Imagine a 28-year-old construction worker. As his family’s primary provider, he works long hours in the hot summer air, doing roofing work for a small company in western Kansas.
Then one day, he missteps off the roof and plummets 20 feet.
“What happens next is that now this person is either going to die or is going to be in a very tough road to recovery,” said Jorge De La Torre, director of safety for Hutton. “More than likely, he’s going to stop earning money. More than likely he’s going to go into therapy and surgeries and all of that.”
That example is hypothetical. But a new Kansas safety alliance aims to prevent real-life injuries in one of the most dangerous industries by providing education and training.
“We’re not sitting back going through the motions,” said Mike Gibson, Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Kansas executive vice president. “We’re actually proactively addressing these key elements that impact companies and — at the end of the day — keep their employees safe.”
With this alliance, De La Torre said, they are going to save lives, even if the results won’t be evident for years to come.
“That’s the challenge is like, ‘Am I really making an impact on somebody by delivering this information?’” De La Torre said. “I say yes, but I don’t have any proof.”
Starting the alliance
Discussions about the alliance began over a year ago as stakeholders recognized the prevalence of suicides and mental health struggles among construction workers, said Todd Underwood, area director for Wichita’s office of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). While mental health is a strong focus of the alliance, they also aim to improve safety and preventive measures on the job.
The alliance is made up of several local, state and national entities, including:
Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Kansas — which includes member companies such as Hutton — as well as its Kansas Construction Safety Network
OSHA
Kansas Department of Labor’s Industrial Safety and Health Division
Mental Health America Of South-Central Kansas
Underwood said the partners bring different expertise and interest to the alliance.
“I’m interested in preventing workplace injuries. Mental health advocates are obviously concerned and want to make a difference in mental health. The Associated General Contractors leader … (is) interested in bringing healthy people into the construction industry,” Underwood said.
“We all have a different focus, but … advocating together in this alliance, we become much stronger. It’s a synergistic approach that we’re trying to achieve.”
Addressing industry needs
In a 2022 U.S. Bureau of Labor census focused on occupational injuries, construction workers ranked second in most fatalities, 1,056, right behind transportation, with 1,620 fatal work incidents.
Falls, slips and trips were one of the largest contributing factors to these fatalities. These incidents are seen at the state level, too. In the most recent study, eight fatalities were recorded in the construction industry in 2017 .
“Construction — we start there because they are the ones having the biggest issue,” Underwood said.
While the number of workplace fatalities and injuries is high, suicides are the more pervasive cause of death among workers. In 2015, a CDC study identified that the industry had the highest suicide rate among males, at 53.2 suicides per 100,000 workers.
Difficult working conditions and injuries can lead workers to become dependent on substances, which can contribute to mental health struggles, or vice versa, Underwood said.
“There’s a lot of risk factors for the construction people, and it may include this inconsistent and seasonal work demand schedules that they have, and, you know, sometimes they get hurt at work, and many times they’re treated with opioids,” Underwood said.
From here, Underwood said, a cycle could begin where individuals become addicted to substances — something he witnessed in one of his family members.
“This family member was an EMT … They had a back injury that led to an over-prescription of opioids, and they got addicted,” Underwood said. “This individual who we love very much lost himself into this addiction.”
Eventually, the family member died by suicide.
“So this very much speaks to my core, that we can make a difference,” Underwood said.
Providing resources
Much of the alliance’s approach to changing the narrative begins with educational resources.
“This alliance is the first of its kind … in the state of Kansas that brings all these parties together to share resources,” Gibson said. “And a lot of those resources are funneled through the Kansas Construction Safety Network … And we make those resources available not only to the construction industry but the community at large.”
There are only a handful of other construction safety alliances across the nation, such as those in Colorado and Maine .
Some of these resources include offering education about safety practices, support options related to substance use — such as naloxone training — and information sessions.
“Toolbox Talks” are another form of training emerging that aims to educate workers daily about staying safe. De La Torre explained what this could look like on a given work day.
“(It’s) like one piece of paper, one document, that may state ‘safety for today would be we’re going to talk about ladder safety,’” De La Torre said. “And then at the end of the page, everybody that was there signs the paper, saying we trained them; we told them some of the hazards.”
De La Torre noted that Hispanic and Spanish speaking workers make up a large number of employees in the industry. A U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publication highlighted that 30% of construction workers nationwide identified as Hispanic in 2020.
“A lot of times the resources don’t get all the way to the … underserved community,” De La Torre said. “What we are doing is everything that we produce in English, we produce in Spanish because we want to close that gap.”
Gibson said the alliance, along with making workplaces safer, aims to dispel a common idea around the industry.
“There’s still this perception that ‘I don’t want my son or daughter going into construction. I don’t want them to be a carpenter or a welder because it’s very dangerous,’” Gibson said. “But our companies are always looking for ways to improve their safety practices on a job site. And this alliance gives them additional tools in the toolbox to do so.”
Looking ahead
Although the alliance was officially signed into existence two months ago, hopes for the future of it — and the industry — are high among partners.
“We have to take faith that what we’re doing, and if we’re following the information provided by the authorities, that we are making a difference even though we don’t see it today,” Underwood said.
“I just hope from the bottom of my soul that it does make a positive impact.”
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