JULY 7, 2026 #023 (MIDYEAR REVIEW) M.SIMPSON/M.SHIRK

 REPLY/COMMENT 

In this episode of Talkin' Grit, M. Simpson and M.Shirk take a look back at the first half of the year with a Safety Midyear Review. They discuss key safety accomplishments, lessons learned, and trends seen across the company while recognizing the commitment employees have shown to keeping one another safe. From celebrating successes to identifying opportunities for improvement, this conversation highlights the importance of staying focused on safety as Wright Brothers continues through the remainder of the year. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

From the job site to the office, from lessons learned to stories worth telling, this is Talking Grit, brought to you by Wright Brothers. Here's your host, Jared Walger.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Everybody, welcome to the latest episode of Talking Grit. We've got a good episode for you today. It's going to be a mid-year podcast. I'm just talking about company updates, all this good stuff, stuff you're going to want to pay attention to. And as always, comments, questions, all that kind of stuff. Send it to podcast at wbccci.com. Love to hear from you. So let's listen in to this and just get the latest and the greatest going on here at Wright Brothers.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Jared, thanks for leading us off again. So, you know, like you said, mid-year update, you know, at the beginning of the year when we started out the podcast here, we talked about what our goals were for 2026, what our vision was, what was going on. And I think it's just as we're nearing the 4th of July right here, it's a good time to stop, look around, see what we've done, and see where we're going. So, you know, with every conversation here at Wright Brothers, we need to start with safety, right? So safety is the priority. So Michael Sherk's here, he's going to join us today and he's going to walk through a lot of the safety stats. He's going to talk about the good, he's going to talk about the bad. And hey, look, there's some ugly also. And you know, the good, the bad, ugly. We need to talk about it. So, Michael, let's run through this, talk about what we got here, and tell us what what we're looking at here at mid-year.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Yeah, so it's been a great year so far. Mid-year numbers, we're right at 500,000 work hours. That's total. Our total recordable incident rate is a 1.33, which is 39% better than the industry standard right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

So what what what is the industry standard for? So the acronym for what you just said is a T-R-I-R. Yes, sir. That's what a lot of people look at. What what is the industry standard for that?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

So it's right around two, I want to you put me on a spot there. It's about two point eight, I think. Two point eight, okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Is the industry standard. And that's that's tracked through the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a federal deal where they track that.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Yep. So the next rating that we track as well as the DART rate, which is your days away restricted transfer cases. That's if somebody gets hurt, you put them on a different responsibilities, things like that. We've had two of those cases, but we're still we're sitting at a 0.89, it's still 32% better than the industry standard as well. And I'll get that number. I don't know that one off the top of my head. Okay. Zero lost time injuries. That's still that's our goal was to get these guys back to work. If something does happen, hopefully it doesn't happen, but if something does happen, we get them back to work that same day. One for them, you know, make sure they're not losing the paycheck or anything like that, but also for ourselves. Because those two numbers really matter when it comes to bidding work. Though they really look at our statistics, you know, for we get the work that we get. Yep. The next thing we'll talk about is the total number of incidents that we've had this year. We've had 55 total incidents. Most of these are equipment damages or company truck damages. We've had 19 equipment damages and counting, because we've had two turned in since the last time I ran these numbers, and then we've had 15, some 15 or 16 company truck damages. So we have some things what how we're going to improve that later on down here that I'll get to. We've had three OSHA recordables this year in the six months. Uh, we've had a knee injury, we've had a finger amputation, and we had the shin over in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

So And we've talked through those here on the podcast, and you know, we need to try to learn from those and grow from those. They're unfortunate incidents. You know, if you could go back in time and be able to rewind the tape and make one move or two moves, you could avoid those. Right. But we gotta, you know, look, we ain't got a rewind button on life. We gotta learn from them, we gotta grow from them.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Yep. And so far we've done a good job at reacting. We have done a lot better going forward since these recordables of being proactive instead of reactive.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Yeah, and I'd just like to say this, you know, when we do have these incidents, as unfortunate as they are, I would like to say to everybody that was involved with those incidents and the project team members, you know, everybody really pulled together. They tried to learn from it, they tried to go from go forward with it, but they managed the incidents well too. And I appreciate everybody doing that. Thank you for doing that, guys. We biggest thing here, we need to take care of our people, and we did a good job with that.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

One thing we we always talk about on podcasts that I've been involved in is communication, right? When it comes with somebody getting hurt, that communication between the safety team and that project team or the VPs of that region, it's outstanding. The support that we get and the information we get back from them. So, with all that said, some of the focus areas for the next six months with me and my team is vehicle and equipment incident reductions. We've got to get those under control before it gets worse. So we're we're not off to a hot start right now for the next six months, but we are actively in the field. We're actually, you know, doing a lot more better quality audits, things like that. So, and one of our opportunities, and and I stress this and all my evaluations I've done with my guys so far is that near miss reporting, good catch reporting is what we call it. We've had five total turned in in six months. That's less than one a month, if I did my math right. These the reason I push this is that this can help us reduce a lot of incidents if we catch something. If we learn from it. Yeah. Yeah. So we had one turned in from company or the uh contracting group uh yesterday. Great, great thing. Nobody's getting disciplined over these things. It's it's we're doing something good. We caught something, now we can promote it and say, hey, look, this does happen on some of these jobs, and we have a lot of the same recurring type jobs so we can learn from it.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

So great conversation starters, right? You can take that and teach from it.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

And especially for our young young folks, too. Like we talked about, Mitchell, is uh the people that's getting hurt are the 90 days or less people in this.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Or the people that have been here for an extended period of time.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Well, and and so that brings up a good conversation point, Michael. I know you've done some analysis of what day of the week we have accidents on. What day of the week is it right now that we have the majority of our accidents?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Right now it's it's fluctuating between a Wednesday and a Thursday, but Tuesday through Thursday is when most of our incidents are occurring.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

So I want everybody to think about this for a second. And Michael has really him and his team have really drilled down into this info over the last a little bit. And what we see is accidents occur with those that are here less than 90 days or those that have been here for over two years. All right.

unknown 7:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

Okay, it's that that middle group of 90 days plus up to two years, they're not having that many accidents. Okay, and then think about the days of the week here for a second. And I find this just mind-boggling. The majority of our accidents are either on a Tuesday or Thursday, right? Middle of the week. Yeah. Why is that the case? So you look at all that, guys, and I I'd like everybody to really think about this. What I get out of it, and I may be wrong, I'd love to know everybody else's thoughts on this. I kind of view it as we become complacent at times, right? And you know, Monday, you're starting out a new week, you're ready to go, you go through your safety meeting, everybody's geared up. We're on point on Monday, right? When you start a new job, once you're there for a minute, you figure out what you're doing, you're on point, right? But then after you're there for a little bit, what happens? What happens? You know, you're just doing the regular routine, you're doing what you're supposed to do. Yeah, everything normalizes. Everything normalizes that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, middle of the week, after being here a couple of years, hey, we're just doing the same old thing. And we become complacent, and then we end up with some, we end up with some injuries. We end up with some accidents that we need to learn from. So, you know, I just challenge everybody. I Michael, I appreciate you providing all that data. I think we just need to figure out, you know, that complacency key point right there. How how do we how do we battle that?

SPEAKER_02 8:48

And I also think contributing factors is yeah, Monday we get off to a hot start safety toolbox topic that Chris and his team sends out. But after that, Monday, get complacent, you know, work workload changes. You got people scrambling around, got to get this job. And sometimes we don't recognize hazards. And I'm just gonna call it like it is. It's those tough discussions that we have to have with certain leaders, but we've got to get a better job at recognizing certain hazards too.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Yeah, you know, and it's really interesting the pendulum swing on the age range of the people getting hurt. So, you know, experience level, you know, or have been with the company less than 90 days or longer than two years. And when you know, you're talking about complacency, it's almost like, you know, the ones that have been here less than 90 days that aren't necessarily, you know, they're still adjusting to the workflow overall. There might be a complacency and observation of hazard, you know, by maybe the ones that have been around for a while, just not seeing it and not coaching up or catching it with somebody that hasn't been around long enough. And then on the other end of that, the complacentness that's in of I've been doing this for a long time and I'm just going about my everyday and you know, trying to save some time or just the way I've always done stuff, you know, that complacency kicks in. So it's almost like a complacency of, yeah, I've done it, always done it, or even a complacency, and I I've done it and I'm just not seeing it and communicating it to other people. So it's kind of a it's an interesting mix.

SPEAKER_03 10:28

I think that's a great point. And I think, you know, look, maybe that's another podcast moving forward here. Maybe that's a talking point we need to have with all of us as a team. We need to figure out as the Wright brothers family, how do we combat complacency? Yeah. So because I mean the numbers don't lie. Right. The numbers don't lie. Yeah. Right. What else you got, Michael?

SPEAKER_02 10:51

So with all those numbers and all that conversation, so the next six months, our focus for our our team is vehicle incidents. You know, how are we going to reduce these incidents? How are we going to protect the company with our drivers driving these company trucks with a billboard? How do we prevent that? So we everybody knows it's not a it's a it's still a sore subject in some people's eyes, but we do have dash cameras in these trucks. So coaching, driver coaching, and we're not here to fire you right on the spot, but we do want to coach on some of the behaviors. When you're texting and driving 365 times events in a two-week period, that's that's quite a bit.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Well, I mean, that's unreasonable, okay? We have a responsibility to uh the traveling public that we're not gonna be acting inappropriate when we're driving a company vehicle.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yeah. So we gotta we gotta do a better job at managing our system that we currently have in place, and that is to help our drivers know, hey, look, you know, we are tracking some of this stuff now. We brought on a safety admin lady, Caitlin Langford, and and she's done exceptionally well as well as coming on board and saying, hey, how can I help? And these are some of the things that's gonna help us as a company as we grow and grow and grow to eliminate a lot of bonehead stuff that we are doing and just, you know, not tracking. So now we're starting to track this stuff a little bit more. So we're we're gonna work on that. Equipment damage incidents, you know, how we're gonna reduce these incidents. This has been ongoing since I've been here for four years, is that we got to utilize our spotters. We talk about spotters whenever we have an incident with equipment. It's over and over and over again that we put spotters. We should have utilized a spotter, should have had a backup person, should have had communication before we backed into each other. If we can eliminate backing up into things, that's great. But I know that's not feasible everywhere we go. But we can eliminate backing into live traffic. I know we can do that with with flagging, flagging operations, right? You know, some of the stuff we just have to think before we actually do. And I think it's going to eliminate a lot of these. But we're going to do more frequent audits around those type of operations and see what we can come up with and help not just mandate you do this, but we want to help the operations team figure it out and eliminate a lot of these incidents. Because I tell you, when you get Mark touchstone on your tail, it's not a good sign. So we want to keep his blood pressure low as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

Yeah. Well, I mean, the equipment, let's be honest here, that is the largest asset outside of people that this organization has. Right. Okay. The Wright family has spent a ridiculous amount of money on equipment. And we're buying new equipment every year. You know, this year it was to the tune of $20 million. Crazy, crazy what these dollars are. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

You know, look, guys, we're we're we're turning over this equipment every few years. Everybody's got a lot of nice new stuff. We got to keep it nice and new. Right. We got to keep it nice and new. And guys, one of the things that bothers me is when I look at some of these job sites and I open up a cab on a piece of equipment and there's all this just trash and filth in it. Hey, look, that's your work area. Okay. Yeah. That's your work area. Let's take care of it. Let's protect it. Have a little pride. Have a little bit of pride. And you know, look, I don't want you guys sitting around in filth all day long. I mean, you guys are professionals doing what you're doing. Let's let's let's keep the work area like a professional would keep it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Yeah. So the last two things I got, we talked about the most common incidents, what day of the week we talked about that. But the last one is, I reiterate, is the good catch reporting. We just got to get some more information out there. We got to get finding unique ways to get our reporting up on the near misses or good catches as we call them. Yep. If you don't know how to get to that or how to do it, if you go to the QR code down on the bottom, right there on the main screen, it's right there. It says good catch, has like a little fist bump. Click on it, it's two or three questions, you fill it out. You don't know how to put your name. You don't know how to put your name. It's optional. It's just good stuff trying to learn from. But everything that is put in that system is followed up with within 24 hours. So you will get feedback from us, and we'll you'll probably receive a safety person on your site following up on those incidents to see what we can learn from that. It's not what can who can we fire, it's what can we learn from that. Right. And that's the biggest hurdle that we're fighting right now. Is like everybody's afraid they're gonna get disciplined for turning in a near miss. It's that's not the case. I think we should be over that part of our culture where now we're being proactive instead of just firing somebody. So work with us on that, help us on that. And if you see one of our guys, pull them aside and ask them if they can help. You know, if you got questions, they're a resource. That's what we are is a resource. And everybody has my number by now and call us, we'll help you out any way we can.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

Michael, thanks for the update. Appreciate your insight on where we're at and what we're doing. So, Jared, let's talk training for a second. You know, we had another great year at the Pi Center, great graduation. How many of those kids graduated and how many of those kids have we put to work here at Wright Brothers now?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

So you've graduated 18 this past semester, and 10 of them are working full-time for us. Okay, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

That's that's awesome. That's a win. Yeah. Glad that we're still pouring into the community, pouring into those kids. Right. You know, right. The Pi Center is part of our DNA and part of our culture now. Great deal.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Something that's become, you know, expected in the area. It is. And uh, you know, there's we're getting now, you know, these juniors and seniors that heard presentations when they were in middle school.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

That's wild.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Which is kind of cool. So when you think about, you know, if you see on Facebook these pictures of, you know, whether it's KK or whoever or whoever that's at a school doing a presentation, that actually means something because it's sowing the seed of you know recruiting into the future workforce. And so, you know, we're always reaping the benefits of that. But you know, it's it's stable, it's moving forward. And uh currently with training, we're working on expanding that territory. Yeah, so let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

So you're you're you've gone to North Carolina. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Where'd you go in North Carolina? Uh been in Asheville the past two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, just working the ground there. And we've you know had conversations with Madison High School there in Marshall, North Carolina. So just a little ways north of the Asheville office, and met with the superintendent, member of the school board, some educators there, and one of the assistant principals. And, you know, when you've got somebody like Jeff Ball that has deep, deep relationships, good things happen. And, you know, we sat and explained, you know, hey, here's a way that, you know, we can partner with the school system. And the school was excited about it. And they're looking for a way to be able to, you know, establish a Wright Brothers program there at Madison High School. Similar, not the same as what we have here at the Pi Center for Bradley County, but that same emphasis of recruiting, training students, and extending job offers upon graduation. So a lot of really positive work that's going on there, really exciting stuff. Haywood County is a lot of the same, very excited. Right. Two counties that need opportunity. They've got a lot of kids that don't have a whole lot of opportunity there in their home county, but we've got so much work in Asheville. Great way to recruit local up our labor force and give other people an opportunity that are nearby to work close to home, which you can't beat that.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Yeah, you can't beat that. And, you know, we've had so many great people that have worked for us out of Madison County, North Carolina over the years. You know, when we were building the Vokker project, you know, we joked around that half of Madison County came down here to build it because you know, you you had Jeff, you had Joey, you had that whole crowd, you had Brandon, yeah. Everybody from Madison County showed up and they helped start building that thing. Yeah. And uh, you know, look, great people, great county. I think it's awesome that we're trying to plant the flag up there to try to extend our reach to the high school kids up there.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

And this summer, we actually said, hey, we just need to start. And so we've done a training kind of boot camp and and started with a handful of kids. We've got one left standing. And then a lot of people might think one student is a worth the investment. Well, this one student is now turning it back into three or four students because he's recruiting his friends. That's awesome. And his story, his name is Robert Goodman, incredible kid, incredible young man. So the story is Madison County or Madison High School allowed me to come in and spend a day talking in classes and strength and conditioning coach there, who was named Ronald Tippman, incredible guy, had me come in and say, Hey, talk to the kids. Well, Robert was in one of those classes, and he almost missed the day to come hear the presentation because his family was gonna go to out of town and take a day. And he said that he remembered Coach Tipton saying, Hey, you gotta be here because Wright Brothers is coming in, they're gonna have some opportunities. So he chose to not go with his family to come to class because he wanted to hear first kid to sign up, and and I'm so thankful for all the you know, the North Carolina staff, you know, from Jeff and Tanya to Angelica to Michael and Scott and Stuart, the the whole crew there, they're just pouring into this young man and already seeing good benefits from that. And it's you know, now he's a recruiter, you know, getting a hold of his buddies. New concept up there. It's gonna take a minute, but people are starting to figure out whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, so I can really get a job with this company. You're you're really extending like just graduated high school, you'll hire me. Calls are starting to really come in, and uh there's really good things that are gonna happen. That's awesome. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 21:23

So another initiative we're about to kick off is trying to get our office personnel out to the field to try to get them to see what everybody does every day, and then vice versa. We're gonna try to get the field leadership and small groups here to the office, right, Jared? Yes. What's your thoughts on that? When do you think you're gonna try to start pushing that for us?

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Well, you know, I think one, it's it's it's necessary. You know, everybody understanding what other everybody else does. Yep. The office needs to have an appreciation for the field. The field needs to have an appreciation for the office because It takes everybody to make it work, right? Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah. But a lot of times, you know, because paths don't always cross, you don't know who's on the other end of the email, other end of the phone call. So I think being able to have that interaction back and forth is healthy because it it really goes to establish that, hey, this is a Wright Brothers family. And once you meet and spend time with the people that you know you're working with, even if it's from a distance, uh it just makes everything better. But it also gives us an opportunity to invest into our leadership. So, you know, whether it's you know, foreman or project managers or project engineers or whoever coming in in waves of small groups, taking time to invest and talk leadership, talk about how how can you invest in yourself? How can you invest in the lives of those around you? How can we build some more soft skills? How can we talk about communication? What can we do to build our level of leadership? Take that up a notch as leaders, the people that are leading others that are part of the core of the movement of this company, finding ways like, okay, how let's sit down and talk. How can we get better and spend time pouring into groups that come in? So, you know, hopefully towards you know the end of July or so, whenever we can get it on the calendar, start moving people through some of these sessions and say, hey, let's do this and and have just one good meet and greet, strong relational stuff to good, strong leadership sessions. So everybody comes away feeling like, man, okay, I got better from this.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Yeah, that's awesome. That's good. I think that's going to be a great thing, and I hope everybody that is involved in that embraces that because we can we can gain a lot from that. Absolutely. It's just and working together like that and understanding where somebody else is coming from, their perspective, you know, that's part of that communication piece, right? Absolutely. Part of that communication piece we got to work on. At the end of the day, look, we build a lot of cool stuff, we do a lot of cool things, but at the end of the day, we want to take care of our people. Yep. We want to take care of our people. So, with that, guys, I appreciate everything everybody does each and every day for this organization. We want to continue to get better, we want to improve, we want to invest, we want to measure. So, just to follow up on you know what Jared has said, if you guys got things you want us to know about, things we need to talk about on the podcast, communications that we need to have on improving the company. Look, we got multiple ways to reach out to us. Big one here for the podcast is podcast at wbccci.com. Please give us that feedback.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Send it in.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

Yeah, we want to continue to grow. We will continue to get better. And, you know, 2026, we're we're off to a great start. Couldn't do that without the team effort that we've got from everybody. Right. So appreciate everybody. Appreciate what we're doing this year.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Absolutely. Great team, great people. Hey, but there's always room for improvement. Let's keep getting better. And as we're wrapping this thing up, thank you for tuning in. Have a safe day. Catch us next time on Talking Grit.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

That's gonna do it for this episode of Talking Grit. Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone out there putting in the work day in and day out. If you liked what you heard, be sure to follow the show and share it with someone who knows the value of hard work. We'll catch you next time right here on Talking Grit.