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The SiteVisit
Leadership in construction with perspective from the job site. A podcast dedicated to the Construction industry. Construction professionals, General Contractors, Sub trade Contractors, and Specialty Contractors audiences will be engaged by the discussions between the hosts and their guests on topics and stories. Hosted James Faulkner ( CEO/Founder - SiteMax Systems ).
The SiteVisit
Building Mental Health: Transforming the Construction Industry from Within with Joshua Vitale, Vice Chairman at Construction Suicide Prevention
Ever wondered how a journeyman lineman evolves into a mental health champion in the construction industry? Join us as we uncover Joshua Vitale’s compelling journey to becoming an influential advocate for mental well-being on job sites. Through his personal stories and transformative experiences like the Landmark Forum, Joshua reveals how intrinsic motivation and mental health awareness can reshape the construction sector.
The stakes are high as we delve into the pressing issue of suicide prevention within the construction industry. Learn about the inspiring Hoffman Construction’s "Tough Enough to Talk" initiative. We discuss how such programs, alongside the efforts of the Construction Suicide Prevention Partnership and Lines for Life, are creating supportive environments and fostering a culture change on job sites. Discover the importance of community centers and private GUTS rooms in offering confidential spaces for workers to seek support, and how these efforts are making a difference.
We also tackle the complexities of masculinity and respect in a male-dominated field. Through candid conversations, we examine the treatment of female safety professionals, the broader spectrum of masculinity, and the role of the workplace as a sanctuary amidst modern life's pressures. This episode provides a comprehensive look at the importance of psychological safety for everyone on the construction site.
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Hello, josh, hi, how are you doing, james? I am doing well, I'm doing doing very well. That article that you were in wow, what a powerful piece that was. So when that came in through my Apple News and I sent this to Tatiana, I'm like I want you to contact people from this article. So we've had Mike Pugh on and now we have you on. You and I had quite a long chat a few last week, I believe. I really enjoyed that. It's really cool that you have a very cerebral approach to this and talking about Carl Jung and all this sort of stuff, so we got some interesting dovetails there to chat about. But before we get into all of that, maybe just take me through your background and how you got to this point where you're now sort of advocating for this mental health transformation out there in the industry. Welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast leadership and perspective from construction with your host, james Faulkner.
Speaker 2:Perspective from construction with your host, james balkner business as usual, as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know you read all the books, you read the email, you read scaling up, you read good to great, you know I could go on.
Speaker 1:We've got the place where we found the secret serum.
Speaker 2:We found the secret serum. We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them. Once I was on a job sale for a while and actually we had a semester concrete and I ordered a pre-finished patio out front of the site trailer.
Speaker 1:Yesterday I was down at Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber-Connect platform on your guys' podcast. And we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. Thanks, james, it's my pleasure and I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, I had no idea the article. So Justin Asbill, who was featured obviously kind of the main character in that story is a good friend of mine and I've been part of some support groups that he hosts for the last couple of years. And then his advocacy for suicide prevention, obviously, and construction and we work in, you know, in adjacent fields, and then there was an opportunity we had to bring him out and then that kind of spurred on the article, as you read, was him, you know, delivering his extremely authentic, very powerful message to about 5,000, 7,000 people on our job site in Chandler and so you know, nbc writing that article.
Speaker 2:I had no idea what that even means, right, like, I'm not, you know, I'm just a construction guy, I'm a journeyman lineman by trade. So I went to Northern Arizona University and flagged staff and then, you know, dropped out because I wasn't great at school and I think we talked about that in our initial conversation. You know kind of neurodiverse people and how the education system doesn't really fit. I kind of felt like that was me to a T. I was a high performer in high school and you know I'd always get A's on the test but I just couldn't do the grind thing and I'm more of a creative type and I would rather, you know, educate myself through reading books and having conversations with smart people than I would in the typical fashion that our education system in America does it, you know. And so, um, so I went, I went to an apprenticeship with the IBEW, became a lineman.
Speaker 2:I did that for about nine years. I ended up, you know, moving up pretty quick and becoming a foreman and a general foreman at a really young age. I was the the youngest journeyman lineman to top out from local 769, I think. I topped out when I was 22 years old. So I was a journeyman lineman by the time I was 22 and um worked in the trade for about 10 years, um, in leadership mostly I did. I think they made me a foreman before I even finished my apprenticeship. So I had to learn at a really young age how to lead without having more experience and really even knowing what I was doing right, so how to find intrinsic motivation in folks that were much older and had more experience than I did, because I was kind of thrust into that position. So that got me into the education of leadership and I did some interesting stuff when I was younger. There's a program called the Landmark Forum. I went through that entire process, all the seminars, all the three-day deals.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, super intense, like my friends went through that and don't you have to like talk about all stuff from your childhood and and cry and all that stuff oh yeah, lots of crying, lots of, uh, lots of like digging into your you know, and we so you talk about jung man, like that's, it's all shadow work, right, it's all the stuff that you bury and you know, we dig all of that out and you know it's a cool, it's a cool venue to work through a lot of that stuff and it helped me kind of rebuild relationships with people in my family where it had been fractured. And you know, I had a, I had a biological father that I didn't meet until I was 19. And at the landmark forum I like reached out, called him, spoke to him for the first time and since I was like four years old and we had this kind of moment where it healed a lot of that stuff. So you know, my whole life I've really been kind of interested in, you know, digging in right, digging into individuation, right, I think Jung likes to talk about that situation, right, I think Jung likes to talk about that. And that's really been the story of my life is that I've always been looking to dig further in and to find, you know, what it is that I'm here to do, right, find a purpose, help people, right, and then so I, you know, in the last few years I really found that being in service of others truly is my purpose, and so that's what's led to that.
Speaker 2:But so after line work, I left. I got into the sales business. I had a very good CISSP like security engineer, right. So we started an IT company and kind of grew that Ended up in the mountains of Virginia for a while, and then our marriage didn't go so well.
Speaker 2:I started a sales division for a tech company in Pensacola in 2019. And then they ran out of funding, so I moved back to Arizona, got back into line work and that led me to being the transmission and distribution VP for Intermountain Electric out of Wyoming. I did that for a couple of years and that was a pretty cool job. That for a couple years and, um, you know, that was that was a pretty cool job uh, I was, you know, got to travel around a ton. Uh, at the end of my stint with them actually got marooned on a snow drift up at yellowtail dam by powell, wyoming it's right on the border of montana and wyoming there and uh, and had to hike about six or seven miles out after a blizzard and, you know, by foot to find the rangers seven miles out after a blizzard and you know, by foot to find the Rangers that search and rescue had been called and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so I got home. I got home from that and a recruiter called and said Hoffman was building a uh, a plant in Chandler. And I said you know, guys, I don't know anything about microchips. And uh, so I ended up interviewing with the project superintendent and the program director for that, for this project you know, it's about a $20 billion project and I told him I said, guys, I think you called the wrong person. I said I don't know anything about semiconductors. And they said, no, we think you're the right guy.
Speaker 2:We've got a huge electrical grid that comes in to feed this thing and we need somebody that knows how to do that. So, uh, I handled all the, all the electricity coming in from the utility to the project and it's about, uh, about about a gigawatt. So it's about a gigawatt electricity that feeds that, that particular project. So I finished that up and now I'm uh, now I'm the superintendent for, um, what's called the sub fab. So on a semiconductor factory you got the fab level where they have the tools, and then underneath the fab is the sub fab. So that's, I run all of the work, the general superintendent for all of our subcontractors for that floor. Wow Of the Eagle project.
Speaker 1:So when is that? What's the completion estimate for that?
Speaker 2:End of 2025,.
Speaker 1:I would say Okay, cool, and then you're going to probably hang on with them after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would imagine. You know it seems to be a pretty good gig. I like the company. They're very forward thinking. Obviously, you know, having a wellness program allowing me to kind of explore suicide prevention we created Tough Enough to Talk within Hoffman and I think they're serious about it. So you know it seems like a good place. Obviously, we have ways that we could improve. You know there's a lot, like you were talking about, toxic masculinity and stuff that still exists. It's a construction company and you know the old guard are pretty entrenched in that kind of mindset. But you know I think we've reached a critical mass in the, in the environment of construction, that it's kind of either change or go away or, you know, go find yourself a small company that, uh, that allows you to still act that way right, right, just for the record.
Speaker 1:And the toxic masculinity thing, I am not like I'm. Yeah, we did talk about that, but it wasn't me going, hey, we're gonna fix it. It was more of a yeah, what do we talk about that?
Speaker 2:but it wasn't me going hey, we're going to fix it.
Speaker 1:It was more of a yeah, what do we think about that? But so that's pretty cool. So with Hoffman then. So what is the so the program they put together so tough enough to talk? Is there something you invented with them?
Speaker 2:No, no, not my invention at all. So Hoffman had a couple of superintendents in a two-year period that died by suicide. And Hoffman had a couple of superintendents in a two-year period that died by suicide and they were guys that were really connected, super dynamic within the company. And this is a GC that I think I'm not 100% sure on the numbers, but they don't have a lot of employees, right, it's a very lean operation and so, let's say, 200, 250 people that are employee owners in the company and so, you know, for two of their folks to go down like that in the time period, that did really rock the organization. They're like what is going on? You know, what are we doing wrong? How can we change it?
Speaker 2:And Dave Garsky, who's one of the VPs it was his brother that actually was one of the gentlemen that died by suicide, and so he wanted to do something about it, you know, and he started talking about what had happened with his brother and so, Tough Enough to Talk, became kind of like an exploratory mission at first. Right, Like, what do we do about this? And they were working with CSPP out of Portland and you know. So that's a construction suicide prevention partnership, I think, and they work for Lions for Life, which is like the 988 operators in Oregon. So, in conjunction with them, starting to learn that there is this huge need in construction for you know, advocacy and education, of course, and then you know, what can we do about it I kind of jumped in towards the beginning.
Speaker 2:So in early 2022, I volunteered to be a part of it and we were just starting to get to the point where we were going to do a safe space. But we were in this spot where it's like we're trying to deal with construction workers. It can't be a safe space. You can't call it that. It's already got a stigma. Nobody's going to go to the safe space, right? Because they're going to get shunned by their co-workers for going to the safe space. So what do we do? Like, how do we do it? And Josh Faulkner yeah, my colleague, Josh Faulkner, who's a superintendent at the CAMS project. It's the state capital.
Speaker 1:Is that my last name? Same name, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh cool, nice. Yeah, I got a brother out there. I like it.
Speaker 2:Maybe cousins or something, right, yeah, yeah. Anyway, he was like look, so I'm a do as construction workers. When we want to blow off some steam, Typically we go to the bar, so maybe we create a bar environment without the bar, you know. So we thought, okay, well, let's do like a community center with pool tables, foosball, video games, a TV, you know, you could throw some sports up on the wall, whatever it is, music, you know. Make it like where you can sit down and have lunch and be quiet, and then we'll have a small room off of there or two depending on how much space the client has to give you, right when you can have a private conversation. You can take a terrible phone call if somebody's in crisis in your family and actually get some privacy when you've got Wi-Fi and you've got a good cell phone signal and those things that. Or you can pull somebody in there from your crew, right, you can tell they're struggling and there's nowhere to sit because you got hundreds of people around. So you can take them to the, to the guts. We call them guts room. So our safety program is get us there safe, so we call them the guts rooms. Um, so you take somebody to the guts room and, you know, sit them down, have a talk, and so that's where, like uh, on my job site where I do the, the suicide intervention stuff, so we'll have.
Speaker 2:You know, uh, so just a couple of weeks ago, a kid for a he's a, you know, out of the carpenters, local, mom's dying, grandma's dying Same time girlfriend just broke up with him and he just snapped Right. But but he had, uh, the bravery, the courage to reach out to his superintendent and say, hey, I lied and said I had COVID so I could take five days off because I'm trying to be here with my sick grandma and all this other stuff happened and I don't know what to do and I'm thinking about killing myself. And so he reached out to me and he's like hey, josh, I got a kid that's in trouble. I'm going to send you this email. Why don't you look at it? And when can we? You know, what can we do? So meet me at the, meet me at the guts room, you know, at nine o'clock today.
Speaker 2:And so we sat in there with this kid for an hour, you know, just kind of being vulnerable, opening up right, telling our stories of when we've had mental struggles I talked about, you know, my, uh, my suicide ideation, right, and the times in my life where I've been like that. So, uh, I'm a, I'm a PTSD survivor. My, uh, my early childhood was filled with with some pretty horrific abuse at the hands of that biological father I was telling you about, um, and so you know, I didn't know until my mid thirties that I'd been living with PTSD for that long and I was, you know, at a therapist that that recommended I try EMDR therapy and within a week's time, you know, I I didn't have, I was done having nightmares, I had to have night terrors anymore. The first good night's sleep of my life. I'm 35 years old and I'm finally sleeping. What is?
Speaker 1:a night terror. What's that?
Speaker 2:I would wake up in the middle of the night swinging and fighting for my life. So my ex-wife there was a couple of times where I thought she was the enemy. I would wake up and I'd never struck her, thank God. But there was actually. Before I went to that therapist that I'm talking about with DMDR therapy, it was kind of the catalyst for starting to ask that question. I woke up and thought my wife was someone attacking me. So yeah, it's, really it's, and you know I'm, I'm, I'm no expert on it, just from personal experience. It's like you're constantly on edge, thinking that, like I used to describe it as it's the feeling of impending doom all the time, 24 hours a day. And then when you're asleep it's just a loop, that same loop that just keeps running over and over again where you're in duress and frightened and terrified.
Speaker 1:Is it a mortality thing or not? Is it a mortality thing, yeah, like fear of death kind of thing, or not? No, not a fear of death at all.
Speaker 2:So the way that it's been explained to me is that the way EMDR therapy works is that when you have a trauma event and your brain isn't able to process that, when you sleep afterwards you get stuck in that loop and it kind of gets hung up and until you can resolve it, then your brain it's just. You have this physiological reaction like you're running from a bear for the rest of your life, until you resolve it. So it's not a fear of death at all. In fact I welcome death.
Speaker 1:I would, you know, like talk about suicidal ideation I wished I would have I could die. The only stuff that, as a kid, is diagnosed early on medical condition pretty much so that kind of mental is is would you consider that mental health?
Speaker 2:or not. Yeah, I mean, obviously, as a as a construction worker, I don't think I'm qualified to define what mental health is. But you know, personally I would say I would say the idea that we're calling it mental health is a problem, right.
Speaker 1:This is what I'm getting at, because I totally agree with you.
Speaker 2:To say it's an illness to have your brain be structured differently, I think is a problem in the way that it's a perspective that puts us in a position that makes it difficult for us to move forward progressively, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Brokenness to you, if you say that you know I have a problem. The minute you say you have a problem, why I'm broken, well, no one likes to admit they're broken, especially a tribe of predominantly males on a job site. It's, it's, it's a, it's a flag of weakness to your buddies or to your coworkers. It's like, oh yeah, josh, he's, he's weak today. No one wants to be seen that way, right so? But I think what you were saying is, there was that person you were saying that came and chatted with you and had the courage to come and talk to you about that. What do you think? If it's, uh, labeled uh, not so much as courage, even though it is, it is a courageous thing to do because, essentially, what you're doing is you're risking your reputation. That's the courageous part. You're going right. I'm so bad right now that I have to. I don't care what you think of me, I don't, I, I'm, I'm done. I got to go and talk to somebody. You have to get to sort of that bottom the bottom of the um, you know, rock bottom, excuse me to to be able to get to that point where it is a courageous thing.
Speaker 1:However, isn't that a smart thing? Like it's it's, it's an optimization thing, and I think that that's really where we need to look at. This is like your life is not optimized right now because you're not firing on all cylinders. It doesn't mean you're broken, it just means your timing belt's off or your crank, your valves are clogged. So I think if we can rephrase this to more of a performance thing and when we say performance, you don't mean like the company wants to get the most out of your performance, not in that vein but more of the fact that you are not set up right now to go on a long road trip because that engine, right now it's going to seize on the highway.
Speaker 1:So I think there's an element there of you are being smart. You're doing your pre-trip on your car to make sure that you can make it through, and that's what smart people do. So rather than it being, hey, you're courageous for talking, well, no, you're smart for talking. I love it in construction. I have a construction software company. I've been doing this for 10 years. I've trained people on site, I've done all this stuff, but I'm still not considered a construction person.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a problem too.
Speaker 1:Because I don't have a belt on. I'm not seen the same way, right? I think that's a problem.
Speaker 2:Because you're a victim of the culture just as much as the guy with the tool belt on right.
Speaker 1:Which is which is weird, because there's the. I mean, in the early days there was a oh there, here's this tech guy.
Speaker 1:He's trying to like you know, get me to, especially some of the older generations. All that computer thing, all that phone thing, oh, I don't want to be part of that and all that kind of stuff, yeah, and really all I was trying to do is help them and that was the interesting part. But I think that the element of language so I really like the tough enough to talk that's interesting because it kind of does play into the hands of the toughness thing again. So is that something, that hands of the toughness thing again? So is that something that? Do you think we can ever get away from this? Let's just say masculinity. We don't have to say toxic, because that's just a whole other conversation but masculinity is. Isn't this ingrained in us in general? Like when we were little boys, didn't we play a certain way? Like we shoved each other around, we jumped on the couches, Like that's what boys do, and boys just become boisterous men, which becomes masculinity. It's also there's the element of.
Speaker 1:I was explaining this to my wife. She's like you're always looking at the doom and gloom on the news and I said you need to understand is I'm wired to do that, to look out for my family. If you expect me to sit in the beach and I see a tsunami coming 15 minutes away. You don't think I'm going to pick up our towels and chairs and get out of there, Right? Because it's my job to do that as a male, Because we're designed to fight for our families and do those things.
Speaker 1:So it's it's interesting that I don't think that in a very short period of time, we're going to be able to ramp this change of men not being men anymore. I don't think it's ever going to happen, so agreed. So how do you? How do you, from a cultural point of view and when it comes to toughness and all that, how do you lean into it but yet maintain all of the nuances now we have about women on construction and making sure it's respectful for them and being kind to ladies and not being a dick, Right, Like really I mean it's kind of like treat a woman on on the job site like just as your equal and understand that you know she's going to have a different, a different way of thinking than you are and it's just you can't do.
Speaker 1:It's just kind of like I've I've asked this. I don't know if I asked you this question or not, but there's. I would say that some of the older generation they kind of treat the let's say it's a safety, uh, safety person on a website, on a job site, uh, female.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like when your wife comes in with the chips enduring the super bowl right and they're like yeah, yeah, thanks honey, okay, great, yeah, we're watching the game, so it's kind of like that. But at the same time you know you're eating the chips and it's like, hey, thanks, honey, that's super awesome. Why don't you come and sit down with us? Right, but the thing is, will it ever get there?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I think so. I mean, those are great points that you're making and there is a lot of safety folks that are mistreated and we have a lot of female safety folks. I've got one that actually helps me out with the sub fab and she's fantastic. She's a licensed electrician and she calls these guys out all the time on some BS, you know, when they're not doing their lockout tag out and putting themselves in danger. And we've got some, we've got some questionable electrical contractors and she's tough on them, you know, and and and. Almost every time she has to have backup and it needs to be from me or another male superintendent, right, because they don't give her the respect that she deserves, even though she probably has more experience than they do. And you know that's that's unfortunate, right, but but like you were saying, I think at some point, and I think women like her are and I'll say her name in case she gets to listen to this Trini women like Trini are awesome because they are, they know, and, and they just work right through it. You know what I mean. They're not. She's not going to let that stop her. So I love and respect that about her and many of the women, especially in safety, like you were talking about, but, but the but, the women that are out there grinding it out with a bunch of guys that are douchebags that you know, they think that it's funny to raz people all the time. But back to your point, right? So that brings me to the idea of how we act culturally as men, especially on a job site, in this microculture that is construction, and the difference between embracing our masculine nature, which I think is super important, right?
Speaker 2:I think that that's part of the individuation process. And I, I came into this meat sack and I, it happens to be male. So, guess what? I got all those hormones that are that drive me to want to be a hunter. And they want, you know, I want to dominate and I, you know, I want to compete, like I love competition.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, I, and, like you said, I want to be a protector. I've got this hero vibe about me. I want to go save something, I want to go kill something, I want those things innately. They're deep drives, and becoming mindful about what my real desires are and that kind of stuff lead me to being accepting of that side of me, right? Instead of trying to fight against it, which you see a lot of like the I don't know kind of in the academic circle, where it's almost shunned to be male or shunned to be masculine, like you want to be this weird hybrid person that that doesn't accept that we are who we are, right.
Speaker 2:But then I think on the other side of that is I don't know if you played athletics, but you know being being somebody in athletics as a young man and and how that shows up in the culture, which is, uh, you know, super homoerotic and hazing and like, really, you know, really, really toxic behavior.
Speaker 2:And I think that's where the masculine and the toxic masculinity do make sense to me. Now, masculinity in and of itself is not toxic and I think it's 100% necessary and I think that we should celebrate, you know, our masculine nature and do that to each other, with each other right, and teach our young men to be that way, with each other right, and teach our young men to be that way. But you know, I think, I think we have, uh, we have a lot of work to do as far as you know, understanding the spectrum of masculinity and that everyone can have masculine traits or feminine traits. And you know, I don't. I don't want to get into that whole discussion, but you know, if, if there's a woman that wants to hang out and, like you said, watch the super bowl, and you know, go shoot elk or whatever, whatever it is, then let's, let's go. You know what I mean. Like I'd love to have everybody involved, right, like the doors open and everybody's invited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes, uh, that makes perfect sense. There is a. I would say that there there is a. I would say that the work is a very interesting thing for like, the dynamic of like I'm going to say the word. I'm probably getting in trouble for this, but I've said typical family, okay, like archetypal family, you know male, female, relationship, kids, all that stuff, a typo family, you know male, female. Could the whole do I get in trouble for everything, god, I just want to speak my, speak my word. Essentially.
Speaker 2:Can we just do that? Well, you have, you have more at stake. But yeah, I mean it's, it's sad that we can't just talk about it.
Speaker 1:No, I guess what it would be if if you have a relationship at home where it's like you know you want to kind of be. You go out with the guys but just and just like that, the um, the girls go to the spa and they, you know, go and do book club and they do all that stuff with the girls, have wine Wednesdays, all that stuff. It's to be with the girls and then the guys are to be with the guys. Do you think that the home life of these days is so high pressured, with everything being very expensive, finances are very difficult, the economy is in a strange spot and it's hard at home.
Speaker 1:Kids are doing their own thing. You got all this crap going on at schools. There's a lot of things going on that makes life very difficult and that can create a lot of tension in relationships. Divorce rates are high. You don't always meet the person that's right for you. The first time Happens all the time right. So do you think that maybe the job site is where guys get to be guys, because it's away from home, because it's away from home A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:I mean, we talk about that all the time when we're talking about mental health.
Speaker 2:So I do a whiteboard meeting every morning with I don't know 50 or so safety folks, superintendents there's some GFs sprinkled in there and we just have like a half hour 45 minute talk about safety and what we're doing. But the mental health thing has been very front of mind in our conversations over the last couple of years and that's one of the things that we talk about a lot and that a lot of the subcontractors bring up is that work for a lot of folks is their sanctuary, right. Their home life is so disrupted and so toxic that when they come to work, that's the only time they ever have access to camaraderie or, you know, like being able to just be physical and work out some of that stuff. Right, they don't have time to go to a gym, they're not meditating, they don't have a spiritual process that they work through, right. So they go home and it's boom.
Speaker 2:You know there's sickness and anger and abuse and you know, probably you know substance abuse, drug abuse, whatever it is right, that's going on in their family and when they get to worse, they get to set that stuff down. And I don't know about you, but working with my hands is very meditative. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:It's a control thing. You get to control your destiny for eight hours.
Speaker 2:Right, you get to, yeah, you get to. You get to build something too. Right, so you give yourself a sense of accomplishment. You can become laser focused, almost flow state, so you get to just be at one with your body and this thing. Or you know, especially working in a group of folks, right, where you're, you're communicating on a high level and and completing a task together and you get task initiation and completion and all all that good dopamine that you're getting from doing all this stuff. I mean it's, it's super healthy, it can be right. So, yeah, we foster an environment that allows people to do that without you know, with psychological safety at the forefront, or you know, where they feel like they can express themselves and be themselves and really perform at a high level and be safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess, where I'm going with this is that if you know, if we identify the you know the difference between you know men and women and lean into it. You know the difference between you know men and women and lean into it. Because what I see happening and we talked about this in our chat in the last week is that the further you go, you know to the Eastern and you know the Western states, you end up with this more progressive kind of and there's this you know, everyone's equal men and women are exactly the same, blah, blah, blah, all this kind of. And there's this you know everyone's, everyone's equal men and women are exactly the same. Blah, blah, blah, all this kind of stuff, when they're clearly not. They should have the exact opportunity.
Speaker 2:But we're not safe.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just just not. I mean, if you start to do that, you're just it's just not going to be, not going to be cool, right, but you just want to make sure that you don't have any boundaries for women to come and do what men can do if they want to do it, which is totally cool right, but there's not a lot of F1 female drivers, not a lot of snooker players and not a lot of all this stuff. That's pretty male.
Speaker 2:And that's because there's no interest which is fine, right.
Speaker 1:So I think, when we get to a point, and that's because there's no interest, which is fine, right, right, you know it's. So I think that it's it's. I think, when we get to a point and and the reason that that this is relative, or relevant, I should say, to mental health is because the identity of the male on the job site is is being attacked right now, sure, the who am I? Well, apparently, if I read the news, everything I do is Sure. The reality, though, is that if we're going to move forward as a nation, we have to lean into who we were. We have to lean into the fact that we're building America. We're building those things, and without us it's not going to happen. So we have to be proud of who you are.
Speaker 1:Lean into individuality, Lean into if you're a woman, if you're a man, whatever, but be in reality. Because the construction job site the one really cool thing about it. It is inherently meritocratic that thing, is either built or that piece of it is either built at the end of that eight hours or it's not. There's no subjective opinion about that. It's like is it there? Can I see it? Are these 50 bolts put into this piece of steel here?
Speaker 1:No, yes or no, you know it's not like yeah, well, it's, in my opinion it's done, it's none of that Right right, which is cool, though, because it's a merit-based type of interaction. So when you have that the merit-based side, and then everyone is real, you lower the stress, and I think that the stress is something that we really need to deal with. When it comes to people in construction, like that suicide side of things. Yeah, there's the underlying trauma and all of those precursors that are there that are going to just eat people alive, and those obviously have to be dealt with.
Speaker 1:But who are the people that the environment is kind of under attack, to the point they don't like it anymore? That's a huge piece, too. We've got to get everyone to really like the way, the direction everything is going, and then you might even help your coworker a bit more. You might look for signs that they're spiraling, but if we all kind of feel like, oh, this is kind of sucks all the time, that's not good, yeah, so you've got some pretty cool things. So can you just give me an example? So, with your current company? So they've given you the bandwidth for you to plan this foundation. They know about this, obviously.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so the CEO, Dave Drinkward, is totally on board with Tough Enough to Talk and the mission. And I had asked him. I said I think I see this piece of my life right Like being of service and especially in the frame of suicide prevention, becoming a bigger thing, right? So can I get involved in a way that would potentially take me away from my duties? And he said, yeah, just make sure that you know you're, you're clearing it right, you're getting your work done, um, and do your thing. And so it's given me the freedom to go out and really get involved. So, like I said, I'm the, I'm the co-chair or the vice chair of construction suicide prevention week, which is, uh, you know, another foundation that's that's raising money for, you know, education, do a toolbox talks, and we're going to do a safety stand down during, uh in September, hopefully, nationwide.
Speaker 2:I've got about 500,000 people involved right now, um, participants, right, I think it's like 200, 200 or so companies and you know, trying to build from there, uh, there to participate in construction suicide prevention week.
Speaker 2:And then I'm a part of the Arizona Suicide Coalition, suicide Prevention Coalition and we're about to spin off a subcommittee of that for industry and private business, so I'll be involved in that piece.
Speaker 2:Industry and private business so I'll be involved in that piece. And then I started working with Paula McCall, who runs the Semicolon Society here in Arizona, and Joshua Stegemeyer, who's the Suicide Prevention Director for the Arizona Department of Health, and we're doing this roundtable meeting where we're creating a postvention for construction, with clinicians and construction people coming together to create what you know kind of a rubric for how you would go to a job site or to a company when somebody has died by suicide and how to approach that from a construction space right, like how to do, how to get the language right, how to understand what the nuances are, so that, if you know, we can kind of spread this out across the country or internationally even like, hey, this is what you're going to want to do if somebody in the construction industry takes their life. And this is how to get in there and positively impact the people that are surrounded, because the incident of suicide or the risk of suicidality increases substantially for anybody that's affected by suicide.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, malcolm Gladwell talks about the epidemic of suicide in one of the island nations, but it's kind of like the Columbine effect there wasn't a school shooter until somebody was a school shooter, and then now there's all these school shooters. It's the same thing when someone dies by suicide, all the people that are around them are now like four or five times the risk of doing the same thing. Crazy, yeah, it is yeah, so yeah. I don't know if that even answered your question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, no, it did so as you move forward here, what are you hoping to achieve with your initiatives? Now? What's your end game? When you're like you know what, josh, you look in the mirror. You're like, yep, done my job here. What does?
Speaker 2:that look like? Well, I don't think that I'll ever be done. What does that look like? Well, I don't think that I'll ever be done. What it looks like right now and the thing that I get the most satisfaction from is one-on-one intervention with people that are in crisis. So, like the guy that I was telling you about the carpenter, having a good cry with him and hugging for about 10 minutes while we let it all out, like that was, and then, and then, knowing that he's, he's out there doing better you know what I mean Like that he reached out for help and that you know he was able to talk his way through it instead of, you know, taking it, trying to take his life, which he was in the process of trying to figure out his plan to do that.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's where I get most of my satisfaction the committees and the foundations and stuff. I haven't. Really I don't think I'll be satisfied until I see, like those numbers going down nationally you know what I mean or internationally, like when we're talking about, it's under 5,000 and maybe you know it's under 4,000 and it's under 3,000. Those will be those benchmarks that will make me feel like the work that I'm doing is making a difference. And then you know, I think the other little victories that help to drive the long-term goals are just talking with folks and seeing how the conversation and the context has changed to where boots on the ground, folks right Laborers, carpenters, pipe fitters are talking about mental health and psychological safety, which I never thought I'd see in construction. So that is a big victory.
Speaker 1:Psychological safety. I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's kind of cool. When was that term coined?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't even know. I think I first heard of psychological safety probably in the midst of doing this work we talk about stop work authority in construction. If you don't have psychological safety, you don afraid to be honest about who you really are and what you're experiencing. So if you create a team where you have psychological safety, then everyone feels empowered to just speak their truth, be who they are, you know, show up. Show up as the masculine or feminine person that they want to be, or anywhere in between, and it doesn't matter. And we love you and we accept you and we're going to get the best, uh, the best product that is you out of you as a leader that we as we can. So it's on leadership. I think you know the foreman of the world are the staff sergeants, right, they're the, they're the ones that really do set the culture. But it is a top down kind of deal. So you know it comes from the CEO and the executive leadership and they're building the culture, and then who really implements that on a daily basis for the workers is the foreman. But you have to have, you have to have leadership training, right, you have to be able to to set up your, your supervisors that they create that environment. Their tone speaks to you know schedule drive and how we talk about that with our crews and that we don't, we shouldn't, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be driving schedule at a crew level. That should be up in the office. Right, they should have a plan and enough people in place and the right tools and equipment in place to where the people in the field never have to think about the schedule. So you know, it's, it's. You have to take a holistic approach and it's got to be bottom to top and top to bottom. We have to get alignment and buy-in from executives, from clients, right From the people that are building these buildings and hiring general contractors, all of the subcontractors. Right, I think it needs to be in contract language.
Speaker 2:Hey, you got to have a mental health program. You got to be able to talk about. You know what's your psychological safety. Why are we not talking about the fact that that probably 80 to 90% of physical safety incidents have some sort of tie to mental acuity or the lack thereof? Right? Like if you weren't thinking about the fact that your debit card didn't go through on the way to work this morning and you couldn't buy gas, you probably wouldn't have stepped off of that beam right and hurt yourself. So you know, and and then those are impossible things to really dial in data wise right it's going to be like, well, what were you thinking about when you made that stupid decision that got you hurt today? Yeah, you know we don't have that as part of the interview process. Maybe we will, but you know we got to work on that. We have to figure out how to integrate psychological, mental and physical safety, because they're really without a holistic approach, we're only treating like cancer in the, you know, at stage four.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's good stuff, josh. I got to say the uh. So the lastly um, we touched on this a bit was, uh, like the opioid side of things. How is that? How bad is that? Like, I mean, you're in arizona, right, yeah, so what's I mean? How bad? Do you see that there?
Speaker 2:you know it's interesting. Um, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because we have a really robust testing policy for the job site. We have not had. To my knowledge, we have not had anyone overdose or even get sent off site for treatment because of opioids on the project that I'm on. But I that is not the case in other places. Now we have a very robust drug screening policy, right, they get, you know, they get tested before they come on site and I think they get retested.
Speaker 1:Tested before they come on site, like I mean, how? I mean that's not happening on every job site?
Speaker 2:Obviously Right, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So so for smaller projects. Projects, I mean so how does this? Uh, I mean drug testing. Wow, it's kind of like it's like the cycling doping case. I mean it's like it is, but how often are people being tested? I mean, it's almost like a, it's almost a vindication not a vindication, but like a you you're, you're assuming somebody's guilty until proven innocent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean well, so in line work we get randomly tested all the time it's. You know it's a liability thing and I think the insurance companies require it.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:Okay, so like, uh, but so little anecdote. I worked for a small, a small line company that was a subsidiary of a big utility and I was an apprentice and every month during random UAs, I would get called up and it was like four months in a row that my ticket got drawn and I was like how is that even possible? There's, say, 200, 300 people working at this company. They pick five people and my name is always drawn. So I go into the VP's office and I said, hey, man, you guys have it out for me or what? And he's like what are you talking about? I said, well, every time we do a random screening for drugs my name gets drawn. I go what's up with that? He looks at me, goes Josh, it's not because we're trying to catch you, it's because we know you'll pass. Oh, interesting. I was like oh. And then I go click, I'm ignorant to that, right. I'm like oh, I'm like wait. So that means everybody I'm working with is high. It's like, yeah, shit, you know what. But yeah, but I went to a job site once where they had a. They had a, a meth cook, that was on the payroll as an operator. It was a transmission line work job. So you know, those guys work like seven, sixteens and and they had a guy that was cooking meth in the material yard. I didn't, I quit that day, but it was, uh geez, yeah, it was a big, a big, a big awakening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the drug drugs in construction are a thing it just depends on where you're at. But, yeah, the opioid crisis, I mean I think you can assume right, this fentanyl uh wave that's happened in north america, uh is is, you know, definitely hitting construction sites. Right, and we talked about this in our phone call. The grueling effects of doing construction for decades starts to break your body down and then you get hurt or you're just chronically in pain. So then you get prescribed opioids and, as you know, it takes one prescription, and then you're just chronically in pain. So then you get prescribed opioids and, as you know, it takes one prescription, and then you're just down, that, that spiral, and and that, and now any pills that they're buying on the street are laced with fentanyl and you know all sorts of other crap. So, um, there's a lot of people doing a lot of great work in this space, like Cal Buyer is a uh is a great guy to talk to up in Seattle so he's kind of close to you. Uh, chris Lollaby, out in New Jersey, they're doing a lot of opioid work. Uh, my friend, john O'Brien, is in Pennsylvania. Uh, they're doing a lot of work with opioids.
Speaker 2:You know, getting naloxone on job sites because you know at least you can save somebody's life Right and you know it's going to take them 30, 45 minutes to even get into an ambulance if you're on a big job site. So without that life-saving stuff available like we have, uh, we have AEDs all over our job site and it saved, saved the guy's life a few months ago. You know he was having a cardiac event. You hook it up, the computer does all the work for him. That kept that guy alive until we got him on an ambulance and and he was fine. But, uh, but that wouldn't be the case if we didn't have that stuff available. So I think naloxone availability is huge.
Speaker 2:I you know, I mean until you could stop the supply of fentanyl from coming in. Good luck with that Right. The war on drugs didn't seem to work too well, so I don't have any answers there. I just know, you know again, it's like creating stage four cancer. What do you do? It's already metastasized, so you just try to, like, put Naloxone in as many places as you can and try to educate people and, you know, train people that aren't high to take care of the people that are. I don't know.
Speaker 1:You know, like here in Canada we have I don't know what you call it in the States, like you know, lead gold standard buildings which are yeah, yeah. I mean you guys probably have the same thing.
Speaker 2:Something similar yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you think that there would be a psychological program? That it's that the entire project is? Has this other label to it? This is how this job site is run. Has this other label to it? This is how this job site is run, so it's basically like an overarching program that this building was built, or this project was built with psychologically humane practices for all the work.
Speaker 2:I love it. No, I love it.
Speaker 1:But something that lives with the building, to know that it didn't have any guilt that went along with it.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that would be awesome. I think the danger of that is you end up with you're slapping a guarantee. If you watch the movie Tommy Boy right Now, you got the guarantee fairy that's slapping these stickers on buildings which all you got, all you got to do is pay for whatever. The organization is Right. So, uh, it depends on what that organization is, and one of the things that I wanted to explore with the foundation that we're creating is is how do we create an evaluation system for organizations and corporations for that certification and to get that certification Right? And there, uh, you know, my wife was actually the one who brought it up they do that for ADA compliance or autism, right?
Speaker 2:So the city of Mesa was one of the first cities to get this stamp of approval to say that they're inclusive of people with disabilities. So they do a lot of stuff above and beyond what the ADA says you have to do in order to make it inclusive for people with disabilities. So the city of Mesa is pretty progressive in that way, and so, yeah, I think it would be great to have something that you could say let's say, you're a city, right, or you're a company, a big company, that does this stuff that employs thousands of people and gets billions of dollars of taxpayer money to build your stuff. Like, yeah, tell us that you're doing the right thing and that you're protecting the people that have built these. You know what I mean. Like you said, we're rebuilding this country. Let's not destroy the people that do that for us.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, that sounds like a really good business model for your nonprofit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Well, that sounds like a really good business model for your nonprofit. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that could be very good. Okay, josh. Well, this was awesome, as I knew it would be. Love chatting with you. Thank you very much. That was. Our previous conversation was great, this one was great, and my wife's going to Chandler tomorrow, oh sweet. Yeah, I know my sister-in-law lives there. Oh, there you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, if know, my sister-in-law lives there. Oh, there you go yeah. Well, if you're ever down here, let me know man, We'll hang out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will do that. Okay, well, this was awesome. Anything you want to. How do people get in touch with you if they want to reach out and ask you about what you're doing?
Speaker 2:So you can reach out to me at Josh, at Build Vitalchemy. So my company, my consulting company that helps organizations build their own wellness program and suicide prevention programs, is Vitalchemy. So just my name right, vitaly, but alchemy, so you know turning stuff into gold. Yeah, vitalchemy.
Speaker 1:The science of being vital.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah. So Josh at buildvitalchemycom, and you can find me on LinkedIn. If you post this. I'll give you some links. Maybe you can throw them up there for me. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Right on. Okay, this was great. Thank you very much and we'll chat about your foundation again. Yeah, and I'm going to hit you up about branding too.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no problem, I'm yours man.
Speaker 1:Awesome buddy. No problem, I'm yours man. Awesome buddy. Thank you, ciao, bye. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash, the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the site visit podcast and sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in north america and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.