A free Workplace Peer support toolkit for Washington construction crews.
Washington State Labor & Industries has funded a project I proposed with IUOE Local 612 as our signatory partner, joined by IUOE Local 302, Bricklayers Local 1 and the South Sound Building and Construction Trades Council: a free, public-domain workplace peer support toolkit for construction crews in Washington State. I'm the project lead, and I'll be building the content, running the pilot training and doing the reporting.
Funding and support for this project has been provided by the State of Washington, Department of Labor & Industries, Safety & Health Investment Projects. Learn more at lni.wa.gov/SHIP
Why a workplace safety program is funding this
In 2024, just over 1,000 U.S. construction workers died on the job. That same year, about 11,300 construction workers died from an overdose and about 5,000 died by suicide. Those deaths do not start on the day they happen. Before that, someone is showing up impaired, in pain, or not themselves, and the people working next to them can often see it. That person is a hazard on the jobsite, to themselves and to everyone around them: slower reactions, missed steps, a lapse at the wrong moment. Those coworkers are the earliest warning system on any jobsite. Most crews have no idea how to start that difficult conversation or where to send someone for help, and the result is silence. This toolkit teaches them to recognize the signs, react, and recommend help. The goal is to save lives from overdose and suicide, and the same skills make a jobsite safer every day. A crew that pays attention to how its people are doing catches the problems that lead to near misses, injuries and illness, and gets help to the person before something goes wrong. That is the connection to what SHIP funds: preventing workplace injury, illness and death through cooperation between employers and workers.
U.S. construction workers, 2024. Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries 2024. CPWR and NABTU, February 2026 (overdose and suicide figures are rounded).
What's inside
A free, public-domain toolkit any employer or hall can run without us:
- Three guides. One for Workplace Peers, the people doing the work. One for supervisors and foremen, so they understand what the Workplace Peers are doing. One for workers, so they understand the program.
- An employer policy framework. Recovery Friendly Workplace practices for the trades.
- A training curriculum. Facilitator guide, slides and scripts, 60 to 90 minutes or a full day, built for a safety lead, foreman or steward to deliver.
- Short informational and instructional videos, with a QR code so people can watch them at lunch or on a break.
- The surveys, so any employer can measure their own rollout.
- All of it accessible, with the key pieces in Spanish.
The road ahead
- DesignOctober to December 2026
Kickoff with L&I. Lock the module list. Pencil in pilot dates with the partner halls.
- BuildJanuary to March 2027
Write the guides and the training. Film the short videos with people from the trades, not actors.
- PilotApril to June 2027
Training at partner halls and worksites, with a short survey before and after every session.
- Revise and releaseJuly to September 2027
Fix what the pilot taught us and release it free. Suicide Prevention Week, September 2027, toolkit in hand.
Who is building it
Brett Lovins is the project lead. He builds the content, runs the pilot training and does the reporting. Sober Curious Consulting is the grantee.
Kyle Zimmer is the subject matter expert on the project. Kyle spent 20-plus years building Workplace Peer support inside the trades and retired as Director of Health and Safety at IUOE Local 478 in Connecticut, where he pioneered their Members Assistance Program. We met in 2024 at an invite-only Recovery Friendly Workplace event at SAMHSA headquarters and have been collaborating for about a year. What he learned doing this work for decades is going into the toolkit so any crew in Washington State can use it.
The partners. IUOE Local 612 is the signatory partner, joined by IUOE Local 302, Bricklayers Local 1 and the South Sound Building and Construction Trades Council. They bring the halls, the members for the pilot sessions, and the finished toolkit to their members and signatory contractors.
Where things stand
- October 2026. Work started October 1. Kickoff with L&I is next.
If you work construction in Washington
The toolkit will be free to any employer, hall or crew in the state when it is done. If you want to hear when it is ready, join the newsletter.
If you want to talk about us working with your company or your local, you don't have to wait a year for the toolkit. Email me: brett@brettlovins.com
Funding and support for this project has been provided by the State of Washington, Department of Labor & Industries, Safety & Health Investment Projects. Learn more at lni.wa.gov/SHIP