December 6, 2024

By Lane Kimble

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. — The keynote speaker at the Wisconsin Asphalt Pavement Association’s (WAPA) Annual Conference walked on stage Tuesday to a round of applause.  He then promptly told the crowd he is not a keynote speaker.

Vince Hafeli – president of Ajax Paving Industries – instead spent the hour talking about something he says the construction industry never talks about; a topic that Hafeli says even he never shared publicly until a couple years ago.

“At work, I felt like I was a rockstar.  I felt like everything I touched turned to gold,” Hafeli explained.  “Personally, I felt like everything I did was absolutely wrong.   I felt like a complete failure.”

Hafeli, 62, likely would have taken his own life one night in 2007 if it weren’t for a phone call letting him know his son was on the way to intervene.  The longtime contractor says that was the darkest time in his personal life despite publicly appearing to have truly made it.

Data helped highlight Hafeli’s message: the industry sadly loses 2-3 workers per day on a job site to accidents, which often draw huge attention.  Meanwhile, 10-15 construction workers per day die by suicide but that gets buried and tucked away, Hafeli said.

“Today, I’m going to dare you to be different,” Hafeli said.  “I’m going to dare you to talk about something that men in particular have been hesitant to talk about in this industry.  To talk about mental health and to talk about suicide.”

It was a powerful message for a crowd of about 300 gathered at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells.

WAPA’s annual conference also included remarks from WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman, representatives from the Federal Highway Administration, and a number of technical breakout sessions. Wednesday’s topics included election analysis, a WisDOT quantities update, and work zone safety discussions.

Award winners and scholarships were the other highlights at the convention.

WisDOT won an award for this year’s full freeway closure of I-894, which helped Payne + Dolan (Walbec Group) crews repave several miles of highly traveled freeway in a fraction of the time.  The villages of Weston and Rothschild won an award for a shared roundabout project, and Lannon Stone won the 2024 Business Asphalt Innovation award.

WAPA’s scholarship winners included Alexa Rademacher (UW-Madison), Luke Fischer(UW-Madison), and Natasha Janicki (Mid-State Technical College).