The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management
From Concrete Work to Corporate Safety Leadership with Zac Elliott
March 26, 2026
Most safety leaders think about job-site hazards first. But what if one of your biggest risks isn’t on the jobsite at all? In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Zac Elliott, Safety Director at Mead & Hunt, to talk about one of the most overlooked risks in modern operations: driving. With employees logging more than 5 million business miles per year, Zac shares how his team manages fleet risk, distracted driving, and fatigue while maintaining a culture that truly puts people first. We also explore why some of the best safety professionals come directly from the field, how strong company culture enables strong safety culture, and why sometimes the most effective safety conversations are the most human ones. If you’re responsible for protecting people across complex operations, this conversation will challenge how you think about risk and where it really lives.

In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Zac Elliott, Safety Director at Mead & Hunt, to explore what modern safety leadership looks like across a diverse, nationwide engineering and consulting organization.


Mead & Hunt operates across architecture, engineering, aviation, transportation, water infrastructure, and environmental services. With more than 1,500 employees and teams operating across the country, Zac’s role involves managing safety exposure in environments the company often doesn’t directly control like construction sites and client facilities.


What makes Zac’s perspective particularly valuable is his background. Before moving into safety leadership, he spent years working in the trades, cutting his teeth in concrete work as a laborer and cement finisher. That hands-on experience continues to shape how he approaches safety leadership today.


In our conversation, we explore why field experience can dramatically improve safety leadership credibility, how organizations can balance internal and external safety expertise, and why driving risk remains one of the biggest safety exposures for many companies.


But the deeper theme running through the conversation is culture. Zac explains how strong company values, including taking care of people, doing the right thing, and doing what makes sense, create the foundation that makes a real safety culture possible.


Here are some highlights from my discussion with Zac:


If you're responsible for risk management, workforce safety, or operational leadership, this conversation offers practical insights into how safety leadership works.



Episode Resources


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