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What if there was a way to smoothly connect local prime contractors with qualified minority subcontractors?

In the Portland metro area, where both the public and private sectors are often involved in projects that mandate the hiring of companies owned by minorities and women, this is no small issue. Building a smooth-functioning team organized under a prime contractor is critical. That’s where Penny Perez 聽is focusing as the new director of technical assistance with the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership.

Perez took over that role earlier this spring, and she already is full of ideas for furthering the group’s mission.

鈥淎t this point there’s no system in place to track minority contractor participation,鈥� Perez said. 鈥淲e’ve talked about some different ideas for doing that, maybe doing an MCIP certification where we verify the ethnicity of the owner of a small contracting company that is pursuing projects and performing on projects other than public works.鈥�

Originally hailing from Las Vegas, where she worked in commercial contracting for 25 years, Perez taps her own experience running a certified disadvantaged business enterprise when helping those in a similar position.

鈥淚 have a thorough understanding of the business and workforce equity policies and the expectations from the agencies,鈥� she said.

In Oregon, the state’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity, or COBID, runs a certification system that allows minority- and women-owned firms to compete for public-sector contracts. The system also gives prime contractors a ready-made source for complying with public work requirements mandating the hiring of certain percentages of minority- and women-owned business enterprises. But Perez says the COBID process still has shortcomings that allow skilled minority- and women-owned businesses to fall through the cracks.

鈥淭here’s quite a bit of underwriting with the certification process you go through with COBID and that portion is great,鈥� she said. 鈥淗owever, some of the work is being performed by minority contractors who aren’t certified for one reason or another, mainly because they’re not pursuing public work, but they are participating in these projects. So it would be really cool to be able to monitor and gauge the non-public worksconstruction that is occurring and being performed by minority contractors.鈥�

Some prime contractors try to track this type of information themselves, but that’s no substitute for an industry-wide database.

鈥淭here’s no system in place to track minority contractor participation,鈥� she said, 鈥渞egardless of whether or not that contractor is certified; so that’s kind of the big picture of the problem.鈥�

To help start improving the situation, MCIP recently introduced a new contractor assessment program that takes stock of each company’s capabilities, experience, personnel, accounting systems and more. Perez likened it to a sort of pre-qualification application.

鈥淩eally, the analogy is like going to the doctor,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he doctor is going to assess, diagnose and treat. And so with a CAP, we assess. We have a 50-question assessment 鈥� and we take that information and we diagnose. We look at it and say this particular company is in an excellent position to pursue this type of work at this level of contract valuation in this market, so we could talk small commercial, we could talk large commercial, we could talk multi-family residential, several different areas.鈥�

A company’s assessment also looks at potential deficiencies and training needs. In all, the CAP is intended to ensure that prime contractors looking for qualified subs will be able to find exactly what they’re seeking.

鈥淪o, we are here to support them to ensure they are set up for success,鈥� Perez said. 鈥淎nd part of that is having frank conversations with them about what they are truly ready to pursue in the contracting world. So once we have that information around our contractors, when we are contacted by a prime contractor, we can make the connections.鈥�