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TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
Helping Minority and Women - Owned Businesses
How can cities help businesses run by women and minorities thrive? One Portland program has come under fire after an audit revealed that more than half of the money it gave out went to businesses owned by white males.
Do you run a business that competes for city contracts? What's your experience with the process? Is your business struggling or thriving? How do you think your race or sex plays into how well your business is doing? What do you think your city's responsibility is to help you compete?
GUESTS:
- Drummond Kahn: Director of Audit Services for the City of Portland
- Jeff Baer: Director of Internal Business Services for the City of Portland
- Samuel Brooks: President of the Board of the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs
- Elizabeth Gibson: Owner of Denali Stoneworks
- Mia Cariaga: Purchasing Manager for the City of Eugene
Tagged as: minorities · politics · small business · women
Photo credit: oooh.oooh / Creative Commons
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We are 5 year old company that is minority owned in SW Washington. We compete at the local as well as the federal level for government contracts. 2009 was our best year to date. I don't feel that my race or sex plays much of a role in my success. I get up every morning and hit the streets looking and working on building my business. The program that the City of Portland has come under fire for we can not compete due to the size standards. One thing that I have noticed is that when someone says minority owned it often brings up negative thoughts. I have heard countless times where agencies were burned by MBE's. This stereotype is hard to overcome and often makes our job tougher to convince our clients that we are qualified to do a quality job. It our #1 goal to give our clients the best value for there money. I understand the process of owning and managing a business is very difficult proposition. It takes up most of all your time and energy. You must be dedicated and steadfast in your efforts. I applaud any agency that works to help small business's no matter what the race, creed, or color. Lets face it our country was built with small business's. I think that the city's responsibility is to help business's become successful by allowing them to compete for projects that they are capable of doing. Just because you have a program that allows them to compete doesn't make it successful. Often times firms are hired just to meet a so called goal. What good is the goal if the firms fail in trying to reach them. Any firm competing for public contracts right now better be willing to do it at a loss. The projects cost what they cost. People need to remember if you want to stay in business you must produce a quality product as well a quality profit. I applaud the city for trying to help small business's but there needs to be some real change to this program. I just think that the city could just do a better job at screening the contractors they use. Have them produce proposals that showcase their talents. A proper screening program would allow more good companies succeed and the companies that fail the process can work till they can pass the test. Besides who wants to hire someone just because of there race or sex. Isn't that discrimination???
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We are members of OAME and we believe the City could benefit by investing some time to learn from the local leaders like, Mr. Sam Brooks, Founder and Chair of the Board of OAME who has put his heart and soul to the growth of local economy by supporting small businesses.
Kaleidoscope Construction Inc.
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As a former City of Portland, Facilities Services project manager (currently in public service), I worked 11 years primarily on large capital projects, but also with the Bureau of Purchasing, Sheltered Market Program (SMP) on projects valuing $100,000 or less.Since affirmative action was successfully challenged in the courts, ending programs that discriminated based on race, gender etc., cities like Portland have endeavored to develop incentive programs like the SMP to provide opportunities for women, minority and emerging small businesses (emerging small businesses include owners of any race).
While a recent audit report indicates that businesses owned by whites are awarded City of Portland contracts disproportionately, that result is most certainly not for lack of effort on the City's part. While the City can provide the opportunities, by law they are required to award contracts based on low bid (in all but exceptional cases). I have worked directly with MBE, WBE and ESB firms that have successfully graduated from the SMP and gone on to work within the broader construction industry. I have also seen some SMP construction firms fall short, despite the City's best efforts. Overall, I would say the City's SMP program has worked for those best equipped to succeed in a very tough and competitive environment (which is not inconsistent with the real world construction industry).
The divisive argument that the City of Portland is doing a disservice to women or minority owned construction firms, is not rooted in reality. So how can the City improve its construction contracts incentive programs for minorities and women? I point to the basis of contract award - low bid success. By no means, does low bid always translate into project success. In today's complex construction industry, it is better to be second low bidder or worse, than to be low bidder and inaccurate. Knowing how to be a "successful" low bidder requires extensive technical knowledge and a little luck. Before the City considers spending more resources on data collection, reports and program adjustments, they may want to consult the OSU Construction Management Engineering department and explore ways to offer free valuable technical training for motivated SMP contractors desiring a competitive advantage.
Stephen Keller,
Property Services Manager
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Stephen,
I completely agree with your statements. I have worked with the City of Portland and they of all agencies do a great job of reaching out to small business's. The fact is the "low bid" process especially in the current economy is failure waiting to happen. The federal government often uses the "Best Value" factor. I know that the City of Portland uses this but only on much larger projects like the "Balch Conduit" project. Why cant this be done for the small business's as well in this program? The fact is that no matter what any person with a little luck and a little knowledge can get their contractors license in Or. I think that there is a tremendous push to use minority or women owned business's. In saying that just because of your gender or color of you skin doesn't make you qualified to be a contractor. Proper training and education and life experience give you those things. But like with anything else in life, it takes hard work and lots of effort with a good team to pull of a successful project. Had there been more room in my post I would have loved to talk more about this subject. I truly believe that many business's have succeeded through this program but just like in life there will always be those who fall short. To those I say, learn from your mistakes and get back up and keep on trying. There is always hope for those who don't give up.
Mikecatworks
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As a the owner of a sole practioner design firm that is certified as a WBE and ESB with the state of Oregon, I have found that the certification has provided no advantages in winning public project work. I have the experience to do the projects being advertised, after working for large firms for over 15 years. It is very difficult to compete against larger older firms with 30 years of project experience. These firms have established relationships with jurisdictions such as the City of Portland.
Another issue is that selection committees are not trained on how to score on the diversity sections of proposals that I have submitted in response to RFPs. I have reviewed the score sheets from selection processes and have been bemused to learn that my team (that also included other WBE/ESB certified firms) scored lower on diversity than large firms owned by white men.
What qualified MWESB firms need is not more training - they need to be awarded projects.
At this point, I rarely go after public work as the prime consultant - it is not worth the time and effort that goes into preparing RFP responses.
MZScott
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What is the point of the program? I actually don't believe the program is doing anything operationally wrong, the problem lies in the conception of the program in the first place. The whole architecture of the program doesn't have focus; so, the audit saying that there is a "need for clearer focus and stronger management," is pointless and beside the point. It is like saying your MP3 player on random should have more focus. At its core, it is a half-baked idea to encourage or promote minority business. The lines are at least clear when you are employing an individual person, in areas such as equal opportunity. But what a minority owned business is exactly, is not clear.
Who knows why minorities and women are underrepresented, from the articles and information I can't even figure out how underrepresented they are, based on the diversity of the population, and how it compares to other locations and nationally. Exactly what is a business owned by a woman? Can you be a husband and wife, and have the wife own the business and the husband work there? We live in a society that doesn't allow gays to marry and we wonder why there might be a disparity in who owns the majority of the businesses? The concern over this program is an arbitrarily odd joke, we can't possibly have enough information to understand what is going on and why, and whether there is any sort of discrimination occurring or if it isn't simply representative of our society and how our culture functions.
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First, the 1996 study was deeply flawed. If found "disparity" but failed to account for the fact that minority, women, and emerging small businesses are concentrated certain in trades that don't require large amounts of capital: landscapers, painters, reinforcing bar installers, and so on. The question is not whether MWESB's are getting a proper amount of the overall construction dollars but rather whether MWESB's are getting the proper amount of construction dollars within the trades that they are concentrated in.
I actually worked as a consultant in the sheltered market program teaching contractors how to bid and run work. What I found was that most of the firms were not competent. Few if any were run by people that had any formal education or training in construction or business.
Most public construction projects, at the subcontract or trade level, are awarded on the basis of the lowest responsive responsible bid. Discrimination between bidders is based solely on price. The original 1996 study did not and the pending study will not find discrimination on the basis of race or gender. The upcoming study will find a disparity between MWESB's and white male businesses. To find the roots of that problem, turn to Oregon's university engineering and construction programs. You will find those programs dominated by white men, few women and fewer still minorities.
Education, training and access to capital are the main stumbling blocks to MWESB companies succeeding in Oregon, not racial or gender discrimination.
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The woman who is speaking right now is being SOOO racist! Anyone can be late. I've had plenty of white male owned businesses be late or not perform well!
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Do these contractors have to be local? Seems like that would be a good idea to get jobs to people in Portland.
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The city should look to the Federal Programs for more guidance. The SBA does a great job of working with Small Business's.
Mikecatworks
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I want there to be a level playing field for all companies and workers.
But I seriously doubt women will ever have an "equal" share of my market either as workers or owners.
Giving special treatment is just wrong. I don't treat people in my employ differently based on race, religion, or gender. Without special treatment most women just don't measure up when it comes to hard exterior work any more than they measure up in professional football.
In the Portland painting market, women seem to dominate the faux finishing sector but just don't want to do the more production oriented work. I'm sure there are very good female production painters but it's easier to find men that are willing to work in this difficult, dirty, sometimes dangerous industry. Trying to make it equal is just unfair to those of us that just want to be judged by our quality of work, professionalism and price.
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Comments are now closed.
We are Asian American company and 8 year in business, 4th year hold MBE & WBE certificate, member of OAME, regularly bid private and public project and regularly in OAME meetings. We have been subcontractor with Skanska and Seabold construciton. We invested a lot to become what we are today.
But no matter how experience we became and high professional level we hold up, we still can't get 99% of job these 2 years due to the changes: the most GCs transfered the management for the line of our work, slab stone interior surface to 2nd tier which is casework or millwork company, and these 2nd tier companies have no interest to work with us as GCs do, that's we felt, this change already put us out off business almost.
Not just economy down, but the industry managerment changes that out of our reached killed us almost.