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In conversation with Kieran Campbell, Senior HSE Advisor and Mental Health First Aider at ISG Middle East.
There is a version of the construction industry that has started to change. Not completely, not everywhere, but in enough places that the shift is worth paying attention to. Welfare conversations are appearing in inductions. Mental health first aiders are listed on company emails alongside emergency contacts. And senior figures on site are beginning to talk openly about the fact that the job is hard in ways that go beyond the physical.
Kieran Campbell is one of those people. As a Senior HSE Advisor and certified Mental Health First Aider working with ISG Middle East, he spends his days making sure people go home safely, in every sense of the word. But his understanding of mental health does not come only from a training course. It comes from lived experience and that combination of personal insight and professional responsibility gives him a perspective that is worth hearing.
Why Mental Health Became Personal.
Kieran did not set out to become an advocate for mental wellbeing on site. His path into the role came from somewhere more personal. In his early twenties, living abroad on a football scholarship, he went through a period of depression that at the time he kept mostly to himself.
"I was living in America on my own and struggling, but my Instagram looked brilliant. People would have had no idea. That is what people need to understand. Sometimes the happiest person in the room is the most vulnerable."
When he later came across the Mental Health First Aid course through work, something clicked. The training formalised instincts he had already started developing and his own experience gave him a frame of reference that no classroom alone could provide.
"I am glad it happened," he says of that difficult period. "It allowed me to understand how people can feel in certain moments. I look back at how I was then and it helps me now when I am trying to read how someone else might be feeling."
What Supporting People Actually Looks Like.
Mental health first aid in construction rarely looks like a formal meeting in a quiet office. More often it looks like a conversation on a walk, a check-in during a morning brew, or simply noticing that someone who is normally talkative has gone quiet.
"No one has knocked on my door and said come in, I need a chat," Kieran admits. "But I probably use it more than I realise. Within the course, a lot of it is about how you ask questions and how you respond. You are picking things up all the time without labeling them."
One lesson that has stayed with him is the importance of not comparing. If someone shares that they are struggling, jumping in with "at least you are not dealing with this" closes the conversation down. What people need is to feel heard.
"People do not really want answers. They want someone to listen. I see it at home and I see it at work. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is just sit with someone and let them talk."
He draws a useful distinction between offering solutions and offering presence. The former, done badly, can make things worse. The latter, done consistently, builds trust over time and means that when someone is really struggling, they already know where to go.
The Construction Industry Is Still Catching Up.
Progress on mental health in the sector is real but uneven. Kieran is clear on that.
"I think it is improving, but it is very situational. It depends who your managers and leaders are. There are companies and managers who would fully understand if someone needed a couple of days off because they were stressed or anxious. And there are others who would say, "Come on, I used to do this and that."
The barriers are not just cultural. They are structural. Construction is a predominantly male industry, with long hours, physical demands, high-pressure deadlines and a workforce that has traditionally been expected to get on with it. Those conditions do not disappear because attitudes are slowly shifting.
There are organisations making a difference. Charities that provide free mental health support specifically for people in the industry, campaigns to raise awareness and more companies are training first aiders. But Kieran's view is that awareness for one week a year is not enough.
"Why should it only be pushed for that small window of time? It should be every day. Even if that is not realistic in construction, at least make it consistent. Make it normal."
Fatigue: The Risk That Often Goes Unnamed.
Ask people to list the major safety risks in construction and fatigue rarely makes the top three. Yet its effects on decision-making, on mood and on the likelihood of an incident are significant and increasingly documented.
Kieran is direct about this: fatigue and mental health are not separate issues. They feed each other.
"When people are fatigued, that is when they are not thinking straight. That is when they are most vulnerable on site. But it is also when their mood suffers, when their patience runs out and when small things become big things."
In the UAE, where Kieran is currently based, the dynamic is particularly complex. Workers are often far from home, separated from family and operating in extreme heat. Many are motivated to take on additional hours for the overtime pay. Kieran understands this but he also knows what it costs.
Fatigue, he notes, is not just about overnight shifts or extreme hours. Missing a breakfast break in forty-degree heat. Working through without hydration. Being mentally absorbed in a problem for hours without a pause. These things accumulate and they affect people in ways that are not always visible until something goes wrong.
Watching for the Signs.
One of the most practical things Kieran talks about is how to spot when someone is struggling without waiting for them to raise their hand.
"If someone who is usually bubbly stops saying good morning and stops interacting, that is worth noticing. You might also see it in their appearance, their hygiene and how snappy they become with people. Lateness can be a sign. So can overworking, which sounds counterintuitive, but people stay late when home is not comfortable."
It is important to assess over days and weeks as opposed to one off days. Everyone has those. But if a pattern develops over several days or a week, that is when he acts and the way he acts matters as much as the act itself.
The shift from "what is wrong with your output" to "are you OK" sounds simple. In practice, it requires a kind of leadership maturity that not everyone has naturally and that many managers have never been supported to develop.
Leadership Sets the Tone.
Kieran talks warmly about the culture at ISG, specifically about the way senior people carry themselves. He describes his own manager asking regularly how he is settling in, how his partner is finding life abroad and whether they are both doing well. Small questions, consistently asked.
"It makes you feel comfortable. And if you feel comfortable, you will actually answer honestly. If someone only ever asks you how you are when something has clearly gone wrong, you are not going to open up to them. You are going to feel like you are being assessed."
This is the difference between a tick-box approach to mental health and a genuine culture. The former involves a policy document, a poster and a first aider on an email list. The latter involves leaders who ask how people are because they actually want to know and who make it normal to talk about wellbeing before a crisis arrives.
"You want people to feel like they could go for a beer with you and also tell you if they are struggling. That balance does not happen by accident. You have to build it."
The Role of Systems and Structure.
Culture matters but so do systems. One reason Kieran values using the inndex platform is the ability to track who is on site, how frequently and under what conditions. Fatigue risk is not always visible to the naked eye. Having data helps.
"If you rely solely on people coming to you, you will miss things. Especially here, where I cannot always communicate directly with every worker on site. A system that shows me patterns and flags that someone has been on site for twelve days without a break gives me something to act on."
He is equally clear that technology alone is not the answer. It works when it is backed by a leadership culture that takes the data seriously and has the courage to act on it even when workers themselves want to keep going.
What Needs to Change.
When asked what he would most like to see shift in the industry over the next decade, Kieran's answer comes back to two things: training and visibility.
"Every manager who has a team should have a Mental Health First Aid certificate. Not because it makes them a therapist, but because it gives them a baseline of understanding. If someone comes to you and opens up about how they are feeling and you have no idea what to do with that, you can make things worse. You can make them regret speaking up."
On visibility, his hope is for more honest stories from senior people in the industry. The idea that someone can appear confident, capable and content while carrying something difficult underneath is not unusual. What is unusual is leaders being willing to say so.
"If people further up the ladder are willing to talk about their own experiences, it changes what everyone else thinks is possible. It makes it feel less like a weakness and more like a human thing. Because it is a human thing."
If You Are Reading This and Struggling.
Kieran ends most of his site inductions by mentioning mental health. Not to create pressure or make a formal announcement, but just to open a door.
"I know that on a site with two hundred people, someone is dealing with something. I just want them to know there is somewhere to go. You cannot force people to speak. But you can keep chipping away until they feel comfortable enough to."
If that is you right now, reading this from a site office or a cab home after a long shift, his message is simple: it does not have to stay invisible. A problem shared is a problem halved.
And if you are a leader reading this, the ask is equally simple. Check in before you need to. Build the kind of environment where people feel comfortable telling you the truth. Invest in training. Take fatigue seriously as a mental health issue and not just a safety one.
The industry is changing. But the pace of that change depends on the people inside it deciding it matters.
