Waiward Industrial credits housekeeping, lighting and Hickey bar training for its drop in shop floor injuries
A structural steel fabricator in Edmonton, Alberta, has gone nearly a year and a half without a recordable incident, a turnaround its top safety officer credits to an ergonomic redesign of the shop floor, upgraded lighting and a rebuilt peer-to-peer safety program. Waiward Industrial's total recordable incident rate (TRIR) sat between two and three during 2022 and 2023, said Phil Wolkowycki, health, safety and environment (HSE) director at Waiward Industrial. The rate dropped to 0.7 in 2025, and the shop has recorded zero incidents on a trailing 12-month basis since its last recordable in January 2025.
"It's tough to put one specific thing on why there was success with that," Wolkowycki said, pointing instead to leadership buy-in, facility upgrades, personal protective equipment (PPE) changes and behavioural safety programs working together.
Ergonomic redesign starts with housekeeping and light
Housekeeping is the foundation, Wolkowycki said. Waiward's roughly 30,000-square-foot shop draws regular compliments from visiting clients comparing it to other fabrication floors. "We get a lot of compliments when we bring clients through and they're comparing shop to shop. The housekeeping is impeccable," he said.
Lighting reinforces that standard. About two years ago, Waiward's maintenance team replaced fixtures throughout the shop, adding an estimated 10 to 20 per cent more brightness. "The brighter the better. The lighting promotes better housekeeping," Wolkowycki said.
The ergonomic work followed the same logic. Steel plates once stored at ground level are now raised to waist height in large, movable metal trays, cutting down on the bending and awkward lifts that used to strain workers' backs, the kind of fix covered in our recent piece on [ergonomic lifting aids that reduce manual handling injuries]. Work carts that ferry steel along rails through each bay were redesigned with stanchions after loose material repeatedly rolled or slid off during handling. Metatarsal guards were added to the standard Canadian Standards Association (CSA)-approved work boot after several foot fractures caused by dropped steel or failed rigging attachments; Wolkowycki said there have been no foot injuries since. Impact gloves have replaced leather gloves as the standard for manual handling and crane work, though the shift took years of coaching to overcome resistance from a traditional workforce. Welding and chemical-handling tasks remain exceptions.
Hickey bar training closes a recurring injury gap
One tool drove a disproportionate share of injuries: the Hickey bar, a metre-long steel lever with a fulcrum attachment that workers use to turn and reposition I-beams. Waiward fabricates the tool itself rather than buying it. "We don't purchase this tool. We actually make the tool," Wolkowycki said.
Over roughly a year, the shop recorded three or four Hickey bar-related incidents, including a hand injury from plate contact, soft-tissue strain injuries from overexertion and steel roll-off events caused by excess force. Wolkowycki said the team set an informal weight limit for the tool, which he estimated at 500 to 700 pounds of resistance before crane assistance is required, though he cautioned the figure was based on recollection rather than a documented specification.
Waiward pulled deteriorated and bent Hickey bars from service, added cautionary stickers to the tools that remained and, with its supervision team, built an instructor-led training program with a hands-on competency component covering hand positioning, load limits and stanchion setup, a tool-specific approach we outlined in our feature on [job hazard analyses that cut repeat workplace injuries]. The job hazard analysis is reviewed annually, and new hires complete the training during onboarding. "I look back at the last two-plus years, and we haven't had an incident with a Hickey bar, whether it's steel rolling off, an ergonomic soft-tissue injury, or a recordable with the hands," Wolkowycki said.
Peer interactions and a shop floor committee reinforce the gains
Waiward's behavioural safety program, called "safety interaction or hazard ID," asks employees to complete at least one peer interaction or hazard identification each week; some client sites push for three. The program was suspended around 2021 or 2022 after it was misused as a blame tool, prompting a lengthy rebuild.
"It was used as a blame or a rat card, and it caused interactions that were negative," Wolkowycki said. Participation is now reinforced through weekly and monthly recognition alongside a quarterly gift-card draw.
An HSE committee of shop-floor employee representatives meets regularly with management to surface concerns before they escalate, Wolkowycki said, a model similar to the frontline reporting structures examined in [how joint health and safety committees strengthen frontline reporting]. New employees, many arriving from outside heavy industry, work through a mentorship program with monthly reviews before handling tools like the Hickey bar independently.
The improvement is ongoing, Wolkowycki said. "We're on a pretty cool journey with reducing our incidents, and we're constantly trying to learn and improve."
This article is part of our Monthly Spotlight series, which in August focuses on Facility Safety, Signage & Ergonomics.
