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The Small-Project Safety Blueprint You Need but Aren’t Using, with Tom Garske
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"Safety is relationship management. That's what it comes down to. It's being able to connect with people and understand their needs and what they wanna see and how they wanna see it and responding to them." - Tom Garske, President, Garske Consulting
OK, everyone, this one’s for the builders, supers, and owner-operators who are running lean teams and still trying to do safety the right way. In this episode of The Canary Report: Safety & Risk Management, I sit down with Tom Garske to unpack what real safety leadership looks like when you don’t have mega-project resources.
Tom breaks down why relationships and not rules drive safer crews, how day-one expectations create real behavioural change, and why multilingual communication can’t be an afterthought. We get candid about the high-risk areas that sink small contractors, the business case for investing in training, and the tough calls that save both lives and budgets. If you’re juggling margins and safety, this conversation is your blueprint.
Here are some of the topics that Tom and I explore:
- Why tone-setting on day one is your most powerful safety tool
- Why the cost of a single incident to small contractors can force closure, and how to prevent it
- How relationship management is actually safety management
- The fall protection paradox: Gear without training kills people
- Why hiring on-demand safety resources beats full-time staff for mid-scale projects
- The language barrier is a safety barrier that requires direct action
Tom Garske is President and CEO of Garske Consulting LLC, and brings over two decades of construction and real estate development expertise to owner-builder representation and construction consulting. A civil engineer by training, Tom spent 20 years at Whiting Turner, a nationally recognized construction management firm known for its unwavering safety standards, before launching his consulting practice in 2017. His work focuses on integrating safety into every phase of construction, from planning through execution, with particular expertise in addressing the unique challenges smaller subcontractors and regional developers face when scaling safety protocols across multifamily and mixed-use projects.
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