From the Field to the Boardroom: Reginald Shubert on Culture, Commitment, and What Safety Really Costs

The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management · 2026-03-19 · 33 min

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Topics in this episode

Psychological safety Risk management Safety Leadership Construction safety The Canary Report

Episode notes

"Once you hear that rack of that shotgun, if you take another step forward, we all know the outcome of that. When we ignore these so-called near misses, we lead ourselves down the road to having an incident." - Reginald Shubert, Director of Safety, Barr & Barr What does it look like when someone who has worked in the trades for decades brings that lived experience to safety leadership? In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management , I sit down with Reggie , Director of Safety at Barr & Barr , a 100% employee-owned construction management firm with a history stretching back to 1927, to find out. Reginald spent years as a union ironworker with Ironworkers Local 401 in Philadelphia before being recruited into safety leadership, not once but three times. What finally convinced him wasn't a title or a pay raise. It was a foreman who walked into a job site trailer hunched over at 50, and a safety director who asked a simple question: do you want to be able to play with your grandkids?