The MATES North America pilot program, which Quanta initiated, has been several years in the making.

In 2023, Quanta Services approached MATES leaders in Australia to become a partner so that the model would be tested across several union and non-union sites in the U.S. The pilot will help evaluate and refine MATES to ensure it is optimized for "the fragmented North American construction and healthcare environment," according to the program website. The goal is to "unite more employers, unions and safety orgs as partners in our cause."

The six Quanta units and their base locations are Blattner (Avon, Minn.); Hallen Construction (Plainview, N.Y.); Mears (Rosebush, Mich.); Potelco  (Sumner, Wash.); Service Electric (Chattanooga, Tenn.) and Summit Line Construction (Heber City, Utah). All are contributing financially to the program with  Quanta and other partners. 

To get started, Katie Deal, the Washington, D.C.-based project lead, says she listened to workers in the field and engaged an advisory group of U.S. industry leaders, unions and mental health professionals. That input is being used to "localize" the program to reflect regional and company language and cultural norms.

The MATES approach to relationship-building can also be seen as building "capacity," a term Quanta uses to describe its company-wide safety program.

In Deal's words, the relationships "are really at the heart of a MATES program, and that's both the relationships between the MATES staff, who deliver a program, the relationships that they build with people on site who are participating in the program, and the relationships between the people working on site."

Those people "begin to build more awareness and capacity, to look out, look out for each other, to notice signs if someone is struggling, either that they're thinking of suicide, or maybe they're not thinking of suicide necessarily, but they're an emotional distress, and they might need some support."

Relationships, awareness and capacity open the door to peer support for anyone who is struggling. 

A key part of the program is initial orientation to MATES principles after which some company staff members are invited to play a more active role as a source of support, called Connectors.

That Connector receives training that includes recognizing if an individual is struggling or in crisis, and, when needed, put that individual together with a MATES case manager.

"There's usually no shortage of volunteers to go through that next level. of training," says Deal. "So, it's not putting all the onus on the person struggling to raise their hand and seek help."

"And what we've seen," she adds, "from research on MATES in Australia and New Zealand, where this program's been around a long time, is that it provides capacity for the worker or for the Connector to reach out."

"MATES provides a sustainable system that supports our men and women, not one meeting or one training, a system of continual support," says Matt Compher, Quanta's senior vice president for operational performance. "It’s all about caring for our employees."

As a reminder, Deal notes that "suicide doesn't discriminate, it can impact anyone on a jobsite" or anyone who works a a company. 

But, Deal says, "anyone on a job site can be part of suicide prevention."

For more information, visit the MATES North America website.