Seventeen months after pledging $7 million to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Bechtel is launching a major suicide prevention initiative for the construction sector. The program, known as Hard Hat Courage, is the first phase of the firm’s five-year commitment to improving mental health awareness and resources across U.S. jobsites.

Built in partnership with AFSP and a CEO advisory council, Hard Hat Courage aims to directly reach 500,000 construction workers, equipping contractors and companies of all sizes with mental health education, suicide prevention strategies, and industry-specific support tools.

“These new tools put help within reach — anytime, anywhere — so no one in our construction family has to face a mental health struggle alone,” said Brendan Bechtel, chairman and CEO of Bechtel. “It’s another step toward making mental health care as routine and accessible as a hard hat on the jobsite.”

Bechtel’s donation represents the largest contribution in AFSP’s history, underscoring the urgency of addressing suicide in construction — an industry where the rate of suicide is nearly four times higher than the national average.

Tools and Resources for Jobsites

As part of the rollout, AFSP is providing companies with toolbox talks — short, structured conversations designed to reduce stigma around mental health, encourage peer support, and teach workers how to recognize warning signs. The plan is to eventually develop at least 52 unique toolbox talks, ensuring that mental health discussions can be woven into the rhythm of everyday safety meetings.

In addition, AFSP has released a crisis response toolkit to guide employers after the death of a colleague by suicide. The resource includes instructions for building crisis response teams, templates for company-wide communications, and a month-long timeline of actions to support grieving employees.

“The ramifications of not being ready for it or being caught unprepared is that it’s discombobulating,” said Dr. Christine Yu Moutier, AFSP’s chief medical officer. “People are in a mode of already feeling stressed.”

She added that responding appropriately can prevent additional tragedies:
“Suicide contagion is actually a real phenomenon that can occur. It occurs when vulnerable people are exposed to a peer suicide or a celebrity suicide’s death is messaged by the media in a way that can draw vulnerable people closer to their wish to die.”

Changing Industry Culture

Moutier emphasized that the goal is not only to provide resources but to reshape how construction views mental health.

“We’re really looking to contribute to culture change,” she said. “Really transforming how mental health and suicide, substance use can be approached in a similar fashion that the industry has been so successful at driving down physical injury and mortality, and applying that blueprint to the mental health and suicide framework.”

She noted that the conversation itself has shifted dramatically compared to two decades ago:
“The fact that it is happening across so many industries and so many organizations is very different than it was, say 15, 20 years ago, where there was still so much stigma that people actually weren’t sure if we could talk about the topic even safely.”

Looking Ahead

Bechtel and AFSP hope Hard Hat Courage will set a precedent for other industries, offering a model for how companies can address suicide prevention systematically.

For contractors, Bechtel encourages not just one-time participation but ongoing integration of mental health into jobsite culture.

“We know that tackling mental health in construction is not a one-and-done effort,” Brendan Bechtel said. “It requires constant attention and better tools in the hands of those who need them most.”

With its blend of education, culture-building, and crisis support, Hard Hat Courage marks one of the most ambitious efforts yet to confront mental health struggles in the construction workforce — and to make safety truly holistic.

Originally reported by Zachary Phillips in Construction Dive.