Wellington Gold Awards 2021

4 years in the making, but that was yesterday………

Well, it was actually on Thursday night when after 4 years of being a bridesmaid we finally became the bride and were honored to receive the ACC Workplace Safety Gold Award at the Wellington Gold Awards. I’m so proud of the BPM team, and of course, we’d be nothing without the support of our whānau, friends and clients. But this award is more than just a business accolade for us, it was a line in the sand, recognition of change, the change that we have been working so tirelessly to drive both within our business and in the wider construction industry. The change to normalise conversations about mental health and normalise them within the construction industry.

In 2018 I lost a friend and colleague in the industry who unbeknown to me had been struggling in silence. I spoke to him (and we had our usual cheery conversation) only a week or so before he passed. The moment I was given the news will be with me forever; how could I have not known when we spoke? Why didn’t he say something?
I knew he had taken time away from work in the past, I knew he was back at work and was under pressure again – should I have been able to see what was going on? These are all normal thoughts that go through the head of anyone that has been in that situation. From that dark moment is when I decided we needed to do our part, we needed to expand our wellbeing programme beyond our employees and into the industry normalising conversations about mental health.

And now, after a couple of years of rolling out our Contractor Wellbeing programme, last year in partnership with our amazing friends at CoLiberate and their CONVOS framework along with the vision of Ash Holwell on his fantastic project at two/fiftyseven we were able to create a method for delivering these conversations; CONVOS in Construction.

NZ’s attitude towards mental health is changing, and for me, us being awarded this accolade helps somewhat give a feeling that what we set out to do in 2018 is happening. But we’re not there yet, there's still more work to do tomorrow............

Dedicated to you PG. Rest in peace.

By Daniel Bradley