From the Field to the Boardroom: Reginald Shubert on Culture, Commitment, and What Safety Really Costs
March 19, 2026
"Once you hear that rack of that shotgun, if you take another step forward, we all know the outcome of that. When we ignore these so-called near misses, we lead ourselves down the road to having an incident." – Reginald Shubert, Director of Safety, Barr & Barr
Reginald Shubert didn't set out to be a safety professional. He was a union ironworker, happy in the field, until three people saw something in him that he didn't yet see in himself. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Reggie, Director of Safety at Barr & Barr, a 100% employee-owned construction management firm operating across the East Coast. We talk about what it actually takes to shift a workforce from compliance to commitment. They get into near misses, psychological safety, the trades gap nobody wants to talk about, and why tying safety back to home changes everything on a job site.
"Once you hear that rack of that shotgun, if you take another step forward, we all know the outcome of that. When we ignore these so-called near misses, we lead ourselves down the road to having an incident." – Reginald Shubert, Director of Safety, Barr & Barr
What does it look like when someone who has worked in the trades for decades brings that lived experience to safety leadership? In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Reggie, Director of Safety at Barr & Barr, a 100% employee-owned construction management firm with a history stretching back to 1927, to find out.
Reginald spent years as a union ironworker with Ironworkers Local 401 in Philadelphia before being recruited into safety leadership, not once but three times. What finally convinced him wasn't a title or a pay raise. It was a foreman who walked into a job site trailer hunched over at 50, and a safety director who asked a simple question: do you want to be able to play with your grandkids?
In this conversation, we cover:
- How a 30-year career in the field shapes the way Reginald approaches safety leadership today
- Why psychological safety is the most underused tool in high-risk industries
- The near miss analogy that will change how you think about incident reporting
- The stigma around skilled trades and why the construction industry deserves more respect
- His work with the Ebony Tie Affair Youth Symposium and what it means to give back alongside professional success
- The technique he uses on job sites to make personal safety feel personal
Reginald Shubert brings over 30 years in construction, starting out as a union ironworker with Ironworkers Local 401 in Philadelphia before making his way into safety leadership. He is a firm believer in moving organisations from compliance to commitment, and he has spent his career building high-performing teams, reducing incidents, and managing multi-site programmes across some genuinely high-stakes environments. Outside of work, he is an EMT, a track and field coach, and the vice chair of the Ebony Tie Affair Youth Symposium. Reginald, thank you for being here.
This episode is for safety professionals who came up through the field, for executives wondering why their culture programs aren't sticking, and for anyone who has ever had an almost-bad day at work and said nothing about it. Reginald makes a compelling case for why that silence is the most dangerous thing on any job site.
Episode Resources:
The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so