🏗️ This article hits home – the construction industry mental health crisis is real
Coming from corporate into property development, I thought I knew stress. I was so so wrong. The construction sector is unforgiving in ways I never imagined 📈
As one of too few women in this industry, I couldn’t have survived without my corporate background and the luxury of a lifestyle that allows me full focus seven months of the year. Even with these advantages, the stress has been unbelievable 💪
It’s a cruel world made worse by factors beyond our control: banks changing their minds at will, councils actively working against developments, endless regulatory changes that hit our workers hardest. Many of these brilliant tradespeople aren’t academics – they’re craftspeople who fold because they don’t know how to push back against the system 🔨
My winning strategy? Team work, for example, my key carpenter provides the muscle and craftsmanship. Together we make it work – I bring strategy, drive, vision and equity, he brings exceptional skill and execution. But I also have to engage a team of expensive professionals just to navigate these shark-infested waters ⚖️
The statistics in this article are sobering: 80 construction workers lost to suicide in 2023, up from 38 in 2019. That’s 80 families destroyed. 728 companies liquidated in just one year 📊
Marti Amos is absolutely right – we need financial literacy integrated into apprenticeships. But we also need systemic change: less arbitrary decision-making from banks and councils, and recognition that constant regulatory changes are crushing the people who actually build our homes 🏠
The human cost of our broken construction system is too high.
