Human Side of Construction

In this solo episode, Angelo takes Daniel Pink’s framework of the six human skills AI will never replace and applies it directly to construction. From asking better questions to building job site judgment, iterating with intent, orchestrating humans and machines, and leading with integrity - this is the leadership map for a construction industry heading into a decade of AI-driven change. The throu...

Angelo sits down with Leighann Harrison — Director of HR and part-owner of Core Mechanical, a mechanical contractor in BC — who brought a psychology background, coaching practice, and clinical breathwork into a trades business. They dig into why most construction wellness is performative, how to notice when someone’s struggling and actually say something, and why mental health belongs under an ope...

Up to 46% of construction professionals identify as neurodivergent — far above the roughly 31% seen in other industries. In this solo episode, Angelo Suntres argues that cognitive diversity isn’t a problem to manage but a competitive advantage construction stumbled into long ago and never named. He breaks down how to tell a deficit from a variation, the three low-cost adjustments that unlock perfo...

Angelo sits down with Kris Lengieza, Field COO at Procore, for a no-hype conversation about the real state of AI in construction. They dig into why the industry has digitized but never truly transformed, the workforce cliff sending nearly half the trades into retirement this decade, and the “knowledge extinction event” that comes with it. Kris makes the case that the barrier to change is no longer...

In this solo episode, Angelo Suntres tackles psychological safety — not as a soft HR concept, but as the operating condition that determines whether problems on a project get surfaced early or buried until they blow up. He breaks down the real cost of silence on a job site, why the old fear-based model has a shelf life, and what psychological safety actually looks like in practice. The throughline...

In Episode 11, Angelo sits down with Trevor Botkin - a Red Seal carpenter with 30 years in construction who nearly lost his life to addiction and suicidal ideation in 2019. Trevor shares his full story, from being told he was stupid in school to finding belonging on job sites, to the day he planned to end his life and the treatment center stay that changed everything. He’s now leading the developm...

In this solo episode, Angelo Suntres examines the gap between how the construction industry handles physical injuries and mental health challenges. Using the analogy of a broken arm - where safety systems respond instantly and without stigma - Angelo makes the case that mental wellness deserves the same systematic response. He introduces the concept of Health & Safety 2.0: integrating mental welln...

In Episode 9 of The Human Side of Construction, Angelo sits down with Ed DeAngelis, founder and CEO of EDA Contractors, a 400-person specialty contractor in the greater Philadelphia area. Ed shares his journey from paper boy to construction CEO, the morning he hit a physical and emotional wall that changed his leadership philosophy forever, and how he built a people-first culture in an industry th...

In this solo episode, Angelo Suntres tackles the construction industry’s most underfunded capability: knowledge transfer. With experienced workers retiring and critical judgment leaving organizations every day, Angelo breaks down why proximity-based learning fails, what real mentorship actually requires, and how reverse mentorship can become a competitive advantage. He closes with a concrete chall...

Episode Summary Josh Vitale — co-founder of Project Built, chair of Construction Suicide Prevention Week, and a self-described recovering superintendent — joins Angelo to dismantle the comfortable lie that awareness alone is solving construction's mental health crisis. They get into the data we don't quote, the family disconnection thread that runs through every superintendent he's ever met, the C...

Construction has a retention problem, and most leaders are diagnosing it wrong. People aren’t leaving for ten thousand dollars and a fancier title. They’re leaving because they can’t see a future inside your organization, and instead of asking, they assume there isn’t one. In this solo episode, Angelo breaks down the four things every construction leader has to get right to stop the slow bleed of...

Kabri Lehrman-Schmid is a Project Superintendent at Hensel Phelps with over 17 years experience. She’s currently leading the S Concourse Evolution Project at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as part of a $2B+ terminal renovation program, with a career portfolio that already exceeds $2 billion in completed project value. Off the job site, she’s co-founded Build With Pride Seattle, co-chairs the...

Why do construction companies keep losing good people and blaming the generation instead of the gap? In this solo episode, Angelo breaks down the real reason workers walk away — mismatched expectations that nobody talks about — and lays out what leaders can do about it this week. In this episode: •        Why this isn’t a generational problem — it’s an expectations problem •        How frustration...

Patrick Murphy grew up in a fourth-generation construction family, left to earn his CPA, worked at Deloitte, served in the US Congress, and came back to lead at Coastal Construction — Florida’s largest GC. When he returned, he saw his estimating team spending more than half their time on manual takeoffs. So he built Togal. AI , an AI-powered takeoff platform trained on millions of construction pla...

The construction industry has been talking about the labour shortage for two decades. We know the numbers. We’ve seen the projections. And yet the gap keeps growing. In this solo episode, Angelo makes the case that we’ve been solving for the wrong problem — and that the real crisis isn’t about who we’re bringing in, it’s about who we’re losing and why. In this episode: → Why 430,000 new workers pe...

Geoff Smith spent 30 years leading EllisDon from a regional builder into one of the largest construction companies in North America. He's a lawyer by training who openly admits he can't build a card house — and that vulnerability became the foundation of a leadership philosophy that shaped an entire organization. In this episode, we get into: → How Geoff's people-first leadership style was born ou...

Every construction leader faces the same problem on every project and in every organization. It's not schedule. It's not budget. It's not scope. It's people. In this intro episode, I break down why the construction industry's biggest risk has nothing to do with technical competence — and everything to do with a leadership skills gap we've been ignoring for decades. I share the statistics nobody wa...