Built to Last™: A Leadership Toolkit
Empowering labor-intensive companies to lead the way in workplace safety, mental health, and well-being.
About the Built to Last™ Toolkit
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Built to Last is a practical, evidence-based leadership toolkit for construction companies and has broad applicability to other labor-intensive industries, such as mining, manufacturing, waste management, and more.
Our toolkit helps companies strengthen both safety and mental health by training leaders in core skills and empowering crews to co-design solutions. Built in collaboration with industry partners, it combines practical leadership tools with peer-driven design teams to address a range of issues, from falls to stress and substance misuse. The result is stronger leaders, safer worksites, and a culture where crews stay engaged and thrive.
If you’re looking to invest in your people and build a workplace where safety, mental health, and well-being are part of the foundation, Built to Last delivers the structure and tools to make it happen.
Challenges the Built to Last toolkit addresses:
- Lack of leadership support for safety, mental health, and wellbeing
- Poor employee engagement in safety, mental health, and wellbeing policies and programs
- Poor teamwork and ineffective safety and health committees
- Ineffective safety, mental health, and wellbeing solutions
- Solutions That Fit Your Company: You know your crews best. We help uncover issues and implement changes that boost safety, morale, and productivity.
- Real Tools for Real Challenges: From design sprints to leadership training, every step is grounded in your daily operations — not theory.
- Developed Collaboratively by Industry Leaders & Experts: Built to Last combines lessons learned from proven programs — like Foundations for Safety Leadership (FSL) and the Healthy Workplace Participatory Program (HWPP) — and was shaped with input from an industry advisory board including safety leaders, mental health experts, and frontline supervisors.
In the News
CHWE Researchers Launch Worker Well-Being Study in Construction
Researchers to explore strategies to improve construction worker safety
Workplace Mental Health at Risk as Key Federal Agency Faces Cuts
Our team
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Natalie Schwatka, PhD
Project PI; Assistant Professor (CHWE); Director of the Total Worker Health Certificate Program
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Liliana Tenney, DrPH, MPH
Co-Investigator; Assistant Professor and Director of Outreach and Programs (CHWE)
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Our partners
Jennifer M. Cavallari, ScD, CIH
Co-Investigator; Associate Professor (UConn); Co-Director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UConn)
Suzanne Nobrega, PhD
Co-Investigator; Co-Director and Outreach Director of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UMass Lowell)
Serena Rice, MS
Co-Investigator; Project Manager for the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW/UMass Lowell)
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©2025, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.
Production of this document was supported by cooperative agreement U54OH012761 from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIOSH.