Health & Safety at The Municipal Group of Companies - Dean Wentzell & Dale Aubin

Dean and Dale join our podcast to discuss The Municipal Group of Companies which has been a key player in developing infrastructure in the region for over 50 years and are known for their commitment to safety, excellence, and community development.

Transcript

 Perley Brewer (Guest)   0:09
 Welcome to today's podcast, my name is Pearlie Brewer and I will be your host, today's podcast guests, and we have two of them are Dean Wentzel and Dale Albaugh.
 Dean is the Hilton safety manager and Dale is the safety advisor from the Municipal Group of Companies.
 Welcome, gentlemen.
Dean Wentzell   0:28
 Good day, Perley.
 How you doing?
 Thanks for having us. Yeah.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   0:31
 Not bad.
 Dean, let's get you to start by telling us a little bit about who are the municipal group of companies.
Dean Wentzell   0:38
 So municipal group in New Brunswick specifically is Dexter Construction is our our main Company within within our group, but we also have the waste management side which encompasses Pharaoh.
 We have AJ Bellis, in the Woodstock area, maintenance shops throughout the business.
 Other construction companies CLAYCO and RBC through throughout the province as well on different crews.
 So and we also have commercial recycling facilities as well.
 So yeah, it's compasses.
 Quite a bit of geographical area.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   1:23
 So do you have any sense of the number of employees that you would have if you rolled everyone up together?
Dean Wentzell   1:29
 Ohm.
 Well, it varies with the seasons for construction.
 So so we have a little bit less in the winter months, but overall we we offer we up our staff in certain operations also in the winter.
 So it does balance a little bit, but I would say up in the range of probably 500 during busy season.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   1:56
 So Dean,.
Dean Wentzell   1:56
 Between anywhere between 2:55 hundred.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   1:58
 Yeah.
 OK.
 So Dan, can you tell us a little bit about your job as the health and safety manager?
 What?
 What's your role within the municipal group?
Dean Wentzell   2:09
 So, so so my role is is just that Safety manager of all New Brunswick operations on both sides of the business waste waste collection, waste management and construction.
 I have 5 Safety advisors that work under me that are located in all the different areas within the province.
 So mainly I assist in manage the Safety advisors.
 Um to to have them out there doing their job.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   2:43
 So Daigle or that brings us to you then.
 What?
 What is your role exactly?
 How would how would you describe as someone said?
 OK.
 Well, that's nice.
 You get this nice title, Safety advisor.
 What's that really mean?
Dean Wentzell   2:52
 But yeah, so my current position on the I say, oh, you say it's a safety advisor for the municipal group.
 And I've been doing the role for close to two years now.
 I was promoted within the company, but my day to day if I were to explain the job.
 I mostly do inspections through the different business units I have and I have.
 Currently I have 3 but I have of multiple on both the waste side and the construction side and maintenance.
 I guess there's no OPS now, so I currently have three in RB, Clayco and Gateway operations.
 But yeah, I I in conjunction with operations, we conduct incident investigations together and I I carried a workplace inspections and I help operations with specific questions they might have about safety related things like legislation and things like that. Yeah.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   3:53
 So, Dale, what?
 What do you see as your biggest challenges for the people that you oversee?
 What are the areas that you you look at and say ohhhhh boy, this is this is gonna be maybe a little tougher sell or this is gonna be a tougher 1 to solve?
Dean Wentzell   4:01
 OK.
 But.
 OK.
 I think one of the biggest ones I have ohm, pretty much all my business units, they're not, they're not you.
 You wake up every morning and you don't know until that morning where everyone's gonna be.
 Cause they're they're every job site is dynamic and most of them are mobile like I have a paving crew and even if they make a plan, it could be the plan might change.
 And so I find being, you know, like I look after the Saint John region, I could have a crew that's two hours away, almost a Moncton, and then gateway looks after a highway stretch of over 200 kilometers.
 And I don't know what they're doing every morning, or sorry, every day until that morning.
 Because, you know, everybody's plan is just changing.
 So it's it requires a lot of presence and a lot of planning on my behalf and and just see what my day will look like.
 That's probably one of my biggest challenges.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   5:11
 What about you, Jane?
 What are?
 What are your biggest challenges when you oversee everything?
Dean Wentzell   5:15
 Well, it's New Brunswick is a fairly large geographical area and we have business units throughout the province stretching from the Moncton area, Woodstock and then over to the north, we have units in Miramichi, Bathurst, Alphaville.
 So.
 So there's a there's a quite a wide geographical area.
 So.
 So it's hard to I'm be everywhere at once.
 So obviously so you make your rounds and then I and then the next thing on that would be the differences in the business units.
 There's there's different hazards and risks with each of those units that they don't always have have the same hazards and risks within what they're doing on the on a daily basis.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   6:07
 So if someone were to ask you Dean, what's your daily health and safety for losophy that that you would like folks to see that you practice on the day to day basis?
Dean Wentzell   6:18
 Well, I think one of the main things that I like to practice as a safety professional and this is comes along before joining Municipal Group is is to have strong relationships with the operations and employees.
 Um, no matter what program you're running.
 What?
 What policies and practices you have in place?
 You have to have that relationship and the trust within the groups in order to get your message across and and that's our focus as we have to influence and convince people that safety is one of the priorities.
 So in order to get that, they first have to have that trust and and relationship with with our team.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   7:04
 What about you, Dale?
 What's like philosophy you'd like for your your folks to see coming from you?
Dean Wentzell   7:09
 Well, I'd take a lot for my own personal experiences coming from operations.
 Um, I I strongly encourage employees whenever possible to almost every time I see them every meeting, everything.
 I always encourage them to just take their time.
 Uh, take a moment to assess their hazards around them and try to control them.
 They can't control them.
 Then to contact their supervisor.
 But most importantly, I always tell them just take your time.
 I find they said a lot of my own personal experiences rushing led to some of the things that's happened in my life in my career.
 So yeah.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   7:52
 So Dean, on boarding.
 I assume that overall you're looking, you would be the one that would be responsible for looking at on boarding and making sure that in all your different operations you have a good process in place.
 What do you think of the critical pieces?
 Not only for your organization, but for any organization to have in place when it comes to onboarding for new employees.
Dean Wentzell   8:16
 Yeah, we we are certainly involved in in the planning of on boarding prior to to that happening.
 But we do have a full training department with the Municipal group of Companies and HR, so they we helped those groups set up what what we need the employees to know when they start their employment with us, depending on which business unit they're joining.
 Um, so we make sure that we obviously we gotta cover any legislation that's applicable to to their jobs.
 What our safety rules and policies and procedures are, those are some of the main things that we start off with.
 Um, emergency procedures.
 We try to give our employees a good overview of how to recognize hazards, how how we recognize hazards and control them, making sure that they're.
 Reporting incidents and near misses when they happen.
 So.
 So that's probably the main thing.
 Starting off before then, we get into the very specifics of each job.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   9:39
 So you mentioned training and and I'll put the question to you first and then I'll get Dale's reaction as well.
Dean Wentzell   9:45
 Hmm.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   9:45
 I guess if you were to ask any person in health and safety is training a good investment?
 I you know, you would expect an answer.
 Yes, of course it is.
Dean Wentzell   9:54
 Yes.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   9:54
 Can you share with us some examples of where you think training really is beneficial and and where you've seen it as beneficial?
Dean Wentzell   10:07
 The Unicipal group has a actually has a career college and and trains employees right from the very start of their careers in heavy equipment operation and and other things.
 So we have a a career college that trains them to to actually do their job and then it and it trains them to do it safely.
 So they they get their safety training as all part of that, if we're bringing employees in that I already have experienced in their qualified to operate equipment and I'm just speaking on the construction side right now then then we'll bring them in and and have the basics of of our safety training and what our policies are and procedures on how we operate safely.
 So yeah, we so that's that's one area that we focus on.
 We also do.
 We have a a large like like I've said before, we have a large training department within the company as well.
 We do a lot of online training.
 At the beginning of the employment and then and then we do in class training um as well.
 So.
 So that's within our group.
 We also do third party training with other training providers like yourselves, um within the province and and then we roll into once once the employees are out in the field, we have mentoring programs in place that we have mentors with each employee and and we follow that up with competency evaluations on a yearly basis as well.
 So so training is is very important and the company takes out quite seriously and they have lots of programs in place to make sure that we cover that.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   12:05
 Go question another question for you, Dean, you you mentioned training different types of training you have online training versus in class training.
 What?
 Your thoughts on the two?
 What do you get as feedback from your employees when it comes to you know what they prefer and and what do you feel is is there one better than the other?
 Or do you consider the meiko or?
Dean Wentzell   12:29
 My preference is usually depending on the type of training it is.
 My preference is always in person training you.
 You get those small indications you you can't see peoples faces.
 You don't.
 You don't get the same.
 You don't get the conversations.
 You don't get the questions asked when when online training takes place.
 So you miss out on some of those key factors when you're doing training.
 Um, having said that, a lot of our our younger workers, um, newer generation workers, prefer the online stuff.
 They they, they're they're more comfortable with that.
 Training seems to be going in that direction a lot more over the last decade, I would say so.
 So the younger workers are more comfortable with it, but but I personally prefer in class.
 I think there's there's a lot more to be gained from that.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   13:35
 You get any feedback, Dale from from your employee or not your employees, but from the employees as to which they prefer.
Dean Wentzell   13:44
 And I think it's like like it, like Dean, said it it it's gonna depend on what training is.
 So when it comes to someone new that's learning how to drive a snow plow, you know they the mentorship program is real benefit in that regard because they're expected to, to drive and be evaluated by the mentor.
 I was.
 I was one when I was with Gateway and you know, I would take a guy out and they thought it was really beneficial.
 I mean, especially if someone was a truck driver for 30 years but never driven a plow truck, you know, to go through that and to run the hydraulics and the wings and things of that nature, they found a lot of benefit in do it.
 Mean.
 So training like that and the guys down at the Dexter Institute are they're very professional and the very knowledgeable and yeah the that's the the feedback I would probably that I've been given anyways.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   14:45
 So during worksite visits, what do you look for and let's start with you, Dale.
 When you go out to do work, site visits and and I'm sure with the you know where Palm Spring and then it won't be long before the construction crews and so on will be out.
 What do you look for when you go out to do an inspection, say on a construction related work?
Dean Wentzell   15:04
 Alright.
 Yeah, it at first I depend.
 It depends on what business unit on inspecting.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   15:09
 Yeah.
Dean Wentzell   15:10
 So because there's a big difference between big rehab bridge construction site versus a waste management vehicle that's collecting garbage, um, so.
 I once I figure out you know where I'm going for the day and what I'm looking at.
 Ohm I typically look for the compliance cause every rule is different for the business unit.
 So certain {PEP} might be required for a bridge read site, you know, with respirators and things like that, versus the crew that's collecting waste.
 They have specialized gloves, things like that, that other sites don't.
 So I I look for the individual requirements for the the tasks that they're doing and and uh, I just genuinely check for compliance and things like that.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   16:02
 How about you, Dale or Dane?
 What do you look for?
Dean Wentzell   16:05
 I'm I try not to get tunnel vision when I go to a site to do an inspection.
 I try not to focus on one thing.
 I just AI look at the site overall and try to see what I can see.
 I'm.
 I mean, I'm obviously looking for compliance issues when I'm there hazards.
 Obviously, if I see any hazards, I wanna address them right away, but I try not to get too specific when I'm doing my inspections out on site.
 I I wanna try to look at the whole picture and and not get focused on one thing, cause you tend to you miss you miss more when you're when you're trying to focus on one item.
 So just just an overall view of the site or or the the job that's being done and and look at it that way.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   16:53
 So Dean, we have construction season coming up, you obviously in the Dexter into the business have a lot of folks out in various aspects of construction.
Dean Wentzell   16:57
 Hmm.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   17:03
 Um, what are some of the most prevalent hazards that you might see that would concern you?
 What are the?
 What are the things that you'd really wanna watch?
Dean Wentzell   17:13
 Well, when it comes to construction, we have, you know, kind of our big three when when we're operating heavy equipment and we're into civil type work.
 Obviously, trenching is is one of those large one of those groups that you want to focus on.
 Like Dale mentioned before, we have our bridge crews.
 So you're looking at specialized peepee for fall fall protection.
 Um systems in place there, um and the.
 And then there's confined space as well that we have to focus on.
 Umm, but one of the one of the things that we also need to focus on is the public.
 A lot of our operations are in direct contact with the public on a daily basis or highway crews, even a lot of our construction crews are still interacting with the public at all times and and that makes for a lot of hazards that are are harder to control because it's hard to control the public sometimes.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   18:20
 How about you, Dale?
 What are the hazards that you see out there when you're doing your inspections in, in the construction end of the business, especially that you sort of pull back a little and you really wanna watch because maybe you're concerned about it, concerned about thoughts and welcomes?
Dean Wentzell   18:34
 Well, I I have to agree with Dean on the the traffics and #1 hazard it, it doesn't matter.
 It touches all aspects of my business units, whether it's waste collection vehicles, snow operations and construction that traffics just.
 It's increased nowadays people seem to be more aggressive with the increased traffic setups, specifically in urban areas like the city and and to touch even further on it the the new hazard that's kind of presenting itself is, is homelessness.
 I've had a lot of, I don't say a lot, but I've had instances where interactions with our employees, the things of that nature.
 So it does happen.
 And like Dean, said, the tires are really hard thing to control, especially if nobody is following the rules or the speed limits or the barriers to keep people out of construction sites and things like that, or setting up tents and work areas.
 So it's a tough one, but it does exist and now I would say that's probably the biggest one that concerns me.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   19:45
 Yeah, I was talking to another employer last week and and and they mentioned the same topic.
 They're they're finding that their employees are coming more and more in contact with the with the homeless population and it it presents a lot of challenges as well.
 Hilton tape culture and I'll start with you, Dale, on on this topic.
 We hear a lot of discussion over the years about well, health and safety culture.
 How do you know when you see a good health and safety culture and how you determine that within your different business units?
Dean Wentzell   20:18
 Well, I see it when I noticed employees are taking a strong interest and they're and their own health and safety and their health and safety, well being of their coworkers.
 Um, I see it when they are mentoring and coaching other people that do things in the right way.
 The Safeway and when I see that, I know that it's a top down approach that the message from management's reached the employee level and it's clicking on all cylinders then and and that's how I that's how I see it.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   20:52
 Now you mentioned something a moment ago.
 Dawn and and I want to go back to it.
 We had a podcast a few weeks ago involving a gentleman.
 That was injured on the job and it was near the end of a project and he was rushing.
 Everybody was rushing to try and get it done and you mentioned that as a concern earlier.
 Do you wanna expand on that?
 You know, how do you get the message across to your employees about taking the time, not rushing work to help keep safe?
Dean Wentzell   21:21
 I think the important thing is we, you know, we we need to keep encouraging it.
 You know, if we can't, we can't rush our employees or or give unrealistic deadlines, things of that nature and it in and we need to allow the the time.
 But we also need to send the message home that you like.
 I said every toolbox meeting, every Safety hotel, everything.
 I always remind guys to just take their time, take a breather because sometimes um, I've encountered were.
 Please will set goals on themselves.
 That management might not set it could be their own personal goal goal, where they and sometimes it can be, they can be their own worst enemy, you know, and and then when they make these personal goals and and can't achieve them, then they start feeling a heightened stress level.
 And when you get stressed and you start rushing it, it could lead to an incident.
 So.
 So it's important to just always drive that message home that it's it's it's OK, you know, take your time.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   22:26
 Dean, to go back to the question on safety culture, when you look at your different business units and you go out and and talk to folks, how do you go about to determine to get a sense of what the safety culture of that unit is and perhaps ways you need to work to improve it?
Dean Wentzell   22:42
 So yeah, I'll.
 I'll just follow up with Dale there.
 It's it's when.
 It's when you see the frontline workers driving the safety program, that's when you know that the that there's starting to be a safety culture within your organization.
 Uh, I having them understand that that we work safely or and we safely produce?
 Um, not just focusing on one thing in one bucket, we take the whole the whole situation and and that includes for them they have to think about production.
 That's that's their job.
 They have to think about quality, so they have to do a good job.
 They have to do their work, but they also have to do their work safely.
 So you have to combine those three.
 You have to recognize with the employees that production and quality are also a part of their jobs.
 If you if you only ever talk about Safety, then they don't think that you understand the things that they're going through on a daily basis.
 So when we're talking to the employees, we try to mention that, you know, there's a job to do and and we have to do good work and we have to do that work safely.
 So you you take it as a threefold system and and make sure that they're all combined equally.
 That's that's the goal.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   24:13
 So my next question and and I'll put this to each of you very curious as to your reaction, different generations of workers, do you think they really are different?
 In fact, how do you see them different in regards to things like work practices and how do you manage the different groups?
 You know we we continually see articles on, you know, generation XY millennials and so on.
Dean Wentzell   24:34
 And.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   24:34
 So Dean, what's what's your reaction is to how to manage the different groups within your workforce?
Dean Wentzell   24:43
 Well, I think with so our our company right now, I think we're dealing with four different generations of employees and and I think we're not alone in that as far as the industry goes or or or even the all the workforce within the province.
 So the important thing is that define that common ground there they all have their different nuances we'll say on on how, how they treat work, work, life balance.
 But the The thing is to find that common ground with within all those work groups or diverse age groups, I guess we'll say so you have your baby, baby boomers, they're the traditionalists.
 I guess we'll we'll call them strong work ethic.
 The Gen Xers prefer to kind of work alone, but but they're OK with working with groups as well.
 The millennials like to work as a team.
 They they like feedback from their peers.
 So you you try to group those, you try to get a nice balance of each work group working together to help have a good team and and then then we're we're starting to see more of the the Gen Z Group come into the workforce too and and they're all about work life balance and a certain way that they do things.
 So there is common small bits of common ground between all of those groups, so it's just finding that and making sure that you're able to communicate with each of those groups.
 And as a whole.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   26:34
 Dale, how are you able to manage to different generations?
Dean Wentzell   26:37
 That's a good question.
 It's for me.
 It's like Dean, said, it's a, it's about finding how to communicate with them and and and to get their trust.
 So for me it changed how I communicate with the different generations, so I might be the only one that feels this way, but I find that the older generations they I can take Safety in a more casual way that it's more beneficial that way because if I appear like I'm telling them what to do, then uh, I'm not gonna ever get.
 I've never had any luck like that with that generation.
 So and the and the younger generations, you can take a little bit more serious tone to it and they are more receptive to uh.
 Do you hearing about it, hearing more Safety stuff?
 So it in somewhere in the middle they, you know, everybody likes to be.
 Mentored a little bit on things that they don't know so but the key is just to communicate and and to change how I talk to them, the different generations.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   27:42
 So my next question, what does a busy week look like for you in the summer?
 And I know obviously it's gonna vary depending on a whole variety of factors, but you just from a general point of view and we'll start with you, Dale.
 What's a typical week look like for you in the summer when you're obviously a lot of construction going on in the summer, so much different activity around the province?
 How do you sort of plan?
 Out your week.
Dean Wentzell   28:05
 Yeah, that's a good question too.
 So the days are long.
 In the summer, in the in the sites are stretched over all over the place.
 Like you said, it could be Fredericton, to Moncton to Saint John and like I kind of touched on at the beginning, it's I really don't know where I'm gonna be until the morning of kind of thing.
 So I gotta wake up.
 Look at my phone and then I see where where my I'm gonna be going.
 And so it's been for the business, it's it's been a lot of traveling, a lot of meetings, ohm, a lot of tool boxes, things like that.
 They all happen, joint health and Safety committee meetings.
 They all happen different days of the week, so I just kinda prioritize, you know, word.
 I gotta be where I got to share my presence.
 I try to spread it evenly and and yeah, that's it's it's all booked the planning as we go kind of thing.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   29:05
 How about you, Dean,?
 What's your week look like?
Dean Wentzell   29:09
 A lot of travel like like Dale says, we try to get.
 We try to have a presence with within the operations groups there were were there to support our operation, be part of the team.
 We don't want to be looked at as a separate a separate group or a separate part of the company.
 We want to be part of the groups, so presence is needed, so we do a lot of.
 I do a lot of traveling around the province, especially in the summertime.
 We look at any incidents that we may have had, make sure that we've put in proper controls, we review the incidents with management and supervision to make sure that we didn't miss anything.
 It's it's a group effort.
 Again, we we don't we we are not, although we are the safety department, we're not the only people that look out for safety within the company.
 It's it's.
 It's a joint effort.
 That's how it works.
 We have to make sure that we're reviewing those things we review in all our inspections to make sure again that we're putting controls in on the hazards that we identified within those inspections and a lot of our audits take place during the summer time.
 That's the way they're scheduled.
 We we need to make sure that our crews wrote on owed on the site so that we can do our auditing process.
 So with all the different companies and business units with municipal group, we have 7 or 8 audits that take place over the summer.
 So that's a busy part of of my summer too.
 And then and then just planning making changes.
 To our our system to make sure that, um, you were adoptable, we have.
 We have to adapt to to all the changes that we're having, so plan make the next plan on how we're going to implement, um, any new processes or or procedures that we we put in place.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   31:21
 So one last question, I'll put this to both of you is if you were to look at maybe one of the biggest challenges you face when it comes to convincing workers of the importance of health and safety on a day to day basis, what would that be challenge be and how do you convince him?
 You know, Sarah with you, Dale.
Dean Wentzell   31:42
 Alright, so coming from operations, when I would see a new safety advisor, I was always wondering what their intentions were or what their personalities were like.
 Cause it does make a difference, so there's when I first would meet one, I was always and we'll say there'd be a lack of trust, but I just didn't know them.
 Right.
 So one of my biggest priorities when I became one was to get out there, earn their trust and show them that my intentions were not in a bad way.
 That I'm here to help them.
 I'm your to help them with any kind of service they need or any kind of questions they have and it takes time.
 And then I've.
 I've gone even I struggled with one team on the waste management side.
 Uh, they they weren't receptive to inspections and I I took some time to actually make my presence with them almost daily and I and I got to the point where I even worked with them.
 I I would work on the back of their truck and help them pick the garbage from residential areas and stuff like that and and that just means such a momentum game in their eyes.
 And you know, I don't even look after them.
 Uh.
 Anymore and they still call me almost weekly.
 So it once you get out there and you get that presence and you just show them your intentions, it can be a huge benefits to just getting to know the guys and not making everything about safety.
 But in a way, you kind of are by leading by example and and showing them how to how to work safely and things like that so.
Perley Brewer (Guest)   33:29
 Ohk 2 Dean,.
Dean Wentzell   33:30
 Yeah, I'll just.
 I'll follow up with Dale on that one.
 I believe that's that is key.
 I mean, you have to have that relationship and and trust before you can have the message.
 Nobody's gonna listen to your message if if they don't trust what you're saying.
 So that I mean that's that's life in general like we see we see that on a daily basis.
 Um within.
 You know you're seeing it with the media.
 There's a lack of trust with the media information.
 There's lack of trust with our government systems, so we we can't look at ourselves any different.
 If if people see us as somebody, they can't trust their, they're not going to listen to anything we say.
 So you have to have that trust and and relationship with with the groups before you can get your message out there.
 So I I agree 100% with what Dale said and again it has it has to be, um based on.
 The the The three main factors we we have to produce safely and & safely produce a quality product no matter what we're doing, whether that's a service or or not, we most of our, our our businesses are service based.
 So we have we have to keep that in mind and make sure that the employees take Safety as as the same priority what they do for production and and quality.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   35:04
 Well, look, gentlemen, like to thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to talk to me this morning.
 Hope things go well for you this summer.
 Uh, I would sense that probably would be a very busy season again this year, seeing as a lot of activity ongoing around the province.
 So thank you very much for our podcast listeners.

Dean Wentzell   35:23
 Thank you.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   35:24
 I'd like to thank you for listening to our podcast today.
 Stay safe and we will talk to you again next week.