How Safety Pros Can Use AI Without Losing Their Judgment
November 3, 2026
Is AI making safety pros sharper or lazier? Zach Granzow shares how EHS professionals can use AI without outsourcing their judgment.
In this episode of Grounded: The EHS Podcast, host Morgan Serrano sits down with Zach Granzow, Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions. Zach went from planning a career in dentistry to reading all of 29 CFR 1910 for fun, and today he’s chewing on one big question: how do we use AI in safety without letting it do our thinking for us?
Is AI making safety pros sharper or lazier? Zach Granzow shares how EHS professionals can use AI without outsourcing their judgment.
In this episode of Grounded: The EHS Podcast, host Morgan Serrano sits down with Zach Granzow, Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions. Zach went from planning a career in dentistry to reading all of 29 CFR 1910 for fun, and today he’s chewing on one big question: how do we use AI in safety without letting it do our thinking for us?
What You’ll Learn
In this episode of Grounded: The EHS Podcast, host Morgan Serrano sits down with Zach Granzow, Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions. Zach went from planning a career in dentistry to reading all of 29 CFR 1910 for fun, and today he’s chewing on one big question: how do we use AI in safety without letting it do our thinking for us?
What You’ll Learn
- Why AI can speed up your work and quietly weaken your critical thinking at the same time
- The QBCA (Question, Verify, Challenge, Apply) framework Zach built from the familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle
- Where AI genuinely helps in an incident investigation, and why Zach still heads to the floor before he opens his laptop
- How smart glasses could help train new welders by showing exactly what they see under the hood
- Why robot welders didn’t cost a single welder their job, and what that says about AI and safety roles
- The translation slip that almost derailed a three-language safety talk
- Why showing up as a colleague is what gets people ready for change
Zach Granzow is the Safety Manager at Mobile Track Solutions, a heavy equipment manufacturer based in Elkader, Iowa. With a background in chemistry and biochemistry, Zach originally planned to serve in the Navy and run his own dental clinic, but life had other ideas. He started as a quality control analyst in animal pharmaceuticals, moved into chemical manufacturing, where he managed operations and helped turn plants around, and then made the leap into safety full time. Since then, he has worked across chemicals, cheese manufacturing, and heavy equipment, with experience spanning HSE, root cause analysis, and manufacturing operations.
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