In this episode of Build & Thrive (available as both a podcast and a video), host Jennie Armstrong speaks with Colin Whiteley, Senior SHEQ Advisor at National Grid, a construction professional with 22 years’ experience who is now completing a professional doctorate focused on mental health in the construction industry. The conversation is practical, honest, and slightly uncomfortable in the best possible way, because it questions some of the phrases we default to when something goes wrong on site.
Colin’s starting point is simple: construction has become far more mature about physical safety, but we’re still early in learning how mental health influences behaviour, decision-making, and risk. And if we want safer sites and healthier people, we need to stop pretending those things are separate.
If you enjoy this blog, it’s worth listening or watching the full episode too, because Colin’s examples, tone, and personal reflections add depth you only really get in conversation.
Colin’s journey: from “on the tools” to research
Colin began in the gas industry as a teenager and spent time on the tools before gradually moving into office and management roles. He explains that it wasn’t a lack of respect for site work that drove the change, but an honest assessment of what the job was doing to people physically over time. He noticed how the older workers around him were coping, and he could see his future in theirs.
That experience shaped how he approached leadership later. He had “lived experience of using the breaker out on site”, as he describes it, and it gave him a strong sense of responsibility. Colin didn’t want people to “suffer the way I suffered”, so he leaned into safety, training and professional development, including IOSH and NEBOSH-type learning, to better understand how to protect workers without drowning projects in bureaucracy.
But mental health wasn’t the initial focus. It came later, through what he witnessed, what he carried, and what the industry often didn’t know what to do with.
The moment that stayed with him: loss, shock, and no support
A turning point for Colin was losing someone he worked closely with to suicide in 2008/2009. He describes the experience with the kind of detail you only share when something has never really left you.
Colin explains that he was the person’s line manager, but there was no real support offered to him or the wider team afterwards. Instead, he was met with immediate bureaucracy and business-as-usual questions about absence reporting and recruitment. Years later, that lack of response still sits with him.
His reflection isn’t just emotional, it’s instructive: when there’s no structured support after a traumatic event, the impact doesn’t disappear, it just goes underground. And when leaders aren’t supported, they’re far less able to support anyone else.
The core question: what if a near miss is also a warning sign?
One of the most powerful sections of the episode comes from a story on a Tier 1 contractor site. Colin describes a scaffolder observed working on an unattached scaffold on the second lift, around four to five metres up. The immediate response was the standard route: get them down, bring them in, deal with it.
But Colin’s instinct kicked in, shaped by both experience and the research he’d been reading. Before punishment, he asked a different question.
“Has anybody asked this individual… is he okay?”
That’s the shift. It’s not about excusing unsafe acts. It’s about recognising that risky behaviour can sometimes be a symptom, not a standalone problem. Colin points out that yes, it could be a shortcut, a bad judgement call, or complacency. But it also could be something else entirely, such as distress, burnout, loss, relationship breakdown, financial pressure, or chronic stress.
This is where his doctoral research sits: in the preventative space, before crisis.
Why “lack of concentration” is not a root cause
Colin challenges something many of us have seen in incident reports: the way investigations often end too early.
“Everything at the moment… is always ‘lack of concentration’ or ‘human error’. And it’s like, let’s stop calling that a root cause, right? Come down another layer.”
In other words, “lack of concentration” is an outcome. The real question is why concentration was lost. And beyond that, what conditions made that more likely.
He describes it like peeling an onion. If we stop at the first layer, we don’t learn, we just document. If we go deeper, we might find fatigue, workload, stress, poor welfare, weak supervision, unrealistic programme pressure, or a culture where workers don’t feel safe to speak up until something forces the issue.
There’s a second part to Colin’s point that matters just as much: sometimes the next layer isn’t about the individual at all. It’s about the system.
“What have we done to contribute to that human error factor as well?”
The missing link: work-related factors, not just personal problems
One of Colin’s strongest themes is that we too quickly label mental health challenges as “personal issues”, when many are directly shaped by work.
Long hours. Excessive hours. Time away from family. Job insecurity. Short-term contracting. Early starts. Living in digs. Unclear schedules. Tight deadlines. Poor planning. These aren’t minor inconveniences, they are chronic stressors.
Colin puts it bluntly: people are human, and they “bring your whole self to work”. That isn’t a weakness. It’s reality. The question is whether the industry designs work in a way that makes it harder than it needs to be.
Jennie Armstrong also raises a key point about messaging and accountability. Talking about suicide can feel “far away” to organisations unless it hits their team directly. But safety is already something the industry pays attention to and measures closely. If mental health is connected to safety, the argument becomes harder to ignore.
Performative wellbeing: when initiatives don’t translate on site
Colin is careful not to dismiss wellbeing initiatives outright. He acknowledges that efforts like Mental Health First Aiders and “wellbeing breakfasts” come from the right place. But he challenges how often they become a box-ticking exercise with little evidence of impact.
He talks about “organisational policy decoupling” – when a company can say it has a programme, an EAP, or a policy, but the reality on site is different. In particular, he asks the question many don’t ask loudly enough:
Do subcontractors have access to the same support? Does it reach the “boots on the ground”?
He also highlights that even when people are trained as Mental Health First Aiders, workers often still turn to mates and peers rather than someone with a formal title. That doesn’t mean the initiative is pointless, but it does mean organisations need to understand how support actually works in practice, not just on paper.
A big part of this is measurement. Colin describes a real frustration: organisations can tell you what they spent on wellbeing, but not what changed because of it. When asked about feedback loops, he was told it was “GDPR”. His response is essentially: you can ask simple, respectful questions without collecting sensitive personal data. What matters is learning what is helping and what is theatre.
The research gap Colin is trying to fill
Colin explains that doctoral research requires you to find a narrow gap and go deep. His gap is specific and compelling:
“When people display this risk-taking behaviour or have a minor to moderate safety incident, is this an indicator of somebody experiencing mental health distress or a mental health issue?”
He is deliberately not studying suicide directly, partly due to ethical requirements and partly because he wants to work earlier in the chain. If you can intervene at the point where stress is showing up in behaviour, you may reduce both incidents and mental health deterioration.
That’s prevention, not crisis management.
Early indications from Colin’s data
Colin can’t share full specifics until publication, but he offers early direction. He explains that in his sample, around half of participants reported a near miss or minor to moderate safety incident, and “roughly one in five-ish” of those incidents were attributed to a mental health episode, distress, or an ongoing issue.
That is an important number. If even a portion of incidents are linked to distress, there is a strong case for integrating mental health awareness into safety conversations in a way that is practical and non-punitive.
He calls it a “double whammy”: better mental health can improve safety, and better safety processes can support mental health, if we treat the person like a person rather than a problem.
Culture and stigma: the generational shift
The conversation also explores stigma and how it’s evolving. Colin notes that construction has historically carried elements of hyper-masculinity, but he believes it is changing. What remains is a generational gap in how mental health is understood, especially as you move into older leadership groups.
Colin describes situations where a manager doesn’t recognise stress in others because they themselves aren’t feeling it.
“If it’s not causing them a problem… they couldn’t then relate and empathise with the individual… It was invisible to ’em and it doesn’t exist.”
This matters, because if someone expects judgement, they’re less likely to speak up. They may worry about being seen as weak, losing overtime, or being treated differently. Colin shares that he’s comfortable speaking openly about being on anti-anxiety medication, seeing it as “a tool”, but he acknowledges many people won’t feel safe doing that in every workplace.
That’s where leadership authenticity becomes critical. Colin says that when supervisors are willing to be human and vulnerable, it opens the door for real conversations rather than scripted check-ins.
Small changes that compound: the 0.5% mindset
A moment that stands out is Colin’s motivation. He has two young sons and believes there’s a strong chance one or both will end up in construction. He wants the industry to be even slightly better for them than it was for him.
“If I can… change it by half a percent for the better… and somebody else is working on half percent… cumulatively… we can all make an impact on this.”
That framing is brilliant for construction because it matches how progress often happens on projects: marginal gains, cumulative improvements, practical changes that add up.
It also avoids the trap of perfection. You don’t have to solve mental health across the industry overnight. But you do have to stop doing nothing.
Practical takeaways for construction leaders and organisations
Here are the key takeaways from the episode, translated into practical reflections you can act on.
- Go one layer deeper than “human error”.
If your investigations end at “lack of concentration”, you’re not doing root cause analysis. Ask what contributed, including fatigue, stress, workload, and system pressures. - Treat some near misses as a prompt for a welfare check, not just discipline.
That doesn’t mean removing accountability. It means adding curiosity. “Are you okay?” is a reasonable question before punishment. - Measure what you do.
If you’re running wellbeing initiatives, gather simple feedback. You don’t need sensitive data to learn whether something is landing or whether it’s just optics. - Fix basics before adding extras.
If welfare is poor, pay is inconsistent, or schedules are unreasonable, initiatives won’t land. You can’t “wellbeing programme” your way out of structural problems. - Build authentic leadership capability.
Workers open up to people they trust. Trust comes from consistency and humanity, not from one training course. - Think in marginal gains.
Aim for small, meaningful shifts in work design, planning, and support. 0.5% changes compound across teams and time.
Listen or watch the full episode of Build & Thrive to hear the complete conversation with Colin Whiteley and host Jennie Armstrong.
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Join the Conversation!
Do you have experiences or thoughts on addiction and recovery in construction?
Drop a comment below or share this post to help break the stigma. Together, we can make wellbeing part of the culture – not just the policy.
Thank you to GKR Scaffolding for sponsoring the Build & Thrive podcast and supporting our mission to improve health and wellbeing across the construction industry.
At Construction Health & Wellbeing, we help organisations create healthier, happier, and more sustainable workplaces.
Contact us today to learn how we can support your strategy.
Learn more about the people and organisations mentioned in this episode:
Jennie Armstrong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniearmstrong/
Construction Health & Wellbeing: https://constructionhealth.co.uk/
National Grid:
- Website: https://www.nationalgrid.co.uk/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-grid/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/nationalgriduk
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/uknationalgrid
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nationalgriduk/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/nationalgrid
Colin Whiteley:
GKR Scaffolding (sponsor): https://gkrscaffolding.co.uk/
