As part of its construction safety week activities, Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos. US Inc. is participating in a new initiative designed to combat a disturbing trend in the industry drug overdoses on construction sites.
Partnering with the Safe Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing fatal drug overdoses, Ryan announced plans this week to distribute naloxone an opioid overdose reversal medication, also known by the brand name Narcan at more than 100 construction sites and all of the company’s regional offices.
Also in the coming months, Ryan will make overdose response training available to its nearly 2,000 employees. The initiatives tie in with Ryan’s previous commitment to the White House Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose.
In the following interview, Ryan Safety Director John Gaddini talks about the initiative and why drug overdoses are on the rise in the construction industry. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Tell us more about yourself and your background in construction and workplace safety.
A: I have been in the construction industry about 30 years. I started in Minnesota OSHA, worked there about eight years. I was a compliance officer. And then from compliance side, I went over the consultation side. I spent about five years on the consultation side before I started working for Ryan Companies in the Twin Cities.
I’ve been here for about 19 years. I worked in the industry for a small GC as a laborer, building homes, doing concrete work and so forth while I was going to school. I got involved in the construction industry through that, and then ended up doing an internship with a general contractor in my hometown. I graduated college and got hired by the state of Minnesota.
Q: Ryan Cos. mentioned in a press release that the construction industry has experienced the highest death rate attributed to drug overdoses. Can you talk a little bit more about that and why the construction industry has this unfortunate distinction?
A: The construction industry has a higher rate of overdoses due to some of the injuries that have occurred: soft tissue injuries, back injuries, rotator cuffs, things like that, that are nagging injuries. They prescribe opioids and people start getting addicted to them, even in short periods of time. That’s kind of been a norm in the industry.
Some of the work that we do is really strenuous. And, and so we’ll have these injuries and people want to get back to work. They want to feel better. If they have a soft tissue injury or a broken bone and they’re prescribed something to make them feel better so they can get back to work sooner, and then all of a sudden, you get addicted to it. And it’s hard to get off of it.
We’re doing a lot of different things you can see in the industry itself. The construction industry has a high rate of suicide, too.
And there’s a lot of factors that go into that. We have transient workforces, being away from home. If you get seriously injured, you get addicted to things. And you have a lot of financial issues, too. You finish a job and you’re looking for the next job. It’s not always a job to go to every day like a regular job. So there’s a lot of stress to deal with.
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Q: Tell us more about how Ryan became involved in this effort. A: Earlier this year, I went to a seminar that was put together by Holmes Murphy, our insurance company. It was was their second annual suicide awareness in construction. Brian Murray, our CEO, was one of the speakers there. He actually was the opening speaker for the seminar.
There was a person there named Jeff Horowitz. And he started talking about the construction industry and opioids is affecting the industry itself, and he also talked about fentanyl and how we can prevent this, alternative measures for when someone gets hurt. There’s over-the-counter medicines and so forth that can be prescribed instead of an opioid, and other types of therapies we could do and instead of issuing out a narcotic.
He talked about Narcan, how it works, how effective it is, and how we can prevent a death in the industry. As a company, we’ve never had a drug overdose on any of our projects. But what we look at, safety being one of our core values at Ryan Companies, is where can we make a difference?
We have all these other things in place for a crisis on a jobsite. We have first-aid kits, people are trained in first aid and CPR. What are other things that we need to have in our toolbox? [Narcan] is a great tool to have to save a person’s life. It might not even be on a jobsite. It might be someone adjacent to the jobsite.
Right now we’ve got about 100-plus construction sites and then we have 16 offices. So every one of our jobsites will get Narcan put into their first aid kits; every one of our offices will, too. We’re one of the few construction companies in the nation doing this, providing it on every one of our jobsites.
In addition to that, we are going to offer training. There will be mandatory training for our field staff. And that will be provided either via training video or in-person training.
And we’re going to roll this out within the next three months. So by the end of summer, we’re looking to have the Narcan purchased, available, in every first aid kit that we have on our jobsites. Small or big, they’re going to have it.
I think everybody should look at purchasing it and training their personnel, so we can have a life-saving tool for anybody that’s on the jobsite if we run into it. Hopefully, we never have to. I hope you never have to use it. But at least we know it’s there.
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