The Safety Link Podcast by Kenyon Manley

Cultivating a Culture of Care through Workplace Safety with Perry Silvey

• Kenyon

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Could we all use a little more safety in our lives? As we navigate through the chaos of life, Perry Sylvie, a seasoned veteran of BT Construction and B-Trenchless, joins us to demonstrate how safety measures and inspections are more than just checkboxes on a list - they are crucial lifelines that keep our workspaces humming and our hearts ticking. Perry kicks off his day with a prayer and a verse, a testament to his faith and a gentle reminder to us all to carry a piece of our personal care routines into our daily grind. His 19-year-long love journey with his wife, Stephanie, beautifully underscores the importance of genuine connections and feelings in our lives. 

The conversation then pivots to the power of relationships in fostering safety. Perry enlightens us with his insights on building trust with employees and crafting a culture of care that transcends mere compliance. We delve into the intriguing concept of thinking inside the box, a strategic approach aimed at shielding employees and averting the normalization of deviance. Perry's experiences and the questions he poses present a clear view of the ground reality. 

We then shift gears to the Trenching and Excavation Safety Task Force, a critical outfit that helps disseminate the safety message to the most vulnerable workers. Perry discusses the upcoming October 4th event featuring OSHA and how such initiatives help reach out to field workers. We discuss strategies to elevate the Safety Task Force with the backing of the National Utility Contractors Association. As Perry shares his journey from the military to becoming a safety professional, we gain insight into how this transition shapes his management style. So, lend your ear to this enriching conversation and learn how workplace safety can foster a culture of care and trust.

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Speaker 1:

Are we?

Speaker 2:

ready, I guess, yeah.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, let's get started. Well, welcome to the Safety Link podcast. This podcast is dedicated to keeping you safety professionals and myself informed about things that are going on in life. So I consider this life, this life, I consider this part of safety. So every once in a while, we'll dive deep into various topics such as personal safety, home security, health and wellness, finances, workplace safety, safety products, craft just a whole bunch of different things that I see can enter our lives and maybe become a hazard or become something that grows into a problem later. So we'll attempt to provide you with some valuable tips, some strategies, practical advice, hope to empower you to be real vigilant about taking care of yourself. I think, at the end of the day, when you wake up in the morning, you got to take care of yourself. That's the very first thing you do. We always talk about inspections on the safety side of things. Well, inspect yourself. It doesn't always look good, but at least you know what you need to fix and what the problem is. So just join us today.

Speaker 1:

I have a guy here who I'm excited, really excited to talk to. A lot of you guys may know him. He's on a lot of different boards. He's on a lot of different things. He's very active within the state of Colorado when it comes to some safety things, and one of the things that he's really involved in is thinking inside the box Not only no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Mr Perry, sylvie, I want to thank you for coming on this podcast and, just so everybody knows, we're going to talk about Perry, we're going to get into a couple things and then I'm going to let him start talking about thinking inside the box, which deals with trench safety, and hopefully we'll have a couple other episodes after this one about different areas within trench and excavation, and I think it's a very big topic. It's sadly to say, last year was a very bad year for people in trenches. It actually doubled, I think.

Speaker 2:

More than doubled Right from the year before.

Speaker 1:

But please go ahead and introduce yourself to us, let us know who you are and we'll go from there. Perry.

Speaker 2:

All right, yeah, thanks a lot. Appreciate you having me on here. This is pretty exciting to be a part of this and what you're doing here, kenyon. This is great, so thank you very much again.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my name's Perry Sylvie With BT Construction. We also have B-Trenchless is our other division. So yeah, I've been with BT now coming up on four years. So yeah, I've been a great organization, really good people there and just excited to be able to support and help those guys and be a part of a great organization.

Speaker 1:

And it's funny those four years when I think about Perry was on one of my projects twice with two different companies, but it's just when he says four years, it's like sometimes they seem like a long time because of what you've been through, but it really hasn't been that long, man. So again, yes, awesome. So, Perry, we're just regular people with an expertise. Ours deals with safety. I think we talked about it last night. In a servant leadership world, in our business, when I think about safety professionals, I always like to highlight who are those people. I think their mothers, fathers, law enforcement firemen, people behind the scenes, like people who sell PPE. They're a piece of us. And then the connection with the foreman, superintendent, nurses, all these people that have to take care of somebody when it comes to their lives.

Speaker 1:

And I think we work as a big part of our day. So when you talk about eight, 10, sometimes 12 hours, you only have 12 more hours left. You have to sleep, you have your family, you gotta eat. It's very hard, Perry, in what we do, to come to work with too much on our mind. I guess what I wanna ask you how is it that when you, what does your day, how does your day start out? Do you take a breather in the morning? I know you're a Christian I don't know if you read your word in the morning. I know I do. But what do you do to get your day started off so that you're prepared to serve people?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, the first thing I do when I get up is I do have the daily verse that comes up on my Bible app, that you version app, and it is something that I do every morning. I wanna make sure that that's how I start my day and a little bit of prayer and just, yeah, get going on my day starting with that. So, yeah, I am a Christian and I'm very proud to be serving an amazing God and, yeah, it's an important part of my day because it does, it starts it out in such an important way that, yeah, nothing goes first. That's it. That's the first thing that happens in the morning for me Super, super, super important.

Speaker 1:

This was the attractive thing that I think when me and Perry first met. Sometimes the spirit when they hit each other, it's a feeling man, and it's a genuine feeling and there's really nothing we can do about it. But when it's living in somebody that's so important, it's because it's nothing fake. You know you have really have no control over it when it comes out. So when they, when they meet up, it's, it's, it's something nice. So really, really again glad to have you. I know you said you're married, you got a family, some kids tell us about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my wife Stephanie. We've been married, let's see, coming up on 19 years, and we've known each other since 98, when we started going to college together. And then, yeah, we, after college, we started dating and and then got married in 2004. And we didn't have kids for eight years. So we now have two girls. Zora is 12, or, sorry, she's 11. And it seems like she's going on 20.

Speaker 1:

I know that feeling.

Speaker 2:

And then Hazel is eight years old. She's actually turning nine here in October. Wow, yeah, these girls are, are amazing. So one, one quick thing I want to share that this is something that we you and I haven't talked about, but just something real cool. That we're doing is I like to do date night or date day with one of my daughters?

Speaker 2:

Okay, and the way we make it work is, the first Saturday of each month is my wife, we go on a date, and then the second Saturday of the month is my oldest daughter, zora, and then the third Saturday is my youngest daughter, hazel, and then the fourth Saturday is a family date night or date day, whatever we decided to do. And then on the fifth Saturday if there is a fifth Saturday, that's my day I get to do what I want. So you know video games, right, whatever. Whatever I decided to do is something I get to do on the on the fifth, which is usually, you know, two or three times a year at most. But it's a fun thing we've been doing for a few years now and it's a way for me to be able to get you know a little closer to my daughters you know each separately and be able to have that, that special time with you, with each one of them, so it's a fun thing I get to do there with my.

Speaker 1:

You just gave us some, some strategies here you know, sometimes you know I've been married for 23.

Speaker 1:

And well, tell her congrats, because you know my first five years was was, you know, because of me, you know was rough man and I'm sad to say that, but it is what it is. Man, definitely we've grown, but what you talk about, you know really mixing it up in in in your, your, your life, because at the end of the day, we come to work, we go home, they see us less than our work does and we got to really be. What do you want to say? You got to make sure you make time for the family. However it is that you do, I really like what you you had. You you separate that, that relationship, and you spend that time.

Speaker 1:

But when I think, when the kids and the wife are made important, those extra four hours that you may not be there, it doesn't even matter, because they know that when their time is up, dad, husband, is dedicated to me and they're making sure they're making time for me.

Speaker 1:

So I really think that's important because all the way from the craft on up, we work major hours, especially during the summer, and sometimes it can create relationship issues, whether it's with the kids, the wife or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1:

So what you, just what you just hit on is like these are the things that we, we need to give the people that we call our brothers and sisters, these safety professionals that you, there's nuggets. I hope that we can get out of this podcast right and it doesn't always have to be something that's breaking down, a cut or whatever these other things that I don't know if we talk enough about them, and it's also these things that cause these, these, these, this new mental thing, this new mental health and wealth, and you know all these things. So I'm really glad that you brought that up about your family and how you you make sure you are deliberate with making time for them, awesome. The other thing I want to talk about is so you, you came up with a great idea, a great move for empowerment because, like we were talking earlier last year, double the year before, which was 2021, in deaths, and I would, if I can't remember, three or four of those were here there was a lot in Colorado.

Speaker 1:

You know and he's and you know, and I'm glad OSHA, I'm glad the government is sort of picking up on the responsibility and the accountability of frontline supervisors, owners and people that are watching this very thing happen. And I think it's so important you me, everybody out there watching that we have to begin to make sure that when there's an accident happening, people are standing around watching it. They are just as accountable. And how do we motivate and empower them to speak up before and not after? Do you run into seeing? When you come to the incident, you find out that like three or four guys might have seen something and and it's like they're really not involved, but they are, because we always talk about you have the right to say no or stop work or this responsibility that we really want our people to have.

Speaker 2:

Right. If you see something, say something, right that culture, that really takes time for an organization to really instill that in their people. It's not going to happen overnight and that's part of what our job is in safety is to help really change that mentality. Or, you know, look at these guys and show them the importance of a life and and really show them what that risk is on that. On that you know for that job that they're doing that they could get hurt or they could get killed, and really understanding that, not having that, that risk tolerance Right.

Speaker 1:

You know, when we talk about risk tolerance, it's uh uh. Some people don't understand that a lot. You know what that is Some of it's. You know part of how we were brought up, what we do, what we're into. It's really what I, what I find for my, my, my, myself, is that when you got a guy with a high risk tolerance, my, I guess my strategy is to teach the form in order, superintendent, to recognize that Some of the things that that I recognize. That may be simple stuff, but it's like when you see a guy continually walk over a hazard, it's going to become a problem at one point. Sometimes I think that I used to be that, that form and that superintendent.

Speaker 1:

You get so overwhelmed with with what is the priority. I just had that one day say that, at the end of the day, I'm working for a company who believes in safety, so I need to be, I need to have that first in mind and, plus, that's my job, right, so really trying to, like you said, just trying to reach out and it, it, it really does. It's sometimes it's frustrating. It's nice to see progress, but, man, you're right, man, that that culture thing, really, it really takes time and you, you got to do the right things and if, if anything goes wrong, it sets you back very quickly, whether you've been working on this thing for months, years, and if, if one of them don't trust you man, it falls out off the, it falls off and then you got to pick it back up to, to try to, to try to run that through.

Speaker 1:

So, going back to this thinking inside the box, I was, I was thinking about this last night and you know it's, it's crazy that thinking inside the box and thinking outside the box, right, there's these two sayings that we were brought up. When I was really thinking deep on this and when I was thinking was it's, it's like us, as safety professionals and anybody who's dealing with the plan of work, we sort of really have to be thinking outside of box prior to them getting in the box, because I think that if we can keep them thinking inside the box, we take the constraints that actually make you think outside of the box, which we don't want them to do. So I, I, I, I, I really, I guess you know, going into, going into this whole thing, did you ever really think that that thinking inside the box had a constraint to you?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question.

Speaker 1:

Because when you I didn't mean to cut you off, but when you, when you're constrained or you're put into a place where you need to think about some options, now you're gonna innovate. The problem with that innovation is is it the right innovation? Right, because our people, we know they're a get it done type of mentality. Shall we say right, they're creative, they're creative, very creative, but we need to make sure that they think inside the box. Call us involve some people to make sure that's the right thing to do than to be spontaneous on being creative, because sometimes that creativity might have been okay, but some corners weren't covered. So when you were thinking about this, did that ever come to mind?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the double meaning. With think inside the box I mean the obvious think inside the trench box and think inside a safety device that's intended to protect an employee and it could be a shoring system, but the original intent was a trench box because that's the most common device, the easiest device to get our hands on in our world. But it's also the concept of thinking inside the box. We don't have to think outside the box, we don't have to think about new creative ideas. This system that's been installed over and over and over works, so use what works. Think inside the box because it works, because this system has already been designed by an engineer. It's already something that can work and will work if it's used. So that's the important aspect of think inside the box. Is that double meaning and how important it is to utilize a system that works.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's powerful. So when this actually started, I was in a situation where come up on a scene and guys were in the box, but there were some things that were going on outside, about a foot and a half outside, and when you look outside the box and you look at the edges, you could tell they're not very stable. So the innovation of the form and he stayed inside the box. What he did was is he put marks inside the trench box. So the guys knew that I don't want you to go past this line and, man, it made a very, very big difference because guys felt that, okay, maybe I got my legs in and I'm just gonna just creep just a little bit, but this here it created a boundary, is what it did, and they were able to grasp it and utilize it throughout the rest of the project and, like you said, staying inside that box, it works.

Speaker 1:

You know, I just got to tweak something. You, because you think to, just because you're here, okay, well, I'm gonna take a foot away from you. Okay, I'm gonna take a foot away from you. Don't let me catch you going past here and I'm gonna keep you accountable to that.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that's normalizing what is actually the compliance level, whereas what typically happens on the job site is they're normalizing a little bit of deviance, right Normalization of deviance Right and a little bit of change over time turns into large changes where people could get hurt, right? You know like an example would be. Well, they've left that trench box off the floor. Maybe at first it's at two feet, because that's what the rule is, but then they're tweaking it up to two and a half feet, to now maybe up to three feet at times, and before you know it, each time it gets higher and higher, and then all of a sudden you're at four foot of exposure, and now it's really dangerous.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And now you have to try to communicate to the team Like guys. That's not the way we do things. So it takes a lot of times, some time, for that type of deviance to start adding up to being something very dangerous, whereas that risk tolerance is allowing that deviance and allowing that normalization of that new standard, that new system that they're getting used to over time, because they've seen that positive reinforcement of negative behaviors and those continue to change their normal and their normal is now getting more and more dangerous as they go. But they don't realize it because they're tolerant to that risk.

Speaker 1:

Right, wow, I think that's where the care factor comes in, because most of the time when you go to the job, you always got those ones right. They wanna talk, they wanna do the right thing, they wanna make sure, but they don't. They're not ready to speak up yet, but they're bringing up some things that, like you said, can materialize into a big situation. And my brother always says that nobody cares about what you have to say until you show how much you care.

Speaker 1:

And creating that relationship as a safety professional is so important because now you have another eye that is helping you make the environment, the company, the culture a little more safer, a little better. And now you're gaining ground through the relationship. And how is it that over time, you've gained the relationships that you're gaining? Because I think that care factor in that relationship is very key to our system, because you and me both know that we can't be everywhere at the same time. Right, really good point.

Speaker 2:

And relationships are so key and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to work on those relationships and you get to know them. You get to know their family and you get to know them. You know what are some of the things that make them tick. You know it could be something as simple as this guy likes that special safety glass that you know and you're able to remember that and take care of these guys in a special way. And if they ask for something then you follow through, so you create trust and that relationship then starts to grow over time. So such an important part of our job is to build trust and really take care of these people, because they are people, they have families, they have a livelihood and we show that we care, we truly care about them because of all these things that we do to show that we care Very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Perry, very important. I always say relationships are important. You know, relationships are worth more money than you can ever imagine. It's really helped me. I think. Another thing that helped me personally too, is you don't know everything out there, right, when you start asking the craft of you know hey, how did you do that? Like you know, and being interested in exactly what they're doing, it helps out every once in a while. You know, getting involved just for a little bit maybe help the guys and, like you said, really trying to find out who's who, what do you like, what does he like, because that's the conversation they need.

Speaker 1:

I'm a believer that every time I come on site, I don't need to be talking about safety.

Speaker 1:

You know, because and the reason why I say that I say that to say that sometimes you gotta make people, you gotta let people know they're important. You know, and if I can let you know you're important safety will sneak its way in on you because you're gonna start caring about yourself, you're gonna start caring about what I think about you and you're gonna start caring about what other people think or are thinking about you, and it's gonna help guide you into a certain way when it comes to being able to execute when the light isn't shining on you and that's where we gotta get to is like when somebody is doing the right things in dark places. We don't never know how many times you hear of this or you hear of that couple months later and it's like, oh man, I wish I'd had known that a little bit earlier, you know. But definitely is important this whole relationship thing. So, perry, going back to the trench box, like I said, it's been a lot. It seems like this year it's only two or three.

Speaker 2:

Actually across country, it's a total of eight.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's eight okay.

Speaker 2:

But it's still much lower than it was this time last year. So we are improving, if you were to call it that, even though Even though eight too many. Eight too many. It should be zero. But I think we would all agree that that number is a lot better than it was last year. Yes, yes, and we definitely wanna continue to drive our message forward to as many people as we can. Again lower that to zero. But, yeah, it is definitely better this year than it was last.

Speaker 1:

Or is OSHA? I know OSHA in 20, I think it was 2018, they had a national emphasis program going on. Is there anything new that's been added to that recently? Perry?

Speaker 2:

No, still, 2018 was the latest on that emphasis program, the national emphasis program that they put together for trenching and excavation and safety. Last year, when they did put that out and I believe it was in June of last year in 2022, they did put that press release out and really to emphasize trench safety and to go back to what they really talked about in their 2018 emphasis program the importance of trench safety, to really try to lower those numbers and minimize those fatalities, which didn't seem to work. But or maybe it did and it could have been a lot worse. We don't know. But I think the important thing here is that we just continue to drive this awareness campaign to as many people as we can across country and around the world. Really, we've been very successful in our campaign through social media and it's been growing quite a bit here as of late and seeing a lot of people reach out to us that have seen what we're doing here on that social media platform, awesome.

Speaker 1:

So I know you got a couple things. I know you got some things coming up. You got a trenching excavation coming up here real soon. I'd like you to talk about that to the people watching, as well as talk about, maybe, some things that are going on with NUCA, which is the National Utility. Get me right.

Speaker 2:

National Utility Contractor Association, yep.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing is, after you answer those two questions, perry, I would like you to maybe talk to maybe a safety manager or somebody out there that may not know that they can either reach out to another safety manager or whatever, but they also can reach out to OSHA, who has a lot of training things. They'll lend theirself to you for some, maybe some small consulting or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2:

But if you can also talk about that where what's available for folks maybe struggling in trench and excavation, yeah, so I'll start off with the trench safety summit that you mentioned there and that's a huge event that we do and it's actually NACSA as well as OSHA, and then the National Utility Contractors Association. The Colorado chapter is a huge partner of that and there's last year we actually had 500 people show up to that event A huge event in person at the Adams County Fairground. This year it's gonna be October 4th. It's an all day event and there'll be OSHA speaking, as well as some vendors and some folks that are experts in the field of trench and excavation. They'll be speaking in front of the group. I actually speak.

Speaker 2:

I do a couple of different things during the event, so I'll be doing a little talk on best practices for trenching and excavation, as well as a round table discussion. So what I did last year is really just took the mic and walked around the room and really tried to get some good discussion with everybody that was there. It was really, really successful and they asked me to come back and do it again this year, so excited to be able to do that as well. It's really, really fun to be able to share a little bit about that and bring the general worker into the discussion, cause that's really the folks that we're trying to reach in our campaign. But really OSHA really wants to see that and really let's talk to the worker.

Speaker 2:

You know, up at our level right, I look at safety managers. We have a lot of resources, we really have a great group of people that work together, but how do we really get the message to the people that need to hear most? And so that event is just a fantastic way to be able to address the folks that are really needing to hear the message the most. So we're really trying to gather as many of those folks as we can to get them to attend that event. So that's a great one coming up. And then the greatest news that we've had recently is the National Utility Contractors Association that the actual national group out of Washington. They actually adopted the think inside the box Trenching and excavation safety task force.

Speaker 2:

So, with their resources, with the people that are on staff, they're gonna help take this and hopefully take it to the next level. So we're working with them. We're coming up with some strategies to be able to grow this message and build it even further than it's been so far. You know some of the ideas we've had with that, right, our group is called the Trenching and Excavation Safety Task Force, so TEST, and so we've started to come up with some new ideas Trenching and Excavation Safety Training, which is also a T-word, so it's still TEST and maybe we can have a sticker that goes on people's hard hats after they've been trained and it would say Trenching and Excavation Safety Trained Wow. So just some concepts that we're kinda, you know, coming up with to try to grow what we're doing and create a brand. And we've got somewhat of a brand and it's not like we're trying to make money, we're trying to save lives, right, and so utilizing this brand to get on as many hard hats as we can Awesome. And we've got, you know, hard hat stickers that the National Utility Contractors Association has made for us and that's the Colorado chapter, but we're also working on, you know, getting that at a national level and what they're planning to do is get those stickers made for every NUCA chapter and every NUCA organization that's part of NUCA and send those stickers out to all of them. We're also encouraging anybody to make their own stickers. So we actually have a website, thinkinsidetheboxinfo, and on that website, when you scroll all the way to the bottom of that website, there's a couple different versions of that logo and it's the PNG or the JPEG version. Those are free to download. Anybody can take them and print their own stickers. We would encourage folks to put their own logo Right and then if you go to the website, you can see the logo inside the box. Have their own logo in there. That's where they can then print those out and put them on their own hard hats and start utilizing that for their own organization and really share it with themselves.

Speaker 2:

And there's been a few organizations across the country They've really embraced that. You know BT Construction for one. We've got those on all of our hard hats and we've got either the BTC logo or the B-Trendsless logo two different divisions that we run here, one in particular, t-leveling out in the Carolinas they have embraced it and they've actually created their whole. Their safety program is built around this whole message and they've printed those. They've also created Toolbox Talks and really embraced that.

Speaker 2:

It's been awesome to see that there's folks in Idaho that have been instrumental in our growth. There's a gentleman in Texas that's been fantastic. Somebody in California, another person in Montana Just amazing to see these people that have been part of our team. I'm the chairman of our task force but there's no way I could do all this without the help of our team. So we do quarterly update meetings. So once a quarter we get together and we do some updates. We share what we've done, what we've accomplished, but also we try to plan some things. We try to come up with some methods that we can be able to share this message with more people. How can we get into a different space to be able to reach these people that need to be reached?

Speaker 2:

Some of the areas that we've seen the biggest challenge with are these smaller organizations that come in to do these residential sanitary sewer service repairs or sanitary sewer service installs, and these are these areas where these guys are gonna put these utilities in very quickly and they might get paid per each and you know how that goes Right. They might go a little faster, maybe not use the protective system because they think they can go a little faster and think about a sewer service repair If there's a saturated material at the bottom of that excavation. You're now dealing with a very dangerous situation. So those are the kinds of folks we're really trying to get in touch with and really try to show them that here's the right thing to do. Let's get trench protective systems where they're sloping, shielding or shoring. Those systems need to be installed before you put somebody in that excavation. That's five feet or deeper.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, wow, perry man, I'm just sitting here listening to you, man, and it's like just making a difference man.

Speaker 2:

Just trying our best Making a difference man.

Speaker 1:

And it's just so important to see because everybody got different gifts. You know it's genuine. I got a friend. He talks about gifts, talents, abilities, and there's another one. But you know it's to me, man, when you're utilizing your servant leadership, your gift and man, it's just making a difference. Man, we're not gonna save the world, you know what I mean, but we're gonna be able to seed a lot of people and let that thing grow into fruition, man, to the tree of life and, at the end of the day, making sure people go home.

Speaker 1:

And I just wanna say from me thank you, man, for your dedication to people, your dedication to your job, and just your dedication, not just to your job but even the people outside of your job. And that's super important because today, me and you, when I look out, you look out there, you might be working for a different company, you guys, you might be on a different team, but we're on the same mission and we just gotta continue finding ways to share best practices amongst our peers, amongst our different companies, because we might battle on the dollar side, but we ain't battling about who's better in safety. We gotta figure out if somebody's weak in that area. We wanna help, I wanna help, no matter who I work for. I wanna help because, at the end of the day, it boils down to the most very simple thing and it's about people, man. It's about people. So thank you for what you're doing, man, and being just being a part of this safety, because last couple of years, like I said, I used to be an operator, I used to be a form, I used to be those things. I never thought I would be on the safety side of things, but when I saw myself coming out of the military being a sergeant and all those things I actually was taking, I was actually prepared. Before I even got this, I was actually taking care of people. So just being able to do that again it's awesome and I ain't gonna say it's easy, but it helps out a lot when you've been there a little bit and you know what they're dealing with, because it's almost like you gotta get down to that level so that there's an understanding.

Speaker 1:

We forget that, the position that we are in management, that people look up to us. You just think you're just this old person that is doing something. You come to work just like the other guy, but you're really being looked upon and looked at as somebody and when you are taking care of that person, when you're loving on them and, you know, wanting the best for them, man, everything works out, man. It just really does, man. That brings joy to me. That's why I get up every single day, man, because I know there's somebody out there that needs some help and I'm willing to do those things. So, and I see that that's in your heart, in your mind and in your career of what you do, man. So again, thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

I'm not gonna ask you too many more questions because I want you to come back on. We're gonna dive a little bit more deeper, maybe on some trench and excavation, and then throughout the year, hopefully, man, we can talk about some products you guys are maybe using, maybe somebody you don't know about a best practice that you guys are doing, but just really getting this information out. Perry, this won't be your last time and I hope this in your mind this won't be your last time, because your knowledge, your love and what you do for us, man, we really need you on here. They need you on here, and I think that you're definitely making a difference, man, and thanks a lot, man.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.