Facility Rockstars

To close out our six-week series dedicated to environmental health and safety leadership, this special compilation episode brings together highlights from Jay Culbert's conversations with six standout EHS professionals: Colleen Walker, Vanessa Brady, Lori Santoli, Jessica Goodhue, Don Bezek, and Don Watson. Rather than a single interview, this episode weaves together their most memorable stories, from redesigning lockout/tagout procedures to make them intuitive on the plant floor, to navigating management-of-change processes for new equipment and chemicals, to rethinking how facilities are designed with universal accessibility in mind.

Across every story, one thread holds the whole series together: EHS is fundamentally a people profession. Guests reflect on building cross-functional trust, using automation to eliminate hazards without eliminating jobs, balancing safety requirements against food-safety regulations, and the lasting lessons learned from leading teams through COVID-19. Whether you've followed the whole series or are just tuning in, this finale distills six weeks of hard-won wisdom into one conversation about why the technical side of safety only works when the human side comes first.
 
Takeaways:
  • Make safety procedures visual, not just verbal. Complex lockout/tagout steps became far more reliable once translated into color-coded, numbered visual indicators that workers could follow in the moment — not just recall from training.
  • Build a cross-functional review process for management of change. Before bringing in new equipment, chemicals, or technology, loop in a team to review risks, permits, and training needs upfront — it's cheaper than discovering the gap after the fact.
  • Automate to eliminate hazards, not to eliminate people. Look for opportunities to remove human error from dangerous manual tasks while redirecting — not replacing — the people who did them.
  • Understand your industry's unique constraints. Safety solutions that work in one sector (like food manufacturing, with its strict food-safety rules) may need to be adapted rather than copy-pasted from another.
  • Design facilities around all users, not just the average one. Applying universal design principles — equitable use, simplicity, low physical effort — early prevents costly retrofits and creates genuinely inclusive workplaces.
  • Lead with relationships before you need them. Getting to know coworkers across departments — their interests, their pressures — makes it far easier to gain buy-in when it's time to introduce a safety change.
  • Communicate constantly, even when you don't have all the answers. Consistent, two-way communication between the floor and leadership builds the trust that safety initiatives depend on to actually stick.

Quote of the Show:
  •  "At the end of the day, it's a person, then it's people, and then you're back to people."

Links:

Creators and Guests

Host
Jay Culbert
Producer
Amanda Goyette

What is Facility Rockstars?

This is Facility Rockstars! The podcast that celebrates the unsung heroes of our daily lives – facility professionals! I'm your host, Jay Culbert. Join me as we honor these leaders - sharing stories, insights, and expertise that empower us all to learn and grow together. Facility Rockstars is sponsored by Kaloutas, operating the way you operate in order to make your life easier. Learn more at: https://www.kaloutas.com