Why Personality-Driven Hiring Changes Safety Outcomes with Victor Buhr
The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management · 2026-02-05 · 35 min
Episode notes
"Brennan's really looking to take a different approach with employee safety. We're gonna start looking at bringing people on who have the personality for it and who are trainable." Victor Buhr, Director of Safety at J.F. Brennan Company OK everyone, this is one of those conversations that really reframes how we think about safety leadership. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management , I sit down with Victor Buhr, Director of Safety at J.F. Brennan Company, a century-old marine construction and environmental remediation firm, operating in the US and Canada with over 600 employees. Together, they explore why the future of safety isn’t about being the “cop on site,” but about earning trust and genuinely caring whether people make it home. Victor breaks down why Brennan hires for personality and trainability before credentials, how they build safety training that actually sticks in a surge-demand, high-risk industry, and what it takes to manage compliance and skills verification at scale. At the heart of it all is a simple truth: safety isn’t paperwork, it’s people, their families, and the responsibility leaders carry every single day.