get hurt on our job sites, you know, you become a burden to your family. You’re not supporting your family, they’re supporting you. So I use that technique all the time. This is what it’s about, you know, taking care of, remember them. And I remember that I used to show a video all the time. ‘It’s Not About Me’ by Tony Crow.
Brad: Yeah.
Calvin: And we show that video and, you know, and he was, he got shot in the face with buckshot with a 12-gauge shotgun, and his son shot him. And, you know, you show that video and you don’t, and he, he talked about, you know, here I walk up on this puddle of water.
He was blinded by that. And so he had a lead dog, and so that lead dog walks up and there’s this mud puddle, and the dog stops. And he said, “It clicked just like that.” He said, “Tell me that we can teach a dog about a hazard, so we can teach our people about hazards on our job sites and teach them the right way to do things.”
Brad: Wow, that’s a powerful message.
Obviously, you know, part of this podcast is talking about technology and building smarter projects. And I think Enerfab is doing a lot to make sure that we’re bringing in the right tools, you mentioned Procore for our people. What else are you seeing in the safety world from a technology standpoint that you’re excited about that you think is going to really help this industry?
Calvin: There’s just so much that’s out there in the world today. I mean, you know, we just moved to a class two fall protection.
Brad: Right, and that was one of my questions about how we really took the charge of leading edge fall protection.
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, and I just talked a few minutes ago and had a meeting, and we were talking about class two, you know, the chair in the air that they’ve got with their harnesses, we’re using Warner harness with the chair in the air.
You know, there’s an individual, he said he fell, and he actually was able to sit and talk to them for 60 minutes while they rescued him. You imagine, in class one, as they call it, fall protection. But there’s so much that goes into all this, and, you know, I see more and more of the different companies coming together and working together to all be successful.
Brad: Yeah, you have such a great peer group in the industry, and I think a lot of people look to you, and you look to a lot of others for advice and answers. Talk a little bit about that community and how you all come together to make the industry a better place.
Calvin: You know, we’ve got groups that we meet once a month. You know, we’ve got our talk association that we meet quarterly.
Brad: Association of Union Contractors.
Calvin: Yes. But the one that, you know, we get together once a month and we go through and, you know, I tell everybody, we laugh together, you know, we tell stories together, we work together, and we cry together. And I mean, there’s so much that goes into it.
You know, if one of the guys on there got a problem, I got a problem. It’s no different than we are here at Enerfab. If you’ve got a problem, I’ve got a problem, we’re going to work to solve that. And, you know, it’s just exciting times to be a part of this company.
Brad: I love that. It’s interesting when you talk about, you know, what some might consider competitors, right? As we’re out there and we’re standing, and three of us are putting a bid in together, but you never look at it that way. They’re just your community, and that’s how we all get better.
Calvin: That’s all it is, you know, at the end of the day, yeah, we’re going to win some jobs, we’re going to lose some jobs. But, you know, we’re not going to hold it against somebody because they beat us out. We’re just going to work harder to beat them on the next one.
Brad: But you’re also the one to first extend the olive branch. “How can I help you?” “Hey, I got a program that might benefit this job.” You know, “Hey, I’d love to come sit with you and help you understand how we do safety,” you know.
I think it’s neat how we get out there and really try to be part of these other, you know, either partners or just competitors, and talk about the things we’re doing, that, you know, helped us.
Calvin: I call people all the time, I get calls all the time. “Hey, do you have anything on this?” And, you know, we go back and forth and, “What can I do to help you? I’m here to help you,” you know.
And at the end of the day, it’s all about our people, whether it’s working for Enerfab or whether it’s working for a competitor. At the end of the day, we want them going home safe.
Brad: So one of the fun topics in safety right now is the new hard hats coming out, right? So, let’s talk, why not, let’s talk hard hats, you know. Tell us what’s going on with hard hats, why can’t I use the same one I used 10 years ago?
Calvin: The helmets they’re coming out with, you know, we’ve always used hard hats, you know, and I’m not a big fan of the helmets. You know, are they comfortable? Yeah, they’re pretty comfortable. Are they hot? Yes, they’re hot. The chin straps, you know, we tried the chin straps back in the Conomall days, if you remember.
And, you know, the guys were just cussing and carrying on and saying, I’m not wearing these things and so on and so forth. But head trauma is one of the big injuries in the business. And, you know, and we’re seeing more and more of the companies move to the helmets.
I haven’t got there yet. I’m still trying to get there. I’ve got a couple of the helmets in my office and, you know, they’ve done some studies at some of the universities where they do help. But, you know, and I think about, you know, I try to think a little bit about all of it, you know, there’s, is it better for our business? Is it better for somebody else’s business than it is for ours? Probably so, at this point in time.
The helmets are going to help. And I think that eventually, over the course of the next probably five years, we’ll be all moved into helmets. But at this time, we’re going to stay with our hard hats.
Brad: Okay.
Calvin: Because for one thing, you can’t wear your helmet backwards. And you know how our craft are. Everybody wears their heart hat turned around unless the customer requires us to wear it with the bill forward.
Brad: And we’re okay with that.
Calvin: We’re okay with that, absolutely.
Brad: You know, I just think back. I remember a guy hired me to paint when I was, you know, 17 years old. And I thought I did a great job, and he came back and had to repaint the whole room again. And I was so embarrassed about it, still to this day. He paid me. And I always think about that.
Like I wanted to do a quality job, I didn’t know any better. So how do we get these guys to understand that aspect of it and to really, you know, give them a quality job?
Calvin: With individuals today coming out, you know, the way that I look at it is, I want to teach people to take pride in what they do. You know, I used to be one that was, I’d want to bow my chest out and say, “Man, look what I done.” You know, that’s what we need to instill in our people today. “Hey, we’re going out there to do a job, and we’re going to do it the right way.”
And you know, and we’ve got once again, we got to go back to the teaching, making sure that we’re teaching people the right way. You know, I think we need to be more involved in these welding schools, you know, these technical schools, I think we need to be heavily involved in them.
And, you know, you and I were, we were on a trip down in Kentucky and we went to a technical school down there and we were doing, if you remember, we were doing a walkthrough, and the kids were welding and using a grinder without safety glasses on. And I went to the administrator there and I said, “Hey, listen, there’s not a contractor out there that will allow that, so teach them the right way.”
And I think the more input we have on stuff like that, the better those guys will understand, you know, they come out and they’re saying, “Hey, you know, we got to learn to wear safety glasses under our welding hood.” Because that’s a problem today. But, just teaching our people and, you know, we bring in the younger generation, the younger guys and gals on our jobs, let’s teach them the right way.
Brad: I saw just last week, I got stuck in the Atlanta airport and they were, they’re putting down a new floor in one of the terminals going to, I don’t know, a tile floor of some sort. And it was amazing to see all the safety violations that one individual could have in just a brief five seconds.
But, you know, took the guard off the grinder, wasn’t wearing safety glasses, was cutting the piece of metal, I think it was a piece of schluter, you know, on the end of the tile, you know, he’s cutting that, he’s holding it in midair and cutting towards himself. It was, it was unbelievable to watch, and even my children recognized it, you know, immediately.
So I went over and talked to the guy and, you know, kind of explained it to him, “Hey, do you have safety glasses? All the other guys are wearing them.”
“Yeah, I just don’t like wearing them.” I was like, “Man, you get one shard in your eye, you know, you’re going to be going home for, you know, they might let you go, you know, and you just got to be, you got to be careful.” And then his supervisor came over and started talking to him a little bit. I don’t know what happened from there, but at least I started a conversation.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Brad: But you see it all the time out in the real world. You kind of forget, you know, coming from where we were to where we are today, you sometimes forget where we were. And there’s people that are just starting their journey, and, you know, we all need to be advocates to make sure everyone goes home safe every single day.
So, construction is a tough industry in general. We do hard work, we travel, we’re up at heights, there’s a lot that goes on. We’re lifting heavy things. It’s just a tough industry, but it goes well beyond the work we do, too. Talk a little bit about how the construction industry deals with mental health and suicide.
Calvin: So, in the construction industry, you know, we’re the second leader in suicides. Military is number one, but, you know, mental health and suicide, you know, it’s an issue in our business. And we’ve got to keep on keeping on as the old saying goes. It’s okay to not be okay, and, you know, recognizing that on our job sites.
And I tell our people, you know, if you see somebody come in today and they’re a little different than what they normally are, walk over, put your arm around them, pat them on the back, say, “Hey, man, everything okay?” And then sometimes they’ll say, “Yeah, don’t worry about it, I’m good.”
And then sometimes they just break down and start spilling their heart out to you, and the other thing is taking the time to listen to them. So, it’s a major issue across the United States.
Brad: I think that’s a good point because I think, you know, maybe even me personally, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not trained in that, so to have that kind of a conversation. But I think your point is, you don’t have to be an expert just to see how someone’s doing, just to ask them how they’re doing. And then we can get them the help if they need it, we have the resources.
So, one of the things with safety is keeping it fresh to some degree. You know, you got to keep people interested, you got to keep people engaged and you do a great job coming out with new campaigns, new posters, new ways to grab their attention. What’s something that you’re working on for next?
Calvin: In August, we’re going to come out with Safe and Sound Month.
Brad: Safe and Sound.
Calvin: Safe and Sound. They’ve been doing this for several years, and so, you know, we were looking through some information, and we’ve decided to come up with three things on our job sites. We want our supervision on our job sites and our leadership to go to the men and say, “Hey, we want you guys to come up with three things that we’re going to concentrate on this month, that we’re going to do better than we have, you know, and just to go above and beyond.”
And it may be, we may look at three different types of gloves, or different respirators, or whatever it might be. But we want them to come up with three things that they’re going to look at on their job. We want them to be able to walk around and look at rigging and say, “Hey, can we come up with something better than that?” So, just going to put it on those guys. Let them push the initiation for that, and let them come up with what they want to talk about.
And we’re going to make sure that we’re doing this, and then we’re going to do some giveaways at the end of the month to… Some awards to hand out, whether it’s shirts, or gift cards, or whatever it might be.
Brad: I think there’s so many ideas at the craft level that, how do we get it bubbled up? I mean, they got great ideas, they’re living with it every day, they’re seeing things. How do we provide that kind of full circle for them to have a voice to give feedback so that we can continue to improve?
Calvin: That’s what it’s all about. We, you know, we feel like we’re pretty good. You know, I think we, you know, I put our culture up against anybody’s in the country. Can we get better? Absolutely.
Brad: We have to.
Calvin: We have to continue on. And, you know, keeping it fresh is a big thing. You know, we want people to want to come to work for Enerfab, and, you know, most of them do, once they come and work for us once: “Hey, for one, Enerfab is going to take care of you on their job sites. They want you here, they appreciate you here. And they’re going to require you to work safe. And that’s where I want to work is a company that wants me to work safe.”
Brad: That’s right.
Well, you know, Enerfab has been on a journey to zero as we used to talk about for a long time. We actually don’t talk about that as much as we used to because I think that we’re further down that path, but part of me thinks, you know, even 10 years ago when we, when we would talk about it and we would say, you know, “Hey, zero, zero is possible. We’re going to get to zero.”
I don’t think people actually thought it, I don’t think they thought we could actually get to zero. But now, you know, I think about Ted Lasso and the whole ‘believe’ concept, you know, and I feel like all the teams believe now that zero truly is possible. And now it’s not about celebrating in a year. Of course, we’re ecstatic when a job site goes a year, when they have 400 workers on site, and they’re keeping them safe. But now the standard is like, well, can you go 10 years?
You know, maybe that’s a bit lofty, but it’s real, we have job sites that can do that. And I often think about, you know, the award ceremony that we get to go to every year that the Association Union Contractors puts on — The Zero Injury Awards. And we’re often winning, you know, 12, 14 awards a year.
And to me, that really speaks to, you know, I think a lot of companies, and not to discredit any company, because I know a lot of people work hard at this, but you can have a great job site and a really great superintendent who’s bought in and cares. But when you win consistently 12 or 14 zero-injury awards with millions of man-hours every single year, that really speaks to a culture. And to me, it speaks to a culture that believes, that believes it’s possible.
Calvin: Absolutely.
You know, and that’s, and you know, Brad, we strive on that, you know, building our culture and continue… And, you know, we talk about building our culture. Our culture is built, right? I mean, it really is. We have to continue with the culture and, you know, the zero. Everybody’s goal is zero at the end of the day, everybody wants to go home safely.
And to obtain that, we have to keep striving, whether it’s technology, whether it’s tooling on our job sites, or whatever it might be, you know, a different PPE, a different safety campaign, a different quality campaign that we may run on our job sites. That’s all about us acquiring that goal of zero.
Brad: Right. So what do you see? Because we have been successful in having a lot of our job sites with zero injury. We have whole offices that go years without it, we have shops that haven’t had incidents in five years, six years, seven years, you have job sites of 14 years.
Do you see, once those job sites and those leaders hit those milestones, do you see any changes in their attitude? Do you see different things happening on those job sites?
Calvin: Oh, absolutely. The guys out there, you know, the leadership, they really get involved. And nobody wants to be that person that makes that mistake that’s going to cost that particular facility their recordable right there. They’re going to lose it, and nobody there wants to do that.
So that makes them work that much harder and that much safer. And that’s where it gets to be… What it’s all about is the buy-in from our people, and Brad, you know as well as I do, we have people that come in for a three-week outage. Enerfab is not their biggest concern, their biggest concern is their paycheck. And we try to instill in them, we’re very successful at doing that.
That’s the reason that we can collect 10, 12, 14 safety awards. It’s because of our leadership on our job sites. And we’re the first to tell them, “Hey, if something’s not going right, raise your hand. Stop, and even when you’re going out there, take two minutes and look around, make sure that you’ve got everything that you need to do your job safely with.”
Brad: I’ve actually noticed over the last year or two that some owners may not have the same safety culture that we have. For a while, it was like the owners pushing us to get better right back in the day.
Now we’re at certain places where maybe the owners don’t have… How do you have that difficult conversation with an owner about, “Hey, we’re not going to put our people in the same terms way. And if that means we lose the job, so be it.”
Calvin: We’ve had to do that several times. And that makes it even tougher for the guys that’s estimating the jobs and bidding the jobs because we want our customers, and most of our customers understand. But there are certain instances where we have to walk away and say, “We can’t work for this outfit, we are going to do things the safe way.”
Kind of go back to the combined space permits, right? And it’s whatever is more stringent on our job sites. If we go out and the customer’s got a more stringent policy, that’s what we’re going to fall in, but if ours is more stringent, we’re going to use ours.
And if a customer says no, well, that’s one of those things where we’re going to have to sit down and have a long conversation because we’re going to do things the right way on our job sites.
Brad: But I’ve noticed you approach those conversations again, not in, you know, “Gotcha! Forget you.” It’s a, “Hey, let me help you understand why we’re doing it this way, and really, it would be awesome if you adopted this for all your contractors.”
Calvin: Absolutely. You know, educate. Sometimes we have to take out the time and, you know, we travel all the time, going around meeting with our clients and talking with them. Just last week, we were on a job site talking with them about how we can make them better as we get better on their job site. And that’s what it’s all about.
Once again, it’s all about people, right? I mean, it’s all about our people doing the right thing, going home safe at the end of the day. And like you started, there’s no job so important that we can’t take the time to do it safely.
Brad: That’s right.
We work a lot with some of the major kind of tool equipment, cutting-edge, you know, companies in our industry, and you spend a lot of time with those guys. And there’s some amazing technology coming out from the tool side of things, from the equipment side of things, from the fall protection side of things that’s really helping us with our goals and with our culture.
But then they also present new safety challenges, potentially. But I think about some of the grinders, some of the things you guys have tested with shutoff and different tools like that, you know, battery-powered tools, maybe talk about some of the changes, but also some of the safety hazards that come with some of the new tools and how we’re addressing that.
Calvin: And you know, the first thing you think of is, there’s new grinders out that if they don’t have the guard and the handle on them, they don’t run anymore. I mean, that’s a big deal.
Brad: You probably wanted that for a long, long time. It seems like a simple thing.
Calvin: It is.
Brad: But now the tool companies are saying, “Hey, we get it and we support you, we’re going to build it this way.”
Calvin: And the battery tools, yeah, they’ve got their hazards, but what are the hazards that they are eliminating? You know, we, how many years have we ran cords and leads and stuff all over the units? And I mean, we were exposing our guys to slips, trips and falls and back injuries and so on and so forth. That eliminates that.
And it makes us so more efficient. And the grinders, they’ve upgraded them so much now that, you know, back in the day, we would think, you know, that grinder is not powerful enough to cut out very many tubes or won’t get…
Brad: You’re talking about like a battery-powered battery. Because they weren’t robust enough for what we do?
Calvin: That’s right. So, now they’ve upgraded those, and they’re pretty good for 10 hours. So, you know, technologists just came so far and so much better for us.
Brad: That’s exciting.
Calvin: It is.
Brad: It’s putting better tools in our guys’ hands.
Calvin: Absolutely, you know, making it easier for them.
You know, how many times, you know, you take your hand off the trigger, it just shuts down. The grinder, they’re left plugged in, somebody comes by and kicks it, or steps on it, or something, starts it up, maybe cuts their foot or something.
Brad: Well, see, I think that’s an interesting part, moving to the battery tools. With the traditional tools, when it’s unplugged from the wall or the air hose is detached, it’s done. The battery powered tools, they’re live. There’s a whole safety campaign about ‘snap your battery off’, you know, make sure you’re not walking with a live tool.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Brad: So just different things.
Calvin: Take that battery out. Yes. You know, there’s always going to be hazards in our job sites.
Brad: Sure. We do construction.
Calvin: We’re a construction company, and we’ve got to make everything possible to get better, and that’s what it’s all about. We’ve got to put the right tools in our guys’ hands to do the job correctly with.
Brad: That’s where I think technology is exciting. It allows us to try to eliminate hazards before they happen by changing the tool, the process, the way we track the data we gather. We can be so much smarter than we used to be, and that helps us really build smarter projects.
Calvin: And you know, in just the tooling that we have on our job sites, you know, we make sure that we’ve got the tools in the guys’ hands, right? There’s nothing any worse than for us to go out on a job site and the guy come up to you and say, “You guys just don’t have the tooling.”
Brad: Right.
Calvin: That don’t happen anymore.
Brad: Well, or you have a bunch of tools that are red-tagged, don’t work, frayed cord, whatever. What does that say to the person that’s come that you’ve just, you know, told about this great company and this culture and the safety and that we care, and then they go out there and the first thing they get is a piece of junk tool. Are they going to respect it? Are they going to care? They think already, “Well, these guys are, you know…”
Calvin: That’s what you get, junk. That’s what they’ll say. “That’s piece of junk.” And then the first thing you know, they’re saying, “I don’t want to work for Enerfab. They just don’t have the tooling that I need to do my job.”
Brad: Right.
Calvin: And you know, that’s not where we want to be, we want these people when they walk away from our job site to be proud that they’re walking away and to tell their buddy, “Hey, you really should go try Enerfab out.”
Brad: But that’s a culture thing too though, right? We’re not perfect, we’re not perfect, and we have lots of job sites that we’re moving tools around the country. But I think that goes back to culture too. It’s about caring for your brother that you’ve never met before, caring for the sister you’ve never met before.
Don’t ship junk from… You finished a great three-week outage and you know you got your friends starting an outage over in another state, and you’re going to help them tool up. Don’t ship the junk over there.
Calvin: Throw it in the trash.
Brad: Do your process. Tag it out.
Calvin: Tag it out. If we can’t fix it, throw it away. We’ll buy new.
Brad: That’s right.
Calvin: You know, that’s…and that’s what makes us successful, right? I mean, we’re going to make sure that people have got to write tools in their hand. If it’s junk, we’re going to eliminate it, if there’s something going on on our job sites, we’re the first ones there, right?
If something goes on that we need to be there, we’re going to go address it, we’re not going to let it sit. And going back to our leadership on our job sites, I’ll put our leadership up against any contractor in the country that they’re going to do things the right way.
Brad: That’s great. I agree. We have some of the best guys in the country.
Calvin: We do.
Brad: The best craft in the country.
Calvin: Absolutely. I mean, where are you going to find them at? I mean, you know, but the thing we got to realize and, you know, I always want people to remember, the new people are coming in.
Brad: We have to have them come. We need them.
Calvin: We absolutely…
Brad: You were new one day. I was new one day.
Calvin: Absolutely. We absolutely have to have them, but we’ve got to train them. We’ve got to take the time to make sure that they’re successful on our job sites. You don’t want to bring somebody in and set them up for failure, that’s not what we’re all about. We’re about making sure that these people are set up for success, which will make, at the end of the day, you and I successful.
Brad: Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate the conversation today.
Calvin: It’s always fun, Brad, with you. We always have a good time.
Brad: There’s no doubt about it.
Calvin: Absolutely.
Brad: Well, I appreciate your time. That’s Building Smarter Projects. Tune in next time.
[Outro Music]
