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Show Up for Safer Workplaces (Show Up) is an innovative new program that helps participants identify where mental health, addiction and psychological safety issues are hurting people who work in the construction trades.

Show Up is a four-day comprehensive training program that helps participants “recognize and support mental health and substance use concerns, prevent toxic workplace culture and become active partners in creating healthier and more stable work environments.”

The program supports trades workers, trainers and educators and organizational leaders who work in construction in B.C.

Show Up uses interactive scenarios, discussions and skill-based learning to empower and prepare participants to transfer their skills back to the workplace.

The program provides them with presentations, short toolbox talks content and other resources they can use in their workplaces, organizations, training institutes, unions and communities.

Show Up covers a wide variety of topics, including psychological safety, mental health first aid and suicide awareness, substance use and the toxic drug crisis as well as bullying, harassment and discrimination.

In addition, the program discusses strategies for how to build respectful, stable and healthy workplaces.

Participants receive a certificate in mental health first aid, a course that was developed and recognized by the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Each Show Up session consists of an online self-paced prerequisite (approximately two hours), followed by four full days (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) of in-person learning with a group of up to 20 participants.

Show Up was developed as a partnership between the BC Centre for Women in the Trades (BCCWITT) and the BCFed Health and Safety Centre (BCFHSC).

“We see too many people impacted by mental health challenges in the construction industry,” says Kristen Keighley-Wight, executive director of BCCWITT.

The program isn’t just for women.

“The program gives the people who take it the resources and tools they need to become experts in mental health,” says Keighley-Wight.

There were three pilot programs in fall 2025 and an official launch in February 2026 in Victoria, which 14 participants attended.

“We get financial support from the provincial government, so the program is free until March 2027,” says Keighley-Wight.

Ishani Weera, executive director of BCFHSC says, “We partnered with BCCWITT to advise and guide the Show Up curriculum.

“We shaped the approach of the program, to give it a worker-centric approach.”

Weera says BCFHSC is a non-profit that delivers health and safety training and consultation to employers and employees in every industry sector – union and non-union – in every region of the province.

“We recognize that mental health safety needs to be taken as seriously as physical safety and that they’re interrelated,” says Weera.

What sets Show Up apart, she says, is that it treats psycho-social injury prevention with the same rigor as physical injury prevention.

“What makes Show Up radically different is that it starts from the assumption that people aren’t hazards, worksite conditions are,” says Weera. “Show Up helps workers, leaders and organizations move beyond virtue-signalling about individual strength or resilience, and instead looks at the real psychological conditions on the worksite.”

Sara Shaw, human resources manager for PML Professional Mechanical Ltd., attended one of the fall 2025 Show Up pilot projects.

“We’re using the workshop instruction at work now,” says Shaw. “The training we received gave us more confidence about what to do if we have to deal with someone having a mental health crisis at work.”

Participants learned how to identify and deal with different types of mental health crises as well as the community resources that are available.

The BC ��������ion Association (BCCA) sits on the ShowUp advisory committee.

BCCA president Chris Atchison says the association has been supporting BCCWITT “for years” in such initiatives as its

Atchhison says partners across the industry are needed in order to introduce occupational mental health safety to stakeholders that will change workplace culture.

“It’s a collective effort that everyone in the construction industry needs to play a part in,” says Atchison. “Show Up is another way for us to reach the industry employers and employees.”

Rory Kumala, CEO of the Vancouver Island ��������ion Association, says VICA is helping to promote Show Up.

“We’ve also been supporting BCCWITT with collaborative specific initiatives on occupational health and safety for women in construction,” says Kumala.

For information on upcoming Show Up programs in BC, go to .

There are limited spaces available and not all applicants can be accepted.