Welcoming Rob Rowe, New President & CEO of NBCSA

We’re pleased to welcome Rob Rowe 
as the new President & CEO of the New  Brunswick Construction Safety Association (NBCSA). With more than 25 years of leadership experience across construction, mining, and major infrastructure projects, Rob brings a deep, practical understanding of what it takes to keep workers safe on complex job sites and across diverse industries. In this conversation, he reflects on stepping into the role following NBCSA’s strong legacy and shares his vision for the organization’s next chapter.

Transcript

 Perley Brewer   0:08
 Welcome to today's podcast. My name is Pearly Brewer and I will be your host. Today's podcast guest is Rob Rowe. Rob is a new general manager and CEO of the New Brunswick Construction Safety Association. Rob has agreed to join us today to have a discussion on his new position and and what he brings to the new.
 Its new position and to the construction industry. So Rob welcome you have big shoes to fill as they say, Rory silica had been with the NBCSA since its formation. So let's talk about you and your plans for the NBCSA.
 But before we get into that, what what led you to apply for the position? I guess there's one question I'd like to ask and and what's your background and what do you bring to the position?
Rob Rowe   0:58
 Well, thanks for having me on the podcast, Pearly. You know, it's a pleasure to to be here and to be able to to meet you, I guess to your initial question on what why I applied for this opportunity. I mean for me.
 I guess there's a number of factors. One is an opportunity to give back to the industry you know and tapping into my experience, whether it was in the road building side to industrial or mining projects.
 Where you know, safety was a key element. But seeing what I could take from the lessons I've learned and see how I could support New Brunswickers with improving safety here and being originally from here is an opportunity to relocate back home so seem like a great fit.
 And you know, I guess before I jump in about the background about myself, I'd like to start just to give a just a brief reflection on Nbcsa's history just because it sort of sort of flows into.
 You know my background and and really why I applied and for those listeners that may not be as familiar with your organization you know with.
 You know more than 25 years ago, it was a safety performance in New Brunswick, New Brunswick. Construction industry was on average was below where it needed to be and the construction association, New Brunswick, the New Brunswick Rd. builders and Heavy Construction Association.
 Like Canadian Home Builders Association of Brunswick, Atlantic Concrete Association and various labour representatives, they all recognize that challenges and that things needed to change.
 They agreed that construction industry should lead the way by developing also funding and setting the standard for their own safety training. So that's really when they wanted to start association and back in 2001, that's when.
 Roy Selecker joined and he really launched the association and actually from his Home Office. That's where he started a person, you know, a team of 1 and over the next 24 years, he built it into a province wide.
 An organization that supports, you know, workers, apprentices, employers and safety safety professionals, and that plays a key role in strengthening construction safety across New Brunswick. You know Roy built association from the ground up.
 And also represented our province at a national level, ensuring that our province had a strong voice and how construction safety evolved across Canada. You know, Roy's legacy has been woven into the DNA of nbcsa.
 The work he started in the the people he inspired, you know, I've been meeting a lot of those folks since I've joined and you know, you know that will continue to shape this organization for years to come. And for me, I'm really excited to pick up the torch.
 And be able to build and leverage the strong foundation that he's created and look forward to looking at new ways to see how he can raise and elevate the bar a bit further to be able to better support our members. And you know, I officially took over as CEO from Roy.
 When he retired late last year, I was fortunate to be able to have a bit of a transition period with him before he moved on to the next chapter of his career. And as you mentioned, I I certainly do have big shoes to fill.
 I'm energized by the challenge, but I'm really looking forward to driving, you know, improvements, maybe expanding our Services that we offer to ensure that MBCSA remains a leader in construction safety in your Brunswick.
 Now your question about built my background. You know I have more than 25 years of progressive international experience and whether it's construction, operations, safety, my career is taking me, you know, across major projects.
 Ranging up to as large as say, 3 billion in whether it's sectors including highways and infrastructure, residential development, mining, industrial construction, you know, through every role. Safety has always been, you know, the central focus.
 And during my time, say in mining, you know, my team delivered our projects safely, but I also saw first hand the impact when things go wrong from how the mine operations were going on.
 You know, unfortunately I can count on two hands the number of people who didn't make it home. So individuals like working for the mine operations or they're working at maybe the joint ventures that the company may have owned a percentage of a different mine site.
 And you know, I've seen the impact of these incidents. You know, they're very significant. It affects managers, coworkers, friends, families, pretty much entire communities. And, you know, the ripple effect.
 You know, it's definitely real and it and it does stay with you. One particular event, Pearly, I stayed with me is there's a contractor, Pat.
 He operated a a floating excavator. He had a company that had floating excavators. In this case, he was helping with the working on dredging the tailings bit our tailings pawn. Unfortunately, he suffered a tragic incident when the.
 The equipment enrolled and unfortunately he did not return home and a few days later at a meeting that I had in a lot of our meetings, we try to initiate and start with a bit of a safety talk.
 Someone had raised about that particular incident and the person that was sitting beside me, you know, I I knew him a bit. Pretty big guy, like 6 foot five, probably 280 lbs, you know, he leaned over and said.
 That was my cousin and I could see him being impacted.
 By what had happened, and it was definitely hitting pretty hard on him. So I sort of stepped in into the conversation and try to guide it to be able to move it forward because I could see how it was impacting him.
 And, you know, he had reached under the table and just tapped my leg. Just say, you know, thank you for doing that. And him. And I had a one-on-one chat afterwards and talked about his cousin, how it impacted him, his family and the community.
 Because I've on my way with this operation where we lived in our operations were predominantly in BCI drive over to whether whether it was to Calgary or Lethbridge and.
 You would. The highway went right by his cousin's company, so you would see that specialized equipment on the side of the by the side of the highway quite frequently. So I was familiar with it where it was. So definitely something that stuck with me.
 And you know, in my role at nbcsa, I want to be able to leverage those lessons learned from, you know, across my career but also from others. You know, the good, the bad, to help ensure that every worker does go home safe and healthy at the end of every day.
Perley Brewer   9:13
 So I know it's early. You know, you've only been in the position a few months. Do you have any sense of where you would like to take NBCSA?
Rob Rowe   9:20
 Yeah.
Perley Brewer   9:24
 Based on what you've seen so far and the people you've talked to, yeah, I know you're excited about this new great opportunity, but so where do you take it? I mean it's it's a pretty foundational base already in place.
Rob Rowe   9:37
 Yeah, for me, I have a lot of ideas and. And you know, I've been brainstorming a bit with my team, great ideas. And so we'll be working with my board and where we want to go, I'll just give it a little bit of where we're at today. And then.
 A few areas that sort of float up the top that we we feel like to move forward with. You know I'll chat on, but you know I was.
 As you know, you know there's this organization today. You know it's a strong foundation and you know we have a ride very wide range of Services that that we support through our.
 Through for our Members in the construction industry, you know, this includes everything from the the classroom training, whether it's.
 In person or we have some private training virtual online safety training, so the barrage of courses that's available we have the course certification for auditing.
 Job site safety consultation to safety program development toolbox talks various resources like that and we do provide training in both both official languages and you know a variety of different courses, from confined space leadership for safety excellence we miss.
 Fall protection and many others.
 You know, and our our focus predominantly has been on the construction industry now we do support and provide training to other industries because for example they may require fall protection for doing their work. So we do support a number.
 Of various industries and you know, at the end of the day, we also provide certain training to our high schools at free of free of cost completely free and.
 That would be like safety orientation or wemis, and we've recently added working around heavy equipment. The online course just to help give a bit of awareness for people that are gonna potentially look going in the trades or for their summer jobs. So at least they have a a bit of a foundation before they go out in the field.
 Laying that out because you know for us, you know, looking ahead, you know, my plan is to to build and look, see where we can modernize the industry is changing. You know the workforce is.
 Becoming more diverse projects are more complex. Employers are expecting training to be a little bit more flexible, accessible and practical. So we're starting to look to see where we can make some adjustments now for this year.
 You know, my plan is to work with our board to develop a strategic plan for where we'd like to go in the next, say, three to five years. So we have a lot of ideas. In addition, you know, I'll be engaging key stakeholders and our members.
 You gotta get their insight and input to help with shaping where our organization goes along with what Services we end up providing. Now I and our team, like I said, have a lot of ideas.
 And you know, I share a few now with sort of rate or sort of items that are raising to the top. And of course if any of your listeners of this podcast have any ideas of their own, they wish to share, you know, and they're if, please feel free to to reach out.
 We definitely want to hear from everyone.
 One area we recognize the need to do more in has to do with mental health, so I'm I'm feeling it's not nothing new for you, Pearly. I've seen a few of your previous podcasts that touch base on it, one with Roy.
 But it with construction workers, you know, they can be under significant stress due to whether it's working away from their families. You know, some of the work is seasonal. So it may be harder to pay their bills certain time of the year, you know, and everyone's feeling inflation these days.
 You know, and although you know there's not a whole lot of data nationally on because the construction centre in Canada like it both construction industry and mental health from a suicide and so on, but.
 Maria want to get some information from Ontario.
 And in the construction industry, roughly one in 20 workers may experience thoughts of suicide.
 You know, that sort of helps to under score sort of the urgency of this issue. And from Ontario, there's statistics from 2016 to 2023 that you know there were 170 traumatic workplace fatalities. So that's fatality fatalities.
 At the construction site, but there were 565 suicides which are not on the site, and there are 1360 suicides combined with drug poisoning.
 So this means that the number of deaths by suicide was three times higher than the workplace. Fatalities and deaths involve suicide and drug poisoning were eight times higher. You know, historically.
 Much of the industry's focus, including MB CSAS, has been on preventing workplace fatalities. So moving forward, you know, we see there's an opportunity for us to expanding what type of support or resources.
 We offer our Members related to mental health recognizing and it's it's a critical component of overall safety and we're currently developing a comprehensive plan to determine where we can create the greatest value.
 And how best to roll out with whether it's new Services, resources and training initiatives relating to mental health? You know, as part of this work, we are leveraging the lessons learned from existing Services, improving resources.
 From our sister organizations across Canada, through the Canadian Federation of Construction Safety Associations, you know this collaboration helps ensure we build on what's already working, like what we don't want to reinvent the wheel.
 And in addition, we've also engaged work safe New Brunswick, you know to identify opportunities for alignment or synergies. You know as we move forward and you know we're very fortunate that they have a, a great team to work with.
 You know this combined with our approach will help us deliver solutions that are both hopefully effective and responsive to the needs of our Members and broader industry.
 Now, during my tech time with the mining company Tech Resources.
 My team was responsible for overseeing the operation of a work camp that house, about 500 construction workers, and that that they they were there to be able to, to work on some of the major projects on the mine sites.
 Because of the local communities did not have enough hotel capacity during peak periods, the camp really was a critical resource for us. Now we had a security team at the camp that now they received additional training.
 To help them with recognizing like signs of mental health distress and you know how to support individuals who might be struggling.
 Now it's just a couple of examples that that stood out for me. The first one is a case where a group of coworkers became concerned about their colleague.
 And they they raised it to security. The security team conducted a Wellness check.
 And took the necessary steps really to help ensure the worker received immediate support and about a week later that individual wrote a letter and sent it back, thanking everyone that was involved in the letter. He stated that the actions of his coworkers.
 And also the security team had saved his life, and because he had been planning to take his own life later that day, you know, and I really.
 Remain deeply grateful for those coworkers who spoke up, and for the security team that provided the support this individual needed. You know their acts made a difference.
 And there was another incident where our security team noticed a construction worker who appeared a bit distressed.
 So they took the initiative to go have a conversation with them and.
 They were concerned by the person's behavior and their response. So later that evening they conducted a a Wellness check at the individual's room and when they had arrived, they had discovered that the person had it attempted to take their life.
 Uh. Through an overdose.
 But you know, thanks to their quick actions, they were able to provide immediate medical care. And the individual did recover. I was informed through that individual that it.
 If the security team weren't there in a timely manner, that unfortunately they wouldn't have survived and the individual later expressed their gratitude to the team for intervening.
 Really, they saved their life and for me, what? What I also remember is they took a photo of the security team with that individual afterwards. This is a number of weeks later.
 But seeing the smiles on their faces with that individual and the person was getting the help they needed really appreciated the support. And like I said, that sort of resonates with me and.
 For me, you know, these are just two examples of how there are many situations that are going on that are are not being seen or underreported. And this is exactly why, you know, we must expand our Services to help.
 Help to our part in addressing cause not only the physical safety risks, but really the psychological risks 'cause they do impact the well-being of our workers in our industry.
Perley Brewer   21:11
 Now, have you had a chance to travel around the province yet and talk to some construction companies to see what their issues are? Sort of top of the mind issues to them.
Rob Rowe   21:11
 Yeah.
 I I have started to have those conversations and I still have a ways to go to get a better, a better finger on the pulse.
Perley Brewer   21:29
 Yeah.
 So what are their biggest issues right now?
 From the ones you've talked to.
Rob Rowe   21:40
 It's what has been coming up. A fair amount is being able to recruit construction workers that ideally are have the right skills experience.
 And right now there there is a shortage and also part of it is the some of the resources or Subs are using may not have the safety culture up to the level they're looking for.
 
 

Perley Brewer

Yeah. Well, look, rob, I, I I know you're busy. I know you've got a lot of plans ahead. I'd like to thank you very much for taking the time today to talk to us, to give a very good overview of what NBCSA does. And you know, we have new people listening all the time. That may not be familiar with what you do.
 So thank you very much. Good luck with all the challenges you have ahead. You're represent a lot of different industries, so to speak.

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Thank you very much for our podcast listeners. Again very much. I would like to thank you for tuning in. And if you have any feedback on guests you'd like to see on our podcast, please contact us. And I would love to hear ideas for different guests, different topics.
 Stay safe and have a good week.

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