Human Side of Construction – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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Human Side of Construction

Angelo Suntres

Business & Entrepreneuriat

Éducation

Fréquence : 1 épisode/7j. Total Éps: 31

Helping construction leaders improve the human experience in the industry.

humansideofconstruction.substack.com

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Données mises à jour le 06/10/2026

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Ep.30 - Stop Bolting AI Onto Construction

Saison 1 · Épisode 30

lundi 5 octobre 2026 • Durée 55:47

Hammad Chaudhry, VP of Innovation and Digital Construction at Pomerleau, joins Angelo to talk about the human side of construction technology. Hammad explains why AI adoption stalls when companies don’t understand their own business processes, why field “resistance” is usually a rational response to risk, and why the most valuable tools rarely look revolutionary. The conversation turns to the workforce gap, procurement incentives, and why investing in mental health and change management is part of any serious technology strategy.

Key topics

• From architecture and BIM coordination to leading innovation at Canada’s largest builders

• Why tech companies misread construction as one monolithic industry

• There’s no holy grail: understanding your business process before you buy AI

• Data strategy as table stakes, and clients asking contractors for their AI strategy

• The timing problem: investing too early vs waiting until your back is against the wall

• Resistance as risk management, and changing a tire on the Gardiner

• Conway’s Law, silos, and a workforce with no time left to learn

• Startups vs contractors: hero syndrome and the unflashy wins

• Will AI replace people? The labour gap and growing demand

• Incentives, procurement and contracts as the real barrier to tech’s potential

• Pomerleau’s investment in mental health and change management

• ROI, insurance, and why the human case is the business case

• The doorman lesson: what you lose when you optimize for ROI alone

• Hammad’s advice to executives: start with the business objective

Guest bio

Hammad Chaudhry is VP of Innovation and Digital Construction at Pomerleau and Vice Chair of Building Transformations, a non-profit built for the industry, by the industry. He started on the architecture side in Alberta, moved into construction as a project coordinator and BIM coordinator, and worked through estimating, preconstruction, proposals and special projects (including the conservatory renovation at the Banff Springs Hotel) before leading innovation and technology teams at some of the largest general contractors in Canada. He has also worked directly in the construction tech startup space, including time at Cupix, and is a Top 40 Under 40 in Canadian construction.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

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Ep.29 - Your Estimate Is Lying to You About People

Saison 1 · Épisode 29

mardi 29 septembre 2026 • Durée 09:23

Every construction estimate makes assumptions about people: how rested they are, how long they’ll stay, and who’s actually running the job. Nobody writes those assumptions down, so nobody prices them, and ops wears the variance when they don’t hold. Drawing on his years as a Chief Estimator and P&L leader, Angelo breaks down the overtime tax, the churn tax and the trust gap between estimating and operations. He closes with three practical moves any contractor can make on the next bid, no software required.

Key topics

• How a labour number really gets built, and why every factor describes the building, not the people

• Why historical productivity data hides the human variables instead of capturing them

• The overtime tax: MCAA factors for 50- and 60-hour weeks, and the “61 cents” reality

• Fatigue data from the National Safety Council (2018)

• The churn tax: absenteeism, turnover and the value of craft training

• The month-six cost review, and why psychological safety is a margin issue

• Three moves: write down the human assumptions, price acceleration honestly, close the loop

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit humansideofconstruction.substack.com

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Ep.28 - The Enemy You Become

Saison 1 · Épisode 28

lundi 21 septembre 2026 • Durée 59:35

Anthony Foley went from National Guard infantryman to master electrician to owner of his own veteran-owned shop, and he volunteered five years as an apprenticeship instructor along the way. In this conversation he is unusually honest about what large-scale construction does to people over time, including himself.

We get into the day there was no drinking water on a hot job site and what that silence communicated, the leadership test he gives every apprentice, why he believes teaching is the highest form of mastery, and the moment a former student told him over lunch that he still seemed bitter. He agreed.

Key topics covered

• Why a foundation in standards made the transition from the military to construction easier, and where that turns into rigidity

• The jump from a small shop to a national contractor, and the day he had to admit he might just be a number

• Getting thrown onto large-scale new construction with no mentorship and being told to ask as few questions as possible

• The water story, and what leadership communicates when it brushes something small off

• Take the money off the table: his test for whether a leader is worth following

• Why he gave five years of his own time to teaching apprentices for free

• Teaching as the way men in this trade actually show they care

• Phones, gambling and what he reads as a hope problem in younger apprentices

• The gap between the six figure trades marketing and a first year apprentice’s actual paycheque

• The superintendent who kept working through heat stroke, and what that models for everyone watching

• How harshness gets inherited from one generation of tradespeople to the next

• Why he thinks building steadier men is the precondition for the diversity the industry says it wants

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.27 - Building a Mental Health Program

Saison 1 · Épisode 27

lundi 14 septembre 2026 • Durée 18:44

A guy breaks his arm on your site and ninety seconds later three people are moving, there is a form, and there is an incident review by Thursday. A guy tells your foreman he has a plan to end his life, and nothing happens at all. In this solo episode, Angelo takes the mental health and crisis response program Shannon Truax-Wardell built at Preferred Materials, following the loss of a colleague to suicide, and turns it into a five-phase build sequence any construction company can follow. This is not an awareness episode. It is the operator manual: what you do, in what order, and what it costs you when you skip a step.

Topics covered

• Why mental health programs start with a trigger and a person, not a strategy, and why they die when handed to someone without authority

• The ready-mix truck campaign, and the driver education that had to happen before it launched

• Awareness without capability as an exposure, not a kindness

• The eighty percent of your workforce who want to help and do not know how

• Mental health first aid versus crisis response training, and why they are not interchangeable

• Volunteer-based responder rosters, and why letting people quit is the system working

• Why operational leaders, not HR, end up carrying the program

• Roster composition, and who people in trouble actually approach

• The legal line: no diagnosing, no treating, no prescribing, and why training is the protection

• Why terminology matters: died by suicide, not committed suicide

• Retention as the real return, and why promising an ROI number gets your program cancelled

• Attention failure as an under-counted driver of site incidents

• The one sentence from a leader that destroys the whole investment

• What a site lead and an office lead can each do on Monday morning

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.26 - Solutions, Not Slogans

Saison 1 · Épisode 26

jeudi 10 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:29:08

Shannon Truax-Wardell led a program that put a suicide crisis line on the side of ready-mix drums and drove it through every community her company works in. It won a national award, and a stranger in crisis called the number and later called back to say thank you. In this episode, sponsored by Grand Valley Construction Association and Mark’s Commercial, she walks Angelo through what came after the campaign: crisis response and mental health first aid training built into an operating company since 2021, who volunteered and why, where the legal line sits, and what to say to the executive who wants the ROI first. Angelo shares the story of the manager who asked him the same question five days running until he broke down at his desk. The through line is simple. We train every crew in first aid for the body and almost none of them for the mind, and that is a training gap, not a values problem.

Key topics covered

• How the ready-mix drum crisis line campaign came together in January 2021, and why the drivers were trained before a single truck went out

• Crisis response versus mental health first aid: what each one covers and how long each takes

• Why operational leaders, not just safety and HR, are the right people to train

• Keeping the program voluntary, and why some volunteers backing out was the right outcome

• The legal line between offering a safe place to speak and treating someone

• Language that matters: died by suicide, not committed suicide

• The 80 percent in the middle who want to help and freeze because they do not know what to say

• Why relating your own story back to someone in crisis can push them further away

• Angelo on Tim Peters, five days of the same question, and what a relief valve feels like

• Shannon on losing an hour of her drive while carrying her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis

• The operational case: supported people produce, and stressed people are a risk to themselves and the crew

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.25 - Awareness Isn’t Enough

Saison 1 · Épisode 25

lundi 7 septembre 2026 • Durée 01:14:38

64% of US construction workers reported anxiety or depression in the last twelve months, up from 54% the year before. For Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Angelo brings Josh Vitale of Project BUILT back to the show to talk about the part nobody has gotten to yet: what you actually do once you have admitted there is a problem.

Josh explains why running six thousand people through crisis intervention training was not the answer, what the trainings gave him and what they never gave him, and how that pushed him into building things instead. Family retreats. Recharge rooms already in use in police and fire halls. Rebar, a free anonymous check-in app that keeps a worker’s data on their own phone.

Underneath all of it is a single design principle: the intervention cannot stop when the time clock gets punched. This is a solutions episode, and it ends with a direct answer to the question a lot of wellness committees are sitting on right now, which is what to do with a budget you do not know how to spend.

Key topics covered

• Why awareness fatigue is real, and why awareness is still not finished

• What crisis intervention training gives you, and the one thing it cannot give you

• The 2025 stigma numbers, from both the worker and the executive side

• Doing your own work first, and the hero complex that comes with this territory

• Whole people, not workers: why interventions that stop at the gate do not hold

• Building the family retreat, and the model it was borrowed from

• Recharge rooms: what is in them, what they cost, and where the results come from

• The cost objection, and the cost of inaction

• Rebar, Level Check, and Compass: free tools for the worker and the spouse

• Why peer credibility beats a credential in this industry

• What Josh would do with a $250,000 wellness budget

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.24 - 34,000 Empty Superintendent Seats

Saison 1 · Épisode 24

lundi 31 août 2026 • Durée 07:51

Roughly 34,000 superintendent seats sit empty in the US and 63 percent of construction CEOs report trouble finding field managers. The industry’s standard explanation is that the next generation does not want responsibility. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 tells a different story: manager engagement fell from 27 percent to 22 percent in a single year, the steepest drop of any group they measure, and leaders now report more stress, anger, sadness and loneliness than the people they lead. In this solo episode Angelo takes that data into the site trailer and makes the case that the field leadership shortage is a job design problem, not a character problem, and that your AI strategy dies or survives at the same trailer door.

Key topics covered

• Why the engagement premium of being a manager has disappeared, and why field leaders are ground zero

• The superintendent’s day as the most pressurized seat on the org chart

• Why team engagement is an operations metric, not an HR metric

• Span of control: the cost of stretching one super across two jobs

• The trailer door test and why AI investment stalls at the field leader layer

• Pointing technology at administrative burden instead of at the boardroom

• Four moves to redesign the field leadership job

• The quarterly question that works as a leading indicator for turnover, adoption, safety and margin

Data referenced

• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026: global engagement 20 percent, manager engagement 22 percent (down from 27 percent), roughly 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity, 79 percent manager engagement in best practice organizations, 8.7x and 7.4x AI multipliers with manager support

• NCCER and the Construction Industry Round Table: roughly 34,000 unfilled superintendent positions, 63 percent of CEOs reporting difficulty finding field managers

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.23 - Language is PPE

Saison 1 · Épisode 23

lundi 24 août 2026 • Durée 01:04:24

Episode summary

Monique Lewis, founder and CEO of Next 2 Native, was six months into a business with no connection to construction when she heard about a fatality on a Charlotte job site where the language barrier was a contributing factor. That conversation rebuilt her company. In this episode she and Angelo get into why a nod and a thumbs up at the end of a toolbox talk are the most dangerous data points on a job site, why translating your safety manual does not mean your crew received it, and why the language barrier that starts an incident almost never appears in the report that follows it. They also cover the numbers that move a skeptical GC, what changes on a site when both sides start trying, and where the shortage conversation and the language conversation collide.

Key topics

• The Charlotte fatality that moved Next 2 Native into construction

• Language as PPE, not as a wellness initiative

• Opening a keynote in Spanish so English speakers feel the gap in their body

• A nod, a thumbs up and silence: the assumptions that hurt people most

• The fall protection training that ended with a rope around a worker’s waist

• Pre-literacy, and why translated documents can still reach nobody

• Why the language barrier is not a citable OSHA violation

• The cost stack: injury, EMR impact on future bids, fatality, reputation

• AI as an accelerant, and why adoption dies at the language barrier

• The air of try, and what two-direction language does to site culture

• The promotion ceiling that language unlocks, and what that means for the shortage

• Site Speak: two-way instruction plus leadership training for multilingual crews

• Bilingual suicide prevention and the Spanish-language 988 gap

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.22 - The Overdose Crisis in Construction

Saison 1 · Épisode 22

lundi 17 août 2026 • Durée 09:59

Construction has the highest opioid death rate of any industry in Ontario, more than four times the next sector. A new ODPRN report tracked 1,338 opioid deaths among construction and trades workers between 2018 and 2024, and flags that the true number is likely much higher due to missing occupation data. In this solo episode, Angelo breaks down how the industry’s injury rates, prescribing patterns, and toughness culture combined to produce this crisis, and lays out a concrete, unglamorous list of what leaders can do this week to change it.

Key topics covered

• Ontario’s construction and trades opioid death toll: 1,338 people, 37.9% of deaths with known occupation, 2018–2024

• Why the recorded number is a floor: nearly 8 in 10 deaths in the dataset have no occupation on record

• Where and how these deaths actually happen: 77% alone, 75% in a private residence, only 47% employed at time of death

• The injury-to-prescription-to-fentanyl pipeline, and why 90% of construction firms are too small to manage it alone

• Toughness culture as a psychological safety failure, and its link to elevated suicide rates in the trades

• What’s working: a 28.8% one-year drop in the U.S. construction overdose rate (2023–2024)

• A leader’s practical to-do list: naloxone access, EAP awareness, changing how pain and time off get talked about, staying connected after layoffs

Sources referenced

• ODPRN, Circumstances Surrounding Opioid Toxicity Deaths Across Occupational Sectors in Ontario, 2018–2024

• CDC / National Vital Statistics System, 2020 occupational overdose data

• CPWR (Center for Construction Research and Training) opioid research

If you need support

In Canada or the US, call or text 988 any time. In Ontario, you can also reach the Mental Health and Addictions line at 1-866-531-2600.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

Ep.21 - Humility, Trust and the Human Side of Leadership

Saison 1 · Épisode 21

lundi 10 août 2026 • Durée 51:41

Marius Tawembe, Director of Special Projects at Pomerleau, joins Angelo to talk about what it actually takes to build a team, a culture, and a career in the corner of construction most people overlook. From his roots in Cameroon to leading complex live renovations in the GTA, Marius makes the case that humility, trust, and candor are not soft skills but the real engine of performance. Along the way he shares the FIXO model he uses for hard conversations, why he treats letting people go as an act of love, and how a 2008 layoff and a sponsored visa led him to Canada.

Key topics covered

• Building a Special Projects division from zero by “firing yourself” and reverse-engineering the ideal leader

• Humility as the most important leadership trait, and why certainty is dangerous

• Trust given up front: trust is given, mistrust is earned

• The FIXO model for tough conversations: facts, impact, expectation, opportunity

• Releasing people from a role they do not fit as an act of care

• Faith, an Achilles injury, and rediscovering what drives him

• Surviving the 2008 recession, a sponsored visa deadline, and choosing Canada

• Resiliency and the impermanence of good and bad seasons

• Psychological safety, belonging, and their link to retention

• Pomerleau’s national wellbeing committee and what employees actually asked for

• Retaining young talent through purpose and varied experience, not just pay

Guest bio

Marius Tawembe is Director of Special Projects at Pomerleau in the Greater Toronto Area. The son of an architect and structural engineer, he trained in civil engineering and architecture from age 14 and has spent more than two decades in construction across nationals, boutiques, and his own shop, on both estimating and operations. He coaches youth basketball and serves on Pomerleau’s national wellbeing committee.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

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