The Mentor Mindset That Keeps People Safe: Insights from David Doggette
November 13, 2025
"It actually costs more time and money to do it unsafe in the end, once you've had an incident, than to do safety directly." - David Doggette, Director of Safety at LPX Group
Okay, safety leaders, this one’s for anyone trying to scale safety across multiple sites, teams, and regulations without losing focus on what really matters: your people. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with David Doggette, Senior Safety Professional at LPX Group, to unpack how a family-run heavy civil contractor is building a safety-first culture across 650+ employees.
David shares lessons from his Army background, why mentorship beats micromanagement, and how drones and AI audits are reshaping safety intelligence in real time. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn compliance from a checkbox into a business advantage, this conversation will change how you think about ownership, leadership, and what “safe” really means on the job.
"It actually costs more time and money to do it unsafe in the end, once you've had an incident, than to do safety directly." - David Doggette, Director of Safety at LPX Group
Okay, safety leaders, this one’s for anyone trying to scale safety across multiple sites, teams, and regulations without losing focus on what really matters: your people. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with David Doggette, Senior Safety Professional at LPX Group, to unpack how a family-run heavy civil contractor is building a safety-first culture across 650+ employees.
David shares lessons from his Army background, why mentorship beats micromanagement, and how drones and AI audits are reshaping safety intelligence in real time. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn compliance from a checkbox into a business advantage, this conversation will change how you think about ownership, leadership, and what “safe” really means on the job.
Here are some of the topics that we explore:
How to shift safety ownership from compliance theater to operational reality
Why your next safety hire might not have a safety degree
The mentor mindset that prevents safety professionals from becoming bottlenecks
How to navigate wildly different regulatory landscapes without losing your mind
Why stopping a project because something looks wrong is a business decision, not a cost
How AI-powered audits and real-time data analytics are reshaping leading indicators
David Doggette is a Director of Safety at LPX Group, a diversified heavy civil contractor based in Louisville, Kentucky. With nearly two decades of safety experience rooted in U.S. Army combat deployments and risk management training, he now leads safety operations across five brands and 650+ employees. David is known for combining military discipline with practical field insight to build strong, scalable safety cultures across OSHA, DOT, and MSHA environments.
Episode Resources: