The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management · 2026-07-30 · 32 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
57 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Robert Poole brings a unique perspective to risk management shaped by 35+ years as a helicopter pilot, military service with Blackwater, and deep expertise in insurance and risk control. As Director of Safety and Risk Management at D.H. Griffin - the third-largest wrecking company in the U.S. and ninth globally - he manages safety for a massive operation spanning implosions, mechanical demolition, and heavy equipment across the country and internationally. The conversation centers on how self-insurance through a captive structure (the largest construction captive in the U.S.) creates financial accountability that amplifies safety culture. When organizations write the first-dollar checks themselves rather than relying on traditional carriers, they develop superior loss control discipline. D.H. Griffin operates with 95% permanent staff and 5% temporary labor, owns approximately 2,000 pieces of specialized equipment including Komatsu track codes, and can mobilize nationwide in under 24 hours. Poole's team manages training through a hybrid model combining in-person instruction, OSHA 10/30 programs, and micro-learning modules delivered via mobile devices - executing over 25,000 training views annually. The episode explores how captive insurance structures shift behavior and why leaders in high-consequence industries often share calculated risk-taking backgrounds rather than pure risk aversion.
A captive is a self-insurance structure where the company writes the first-dollar checks themselves on all claims. D.H. Griffin uses the largest construction captive in the U.S., meaning they absorb deductible amounts directly, which heightens safety and risk management discipline because leadership feels the financial impact immediately.
The company owns approximately 2,000 pieces of specialized equipment, is the largest buyer of Komatsu track codes in the U.S., performs all maintenance and inspections in-house, and maintains regional offices staffed with equipment operators who can deploy locally while corporate specialists are airlifted as needed.
D.H. Griffin operates with approximately 95% full-time employees and 5% temporary labor or specialist contractors on an annual basis, which the company maintains intentionally to ensure quality, capability, and the ability to rapidly deploy experienced crews.
The company uses a hybrid approach: in-person training in groups, internal OSHA 10 and 30 hour programs, micro-learning modules (2-5 minutes) accessible via smartphone, and electronic media delivered through Teams, executing over 25,000 micro-training views annually.
Counterintuitively, safety leaders often have high-risk personal backgrounds - Poole is a 35-40 year helicopter pilot, others interviewed were military trainers, drag racers, and motocross riders - suggesting they understand calculated risk management rather than pure risk avoidance.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains moderately valuable operational details about demolition and explosives handling (e.g., 186 pounds of explosives for a 185ft tower, the process of gutting buildings before controlled demolition, multi-month engineering process), but a significant portion of the conversation is biographical filler and tangential discussions (Mongolia geography, wife's background, pilot hobbies, satellite communications trivia) that don't advance understanding of risk management or financial implications. The promised focus on 'financial stakes' of self-insured captives is barely explored - only briefly mentioned without concrete financial metrics or examples.
The tower that we did, uh, can say Cape Canaveral, we redid this. A launch tower, a huge structure. It was 185ft tall, solid steel, of course, to withstand launching rockets. It only took about 186 pounds of explosives to bring that down.
We'll spend months sometime gutting the building. Everything in that building comes out. Windows, doors, any kind of ceiling panels. A lot of times we take the guts out. All the metal, all the piping, all the wiring will come out of the building.
The episode rehashes standard industry frameworks: captive insurance structures reducing loss control incentives, self-insurance driving safety focus, and typical demolition engineering workflow. The host's satellite communications anecdote and personal helicopter anxiety are conversational flourishes rather than original thinking. No counterintuitive arguments about risk management, no fresh reframes on captive liability, and no novel approaches to self-insurance strategy emerge. The content is industry-standard operational knowledge rather than novel insight.
D.H. griffin is through a captive. We are through a construction captive, the largest construction captive in the United States. So in essence we are self insured for all lines for workers compensation General I bill everything.
organizations like yourself that are running through captives and are self insured to a degree to at least to the threshold of their deductible, have more level of understanding of the value of loss control, safety process, procedures, because it is your money.
Robert Poole is a credible practitioner with deep operational experience: Corporate Director of Safety and Risk Management at D.H. Griffin (third-largest demolition company in US), 35-40 years as a helicopter pilot, former VP of Risk Management at Blackwater, and pursuing a PhD. He has handled major projects (Cape Canaveral tower, multi-site operations) and manages real P&L responsibility through captive insurance. However, he's positioned more as an operator-guest than a thought leader, and the interview doesn't extract systematic frameworks from his experience - it remains largely anecdotal.
D. Griffin's the third largest wrecking company in the United States and we're about number nine in the world.
I'm a helicopter pilot by trade for about 35, 40 years, actually. That started in the military. Went through black order, which I forgot to mention. I was a vice president of Blackwater and Risk Management.
Concrete examples are scattered but underutilized: 185ft tower with 186 pounds of explosives, 2,000 pieces of equipment owned, 95% full-time / 5% temp labor, 25,000 micro-training views last year, 12-day demolition vs. competitor 4-6 weeks. Yet the episode lacks critical specifics on the central topic (financial stakes of self-insurance): no deductible amounts, no loss history, no premium differentials, no claims examples, no financial exposure ranges beyond a vague mention of 'hundreds of millions.' Regulatory details are high-level ('state and federal guidelines') without specific permit timelines or costs.
The largest buyer of Komatsu track codes in the United States, hands down. We have just about 2,000 pieces of equipment and we move all of our own equipment. One of our edges is we can mobilize virtually anywhere in the United States with heavy equipment in 24 hours or less.
I mean within reason, 95 and 5. 95% sires 5% is what we will more or less on an annual basis that we will bring in temp, labor or specialist.
The host (Michael Zao) asks competent setup questions but rarely pushes back or dig deeper into answers. When Poole mentions self-insurance and financial stakes, Zao makes surface-level analogies (kids spending dad's money on credit cards) rather than pressing for concrete impact: deductible amounts, claims frequency, financial exposure quantification. Follow-ups often veer into tangential territory (Mongolia geography, satellite comms history) rather than probing risk management substance. The promised focus on 'financial stakes' is mentioned in the title but barely interrogated. Questions are friendly but lack the sharp, targeted pressure needed to extract actionable insight.
So tell me about your organization from your personal organization, Rob on safety and kind of where you guys span, where you do business and what your purview is as a leader?
How did you meet your wife?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Safety leadership and construction safety programs become critical business functions when your team manages massive demolition projects globally. My guest today is Robert Poole, the Corporate Director of Safety and Risk Management at D. H. Griffin Companies. Robert shares how his background as a helicopter pilot and safety professional informs his approach to high-stakes risk management . He even tells the incredible story of a twelve day demolition at Cape Canaveral. This episode is packed with technical insights on how to handle massive exposures through expertise and a human-first approach to safety training programs . What You’ll Learn: How technical precision allows for the demolition of massive structures with minimal explosives. The impact of being self-insured on an organization's risk management strategy. Why specialized heavy equipment requires internal maintenance and expert inspections. The process of coordinating with local and federal authorities for high-risk demolitions. How microlearning and electronic media can scale safety training programs across global locations. The importance of understanding logistics when working in remote regions like Mongolia.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: The tower that we did, I, uh, can say Cape Canaveral, we redid this. A launch tower, a huge structure. It was 185ft tall, solid steel, of course, to withstand launching rockets. It only took about 186 pounds of explosives to bring that down.
Speaker B: Welcome to the Canary Report, the podcast where risk leaders, safety professionals and operational executives come for real world stories and smarter strategies to keep people safe. I'm your host, Michael Zao. In each episode, I sit down with exceptional leaders who are transforming how risk and safety are managed.
Speaker C: Whether you're a leader of a nationwide
Speaker B: EH&S program in a high risk industry, or you champion workplace safety across 200 retail locations, this podcast is for you. Let's get into it.
Speaker C: Welcome to the Canary Report, the podcast where risk leaders, safety professionals, and operating executives come for real world stories and smarter strategies to keep people safe. I am your host, Michael Zao, the founder and CEO of Yellowbird.
Speaker B: Today.
Speaker C: Joining me is Robert Poole. He is a corporate director of safety and risk management at D.H. griffin Companies. D.H. griffin is an amazing organization doing some really, really cool stuff. Robert is involved in blowing things up for a living. And it is a very technical job, but is a very imperative, important job where you are literally dealing with explosives. You're dealing with implosions of both ground and above ground infrastructure. He is a vertically integrated. He's a powerhouse, and the company's a powerhouse. They are focused on all sorts of very high risk environments, and yet they have a exemplary safety record because of not only him and his team, but the leadership at D.H. griffin. And so thank you, Robert, for joining me.
Speaker A: Absolutely. I appreciate the invite.
Speaker C: So, first and foremost, I would love to, because this is how we always start the podcast is I like to talk about we're a human business and we deal with human beings and everything we do, regardless of where and when, is a human story. So if you wouldn't mind giving us a little bit of your just personal journey, where you grew up, where you went to school, how you ended up here. I just love to hear about you and anything personally that you'd like to share on your family, that would be wonderful as well.
Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. Well, um, born and raised in North Carolina, tobacco town, Wilson, North Carolina. And you can probably tell from my accent it's Southern. So if you can't understand something, just ask me. I'll try to translate it to the more understandable language. Uh, especially when I speak fast. My wife really gets on me because she can't understand me. She's Mongolian, so it's hard for her one time to capture what I'm saying. Went to school at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Received my undergraduate and graduate degrees there. I've just about finished my PhD with Walden University. So I'm um. A bit of a information I love to study, love to learn. Past history I guess was I've been all over the insurance risk management world, risk control the majority of my career. I've had the great advantage of being with some very good companies that taught me quite a bit about not only risk management but insurance safety. I had the opportunity to go to numerous schools to learn the disciplines very well. So I've been cross disciplined actually in safety and risk management which has helped me throughout my career. Not just pure safety but the risk management side of it as well. That's really paid off in my career course and the path immensely and I'd encourage other safety people. I know you insurance, it's boring but there's a lot that ties in to the room.
Speaker C: I don't actually think that insurance is boring Robert and you gave me permission to call you Rob and it's. I appreciate that. I don't think most of the things that we consider to be boring are actually boring if you understand why they exist and how they work. It's like everything else you know when you're in school and I wish I was a better student. It sounds like you're a great student which is fantastic.
Speaker A: I wouldn't go that far.
Speaker C: Well you're committed to it and that's something. And I started in my career very early, very young. I was fortunate to be relatively successful before I could drink but I never really did a heck of a lot from a schooling perspective but mostly because I wasn't a great student. Dyslexia actually does play into that on my side. I found out many many years later. But the reason I bring this up is when you are taking a class and you don't understand the relevance and you don't understand the impact and how it applies. That's why I think that most leaders that are highly educated know how to apply their knowledge and so on the insurance side are you guys self insured or do you work through an insurance organization? You know some kind of a larger organization? How do you guys run your own insurance process?
Speaker A: D.H. griffin is through a captive. We are through a construction captive, the largest construction captive in the United States. So in essence we are self insured for all lines for workers compensation General I bill everything. So we are taking the first dollar hit to A deductible amount which is very high. So given that safety and risk management becomes paramount, as it should be in any organization. But when you are writing the checks yourself for all the legal and everything else, you don't have somebody between you and the attorneys or uh, the claimants. It's you and how you deal with it and handle it. It makes a big difference when you're writing those checks and how you want to write them and who you're writing on to and how much you're writing them for. So it heightens the level.
Speaker C: Absolutely does. And it's interesting because we do a lot of work for very large organizations. It's often that you'll find that organizations like yourself that are running through captives and are self insured to a degree to at least to the threshold of their deductible, have more level of understanding of the value of loss control, safety process, procedures, because it is your money. And as much as I hate to say it, uh, being an entrepreneur as I am and being around other entrepreneurs, when you're shoestring and when you're bootstrapped, you're a lot more cognitive of uh, where you're spending your dollars and why and what the ROI is going to be. It's kind of like your kids when you're growing up and the children and they're growing up and they're going out to lunch with their friends on your credit card. All of a sudden you know, they're hosting and being very, very generous with your money and then all of a sudden they get their first job and they're like, dad, it is really expensive. I'm like, uh, yes, and you're welcome. So it's the same discussion that we're having here. So tell me about your organization from your personal organization, Rob on safety and kind of where you guys span, where you do business and what your purview is as a leader.
Speaker A: Well, D. Griffin's the third largest wrecking company in the United States and we're about number nine in the world. So we are a large company. We get into any type of ranking you can think of. So the exposures to us are massive, from implosions to mechanical demolition. We're heavily equipment oriented. And then you've got your labor aspect, a lot of burning, so you've got tremendous exposure. So the company is heavy equipment all over the United States, literally. And then the world. We do several jobs overseas a year, multiple jobs. So you not only have the exposure here, you've got a with overseas, which brings a Whole nother level of exposure in. Of course, my job with the company was coming in to head up the corporate safety level, the umbrella as well as the risk management, all of the insurance, the claims, the litigation that pertains to that part of it.
Speaker C: It's a big role. So does D.H. griffin also own their own heavy equipment or do you partner in lease or how does that work? Because I know that there's a lot of things like rigging and inspections and equipment things and we do so much of that for construction firms. Do you do that yourselves or do you partner with third parties on getting that heavy equipment?
Speaker A: No, we own it. We are the largest buyer of Komatsu track codes in the United States, hands down. We have just about 2,000 pieces of equipment and we move all of our own equipment. One of our edges is we can mobilize virtually anywhere in the United States with heavy equipment in 24 hours or less. So we do all our maintenance, we do all our inspections. We use third parties sometime, but not usually. It's heavily done internally right down to our aircraft. Our owner is very meticulous about keeping all of that in house. And I work with that as well. I'm a pilot, so I work with that part of it as well and get involved in that. So we are heavily self independent, you might say, and everything we do, our equipment's heavily, heavily specialized. So not everybody can work on it. We even have pieces of equipment that had been built and made for us that nobody can literally work on but us and understand it. So we are highly, highly specialized outfit.
Speaker C: Now, do you have a lot of surge employees or is it the kind of environment where you have a lot of fte full time employees that are, are always on staff? What is the percentage of subcontract staff that you bring in for programs and then full time staff that you use?
Speaker A: I mean within reason, 95 and 5. 95% sires 5% is what we will more or less on an annual basis that we will bring in temp, labor or specialist. That's roughly about what it is. We know it pretty well because that's about where we fall all the time. We're very sensitive about that, of course.
Speaker C: And that's actually you're going to increase your quality. You'd mentioned, and I won't give any information because it's not appropriate, but you'd mentioned that you were able to bid on a deal that was a 12 day demolition that everybody else that you were bidding against was four to six weeks to be able to make through this program. And it's because of your capabilities there. It's because you have full time employees and you have these folks. Now, do you mobilize from across the country? Like when you win a bid like that? They say, we need this done and we need this done. Now do you mobilize people from around the country or do you have enough regionalized folks to do that kind of work?
Speaker A: We'll do both. Our key personnel will typically come out of our corporate area and then we've got enough people in the locations in our division offices to staff up. Uh, if it's specialized, we pull them from around the country because we have operators that are specialized in certain work and we'll pull them in. So it depends on the job and the talent that we need, and we pull from that resource within the company to bring it to bear on the jobs.
Speaker C: It's funny, I'm seeing some similarities and I'm going to change the subject for a moment, Go back to your personal world a little bit, just to make sure we jump in and out of both business and personal. You said you're a pilot? My former business partner, his family is an aeronautical family. They own a bunch of planes and a small regional airport and things like that. And he flew a TBM950. It was a beautiful plane. What kind of pilot are you? And the reason I ask is I found a through line, but I'll get there in a moment. What kind of planes do you fly?
Speaker A: I'm a helicopter pilot by trade for about 35, 40 years, actually. That started in the military. Went through black order, which I forgot to mention. I was a vice president of Blackwater and Risk Management. So I've been flying helicopters a long time.
Speaker C: Yes. I've never been afraid in any kind of a vehicle of any sort, vehicle, whatever you want to call it, I guess it's a vehicle. I don't know what you would call a helicopter, but any kind of a machine, uh, except for a helicopter, are the only things that have scared the crap out of me because I'd never been in one. And I did a tour in Kauai of the Jurassic park, filming waterfalls. And it was the most beautiful thing in the world. And it scared me so badly because the pure drops. And if it wasn't for the pilot who was calm and steady and his voice didn't crack at all, but man, if he would have like gone like, oh, no, I would have lost it.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's not for everybody. Usually on a tour, helicopters, pretty easy, pretty smooth. But A lot of people don't like helicopters. So, uh, I love them.
Speaker C: I get that. And you know, it's funny because this is the through line that I was going to mention. So as I do these interviews and have these conversations with leaders like yourself, I mean you're a fascinating individual. A lot of people would think that, uh, people in safety, which is why I do this, are eggheads. You know, they're very square, they're very risk averse. They want policies and procedures and appliance. And you're a helicopter pilot. The last guy I interview was a former air force trainer and now he does experimental airplanes. There's a gentleman who was a drag race guy, DIY, 10,000 horsepower down, controlled, basically a rocket on the ground. And you got a. It was a motocross gentleman who's been doing it for 20 years and he's 50 something years old and jumps motocross. And I'm thinking to myself, we are supposed to be the eggheads. And it seems as though the leaders in safety all have this through line of understanding risk. Being able to calculate it. Don't not do things, they just calculate it. And it's actually a good important dialogue to have in this industry that we all have risk. There's nothing we do in the world that doesn't have risk. And so now tell me about your personal life. Are you married? Family, kids, all that kind of stuff?
Speaker A: I'm married, yeah. My wife is Mongolian, which most people don't even know where Mongolia is. So that's a little unique. There's only about 3 million of them left in the world. So it's kind of a dying civilization, more or less. Dying language definitely. It's like Latin, it's hard to speak. But no kids. I have a stepson, but no children, unfortunately. Something I would have liked to have done but when it was never able to. But yeah, just hobbies would, I guess golf. And then when I can fly, I love to fly. When I can get the opportunity to and the chance I'll do it, I'll fly our turbo pr. We have a King Air. And I'll do co pilot on that sometime if I'm flying somewhere to. So I'm not bored when I'm flying. But um, no, I like to do that. But other than that I just work all the time. That's the problem. My wife gets on me about that. I work too much. So what like a lot of people in our profession do at the level I'm at, you end up working quite a bit. So I Love to travel. My wife and I travel quite a bit when we have the opportunity for vacation. So all over the world. And I've done that when I was working various jobs. I've worked and traveled all over the world, so lived in about seven, eight countries, but probably traveled and I don't know, 90.
Speaker C: Wow, that's fantastic. And you're an adventurer, man. I love that. And Mongolia. So Mongolia is. Isn't it near Greece? Am I correct in that? Maybe I'm not.
Speaker A: Yeah, it's squashed. Between Russia and China is a country right. Between Russia and China is landlocked country. It's about twice the size of Texas. It's rubbed. It's not quite half the size of the US is the least populated country in the world. But it's amazing. It is one place left in the world that you can literally go off grid. And when I say that, you say, ah, now you can get a sat phone and go, uh, you can catch it. No, you can't. Last time I took. Just took a vacation there. I want a vacation. We go back about every year, but last year and we went out. It's kind of like the outback. You go out in the middle of nowhere and it's beautiful country. But I had a sat phone because our owner made me take it with me. And we hit a lot of places. There was absolutely no reception, zero, nothing. So when you're off grid, you're off grid, something happens, you're done. And I like that, actually. I like that. That's fun for me. That's kind of weird to say, but it's fun.
Speaker C: How did you meet your wife?
Speaker A: In Chicago, of course.
Speaker C: As one does. That's how you meet a Mongolian bride, is go to Chicago.
Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. In Chicago. It was actually through a friend of mine who was dating a friend of hers, Mongolian friend, and introduced us. And that's how we ended up meeting in a coffee shop in Chicago. She was working there. She's a geriatric nurse and she's been in the states about 21 years. And she was getting ready to go back home and we met. So there's very few of them here. There's probably less than a thousand in the country in the United States. And they live in only certain places. It's really weird. They live in Northern Virginia, Chicago and Colorado and Northern California. That's it. That's about the only places they live in the country. And they all know each other, of course.
Speaker C: It's funny, a couple of anecdotal stories. 1, 1 as we talked about. I'm a golfer as well. Uh, you know, I was born with one hand and I'm a very proud disability advocate. I think people's adversity creates opportunity and I'm a big believer in that. And so you and I have talked about golf and how much I enjoy it. But the funny thing is, is that whenever I golf with somebody, they will say, hey, you know, I met this guy and, and you know, he has a hand like yours. Do you know him? I'm like, we don't have clubs, man. We don't get together and you know, commiserate. But in your wife's case, with a thousand people, they probably do have issue. Like they do actually know each other.
Speaker A: Oh, they do, yeah. It's scary, but they do. They're very tight knit community, very tight knit. But it's interesting, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker C: That's fantastic. My past life, by the way, I was in satellite communications and you and I briefly touched on some satellite stuff and uh, rockets and things like that. And when I was in Satcom, one of the things that I was very involved in is launching of uh, satellites themselves. But specifically we would buy frequency and knowing where Mongolia is now where you've just described it, I understand why you couldn't get out of range because there's a look angle at the time that you were there. Now Elon has changed a lot of this with low orbiting, but they're all along the equator and so there's a look angle. There is an angle that you have to be able to see and get a larger antenna as you get further north away, uh, or south away from the equator. And so that is why you would have struggle because they're not very powerful. So little known fact. I was not surprised when you told
Speaker A: me that you're one of the few people who would probably ever know that.
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I uh, know a lot of useless information. Trust me.
Speaker A: So do I. So do I. I'm one of those.
Speaker C: So how do you guys run things internally? As far as you said, you have about 60 people on your team roughly around the country and, uh, around the world. How are you doing? Like your OSHA 30s and your renewals on heavy equipment and rigging and all this stuff. Do you have a dedicated training team that uh, just spends all of their time doing that?
Speaker A: I do.
Speaker C: So what does that look like?
Speaker A: I have a corporate training manager and we have programs that we have set up that they can take via teams. We do a lot of training this way. We do A lot of in person training. We do a lot of micro learning, micro training, two to three minutes, three to five minutes that we can get out into the field and do it very efficiently and it keeps tension and we constantly do that. I think last year we did over 25,000 of those views that we did. And they literally can access right off your phone and done. And we do that quite a bit. Again, we're heavy into the electronic media because we are spread out and it's impossible to pull people in all the time. So we are heavily dependent upon electronic media for training purposes. My staff will do this, will do training in groups. We believe in small quick training. The OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 are what they are. They're 10 and 30 hours. So you got to deal with that. So we have our own program for that. So we do it internally, our 10 and 30s. So we attack it that way and uh, we found it to be efficient. But we're always looking for ways to improve it and make it better than it is. Of course. But it's never going to be perfect.
Speaker C: No it's not. And it's funny because I'm a contrarian when it comes to business and technology in general. And if you look at my evolution as in my career and ending up founding yellowbird is when we started in computers there were mainframes and everybody connected remotely with dumb terminals, these mainframes. And then you went to personal computers and everything got disassociated and the power went to the edge and then you got the Internet and then you start having these data centers and servers and everything's becoming dumber on the edge and going back to the center. And what I've really enjoyed is in the training environment we all in safety leaned into. And I am very proud of this. I've been doing this a long time. I'm very proud of the online training and the advancements that have been made there. But most of the time folks will make the statement that they do it because it is economically and coordinatively impossible to do otherwise and that they feel that in person will be a better experience if they could. And for me, we executed 118 locations in 30 days last week or last month because I use hyper localized talent to go out and do in person. And it's actually less expensive than virtual because I'm using hyper localized talent. And so doing things like an in person versus an online. I say if you spent $110 a person to do in person or $110 to do virtual, which would you choose?
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: Uh, well, Yeah, I do 110 in person every time. And so that was one of the thesis of Yellowbirds. Like, if you did that, you'd actually be able to pull back into the humans again. I'm a human guy. Like, I always prefer face to face because you can't really tell that somebody's learning otherwise. You do your best. You do your best, and I'm not being disparaging at all, but it's just hard. It's hard to do virtual.
Speaker A: It is. And we do as much in person as we can. I'm the same way. If we can get the people interaction, we do it. It's tough. And you make the best of it that you can.
Speaker C: So I'm with you there. I know you are, and I'm preaching to the choir here. But then again, you and I are having a conversation for other people to listen to. So can you educate our community and me specifically, because I don't have a clue. When it comes to explosives and state, local, federal. What do you need to do to arrange to blow up a building? Uh, like, I mean, I find it to be such a fascinating and a little intimidating and very scary job. If you don't know what you're doing, you obviously are excellent at it. But what's the process look like outside of the technical process of planting the explosives in the right areas to make sure it's a controlled fall? Besides that, what else?
Speaker A: Well, way back, the company used to do their own. The company's over 60 years old and they used to do their own, a lot of it. Now we do by third party. We have literally companies that we have partnered with, I guess now for what, 30 to 40 years. So they're almost integral to, uh, us. They're almost part of our company. The one reason that it was separated a long time ago, of course, is liability. But the whole process involves engineering. You've got to learn where the weak points are on the building and how to bring that structure down. Is what most people think is you just come in, put a bunch of explosives and blow it up. Before that's done, we'll spend months sometime gutting the building. Everything in that building comes out. Windows, doors, any kind of ceiling panels. A lot of times we take the guts out. All the metal, all the piping, all the wiring will come out of the building.
Speaker C: It's literally four walls going straight up.
Speaker A: It's literally a, uh, concrete or steel shell is what you have left. And then you look at existing Drawings and then a lot of inspection of the structure to figure out where the weak points and where do we want it to fall. First you have to determine that where's it going to go? Where do you want it to land? Bringing it in a pile. Does it need to go a little to the right, a little to the left? Do you have a building next to it? The amount of explosives it's going to use because you have the shockwaves, is that going to be a factor? What's under the building? Is there basements involved? Are there utilities involved for say a city that you've got to be aware of? What kind of substructure do you have? Is it water, is it sand? What's under you? Because all of that's going to transmit a blast wave, perpetuate out which can cause damage to other structures. All of this has to be looked at and we have our own internal engineers. But we often partner with uh, engineering firms that we've done business with forever to help us with the larger shots like this, the smaller ones. We handle our ourselves. We design the patterns. We got the building, we know what to take out of it. We weaken it. You always weaken a structure. Most people think that you just put the explosives on a column or something and blow it up. No, actually the structure is weakened. You'll go in and actually hammer sections of the building almost to within falling or make cuts on structures, on steel. Literally you're leaving tiny bits holding up. So you weaken the structure significantly to help it fall the way you want it to fall.
Speaker C: Like cutting down a tree, you're making sure just enough to fall correctly.
Speaker A: It is. And the goal is to use the least amount of explosive as possible. That's the goal. So you work as hard as you can to use the least amount. And it's surprising. I mean most structures that we take down. I'll give you an example. The tower that we did atkinsay, uh, uh, Cape Canaveral, where we did this, the launch tower, a huge structure. It was 185ft tall, solid steel of course to withstand launching rockets. It only took about 186 pounds of explosives to bring that down.
Speaker C: Wow, that is not a lot considering what you are dealing with there. That is great preparation right there. That is fantastic preparation. So regulatorily when you go into a program like this, let's say you need to go to California or some places highly regulated, you know, who approves this? Like how do you go through, what is the process for that?
Speaker A: State and federal have guidelines for moving Explosives around as well as bringing them into the state and what you're going to do. It really comes down to states have some guidelines, but then your localities are the ones that really dictate a lot of the final things. So let's say for example you're working in la, let's just use la. The state of California has guidelines and they're relatively easy and I'm um, speaking off the wall here, high level, but the cities are then going to dig into everything you do and they have to issue the final permits for actually doing the demolition control of, dust control of, you name it. So uh, it's really the entity, the county, the city that you're blasting in that has the final say in the regulation and the permitting of what's going to happen and how it's going to happen, literally and uh, when it's going to happen.
Speaker C: I was going to ask that question as well.
Speaker A: Is it early morning, is it night?
Speaker C: And I imagine that you have to get authorization to clear buildings and presence all around it for I don't know how far, but must be pretty far I would imagine, to make sure that there's no humans at risk.
Speaker A: Not really, no. The blast is actually very well contained. You have more items flying away from the building, just from the building collapsing than the explosives. Now one thing that comes into play, you can't just load up explosives in one day, typically takes several days. So you have to have guards, you have to have. The site has to be fenced and guarded 24 hours. 7. Once you bring explosives on site, it is guarded because you can imagine what can happen if it's not. So it is very tightly controlled. All of that has to be coordinated with local authorities, police, et cetera, fire. So it's a big control deal when you bring them in.
Speaker C: That's fantastic. Well thank you so much, that was very, very helpful. I guarantee you that there will not be more than 5% of my listeners that would have known any of this. And that's the goal of these discussions, just to have these dialogues about. And we have mostly safety and risk and liability people that listen and so their heads are probably exploding right now thinking about all the things that they would have to make sure that they
Speaker A: had uh, well, purview over that's just that part. But then again the safety side of it is huge. The risk. Most insurance companies don't want anything to do with blowing something up. So again being self insured, we're taking that risk. The majority of it is going to be on us. So we do have overarching coverage sometime because simply based on the structure, we may have to pull in what you'd call excess insurance for coverage, and then you're getting to the hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure. So we've had that happen. And if we have to go to that level, then you're talking about a whole nother layer of questions and show me improve. To me, this is not going to happen, or, uh, this is going to happen. That's actually more tedious than getting the permits. And working with the cities is proving to your risk managers and your insurance carriers that we know what we're doing if we have to get the excess coverage. But then we've got to meet and prove to the entity, say the city, county, that we've got this under control. And if it does go haywire, we have that controlled as well in the event it does go wrong.
Speaker C: So my background and I'll let us wrap up here, but my background is actually in Satcom, as I mentioned. But I used to do a lot of work with fema and we supplied the Levy break in Louisiana. That was our origination of our company was actually around that because we needed phones. You know, President Bush actually used our phones at the first phone call during that period of time. But I'm very familiar with how challenging it is to be in a dynamic environment and have the insurance companies not really want anything to do with it, except you need to be insured and at the end of the day, insurance and reinsurance and then those who underwrite all of it. You're right. It is one of the most complex pieces of the entire equation. So, Rob, thank you, man. This was fantastic. I could talk to you absolutely all day. I appreciate you so much for coming on. If there's anything we can do for you at yellowbird, please don't hesitate. But you're a class act, man, so thank you again.
Speaker A: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Thanks for the invite.
Speaker C: My pleasure.
Speaker B: That's it for today's episode of the Canary Report. This conversation helped you reframe how you think about risk and safety. Please do me a favor, hit subscribe, leave a review and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. We're building a new category of safety and risk leadership, one that faster and smarter leaders who aren't just empowered by tech, but whose wisdom is accelerated by it. To learn more about how Yellowbird's cutting edge platform is empowering leaders to solve workplace safety and risk challenges faster, smarter and at scale, visit goyellowbird.com don't forget to subscribe to our Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Yellowbird pages to stay up to date. Until next time. Next time, lead with clarity. Know first and act fast.
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