Project name: Multnomah County Holgate LibraryLocation: Portland

Completion: April 2025

Size: 21,000 square feet

Cost: $17,590,743

Owner: Multnomah County

Architect: Bora Architecture & Interiors

Interior Designer: Bora Architecture & Interiors

Engineers: Equilibrium Engineers, Arris Consulting, Samata Consulting Engineers, Vega Civil Engineering

General Contractor: Swinerton

Submitting Company: Swinerton

Other Associates/Consultants: Colloqate Design, Elevate Building Commissioning, O-LLC Lighting Design, PLACE (landscape architecture), Timberlab

Subcontractors: A&R Solar, Andres Landscape, Apollo Mechanical Contractors, Berrien Concrete, Building Material Specialties, Castle Masonry & Restoration, Code Unlimited, Cosco Fire Protection, Custom Designed Skylights, Dennis’ Seven Dees Landscaping, Don Frank Flooring, Figure Plant, General Sheet metal Works, Hyphn, Interior Technology, Interlaken, J.S. Perrott & Co., Kodiak Pacific Construction, KONE, Lensa Consulting, Madlyn Metal Fab, Mill Plain Electric, Norse Ironworks, NW Umpqua Roofing & Waterproofing, Oregon Door Consultants, PBS Engineering & Environmental, Pioneer Waterproofing, Portland Coatings dba Williamsen & Bleid, Prestige Tile & Stone, Qualified Enclosure Consultants, Shiels Obletz Johnsen, Sign Wizards, Skyline sheet Metal, South Town Glass, T. Gerding Construction, Techsource Enterprises, The Grenebusch Group, Ultra Quiet Floors, Valley Shades, Vanco Contracting, Vega Civil Engineering, Vertex Technology Design & Consulting, Washington Commercial Painters, Western Partitions, Whitaker/Ellis Builders

The newly opened Holgate Library in Southeast Portland has transformed from a modest 6,400-square-foot facility built in 1971 into a 21,000-square-foot community hub designed to serve one of Portland’s most diverse populations.

The library, part of Multnomah County’s bond measure to revitalize Portland’s library infrastructure, stands prominently along Southeast Holgate Boulevard with features aimed at serving all age groups.

The project is a strong example of how community engagement, design innovation and sustainability building practices create a built environment that will serve the entire surrounding community for years to come. The building’s design resulted from extensive community input through focus groups, public meetings and surveys. Teens participated in a four-week virtual program called “Your Library, Your Voice” to help design the library’s first enclosed teen space in the system. The room was envisioned as a “home away from home.”

Sustainability was central to the construction approach. The library utilizes a hybrid mass timber structure that reduced the building’s carbon footprint by 61 percent compared to conventional steel and concrete construction. The ground floor features a denser column layout to support heavy book loads, while the second floor has fewer columns for a more open design.

The mass timber frame utilizes Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) for floor and roof decking, Glue-Laminated Timber (glulam) for primary structural support, and Buckling-Restrained Braces (diagonal steel elements) for lateral stability.

Designed to receive LEED Gold certification, the building incorporates radiant flooring for thermal comfort and a rooftop photovoltaic system to offset energy usage.

The library features advanced amenities including a large play and learning space for children, a dedicated teen room, flexible programming rooms, and the latest technology with high-speed internet. An outdoor plaza provides space for reading and socializing.

Construction company Swinerton served as the CM/GC, bringing in its subsidiary, Timberlab, for the mass timber components. The project maintained zero recordable injuries throughout construction.

The project also emphasized economic inclusion, with Swinerton implementing a Project-Specific Workforce Diversity Program. Swinerton’s project team also assumed the role of mentors, guiding businesses through the intricacies of preconstruction and construction phases. In addition to fostering strong relationships and supporting their sustainable growth, Swinerton provided comprehensive training that included technical skills, project controls, budget management, and project execution. The project and these efforts helped three companies acquire COBID certification. The Holgate Library project had a 25 percent diverse business goal (COBID) and hit 34 percent.

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The Portland Water Bureau has completed upgrades to its Lusted Hill treatment facility intended to reduce lead exposure in home drinking water.

With the improvements, the system now uses sodium carbonate and carbon dioxide to increase the pH and alkalinity of Bull Run water, making it less corrosive to lead and other metals found in some home and building plumbing.

MWH Constructors served as general contractor for the project. The upgraded treatment system came online last week.

The project team exceeded equity contracting goals, according to the Water Bureau. More than $4 million, or approximately 55 percent of the project’s hard construction costs, was subcontracted to firms certified by Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID); the city’s goal was 22 percent.

More than 11,000 work hours were performed by minority or women apprentices and journey-level tradespeople; that participation percentage exceeded the city’s goal of 31 percent, the Water Bureau stated.

One percent of the contract dollars will be invested in the city’s Community Opportunities and Enhancement Program that provides grants to increase diversity of construction industry business owners and tradespeople in Portland.

“T��� Improved Corrosion Control Treatment Facility is our strongest tool yet to make drinking water safer for everyone, regardless of the plumbing inside their home, school and building,” Water Bureau Director Gabriel Solmer stated in a news release. “I am proud of our dedicated water quality and operations teams who have honored our commitment to the community.”

The project was financed in part by a Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That money helped maintain affordable water rates, the bureau stated.

The Water Bureau is planning to build a new plant to filter cryptosporidium, a harmful microorganism. Construction is expected to begin next year. The plant must be online by Sept. 30, 2027, to comply with state and federal rules.

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A pair of companion bills that would change how prevailing wage is calculated for public construction projects are under consideration during the 2021 Oregon legislative session.

Senate Bill 493 and House Bill 2419 would largely do away with regional surveys that currently are used to set prevailing wage and would instead mandate that collective bargaining agreements for each of the craft trades involved be used to determine prevailing wage across the state. Where more than one collective bargaining agreement exists in the state, an average of the wages set by those agreements would then determine the prevailing wage. The current wage surveys would be used only where no collective bargaining agreement exists for a given trade or occupation.

Public hearings have been held by both the House and Senate committees on business and labor, with the Senate committee voting 3-1 on March 9 to pass SB 493 to the Senate floor for consideration. HB 2419, meanwhile, was debated by the House committee on Feb. 10, but no further action has been taken.

Supporters of the bills include organized labor and trade associations. Officials are optimistic that SB 493, in particular, may have a fighting chance at passage.

“It is a positive sign,” Professional Business Development Group (PBDG) Executive Director Kenechi Onyeagusi said following the Senate committee’s vote. “I can tell you that I have conversations like this all the time where people will not bid on work if it’s not prevailing wage. It’s very important to us that prevailing wage is the standard, because what it does is allow smaller firms that might otherwise not be competitive to attract workforce.”

The PBDG is a trade association that represents minority-owned, woman-owned and COBID (Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity) certified contractors. These are precisely the types of firms that would benefit most from the proposed bill, Onyeagusi said. Such firms would then be able to recruit and retain skilled and experienced craftspeople, who in turn would help make those firms more competitive in the marketplace.

“When you’re starting off a one-man firm, or with a couple of employees and you’re needing to attract workforce, having a job that pays prevailing wage, it’s a cost that the owner is ultimately agreeing to pay,” she said. “That small firm is able to attract the same caliber of workers as a much larger firm. It levels the playing field in a way that not a lot of things do.”

Matt Swanson, political director for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, agreed. The legislation would aid contractors in rural communities across the state, he said.

“We feel really good about the prospects,” he said. “We’ve had a number of good conversations about making the rates less cumbersome and setting the prevailing wage rate in a way that’s more predictable.”

A similar policy is already law in Washington, Swanson said, adding that fears of it significantly increasing public project costs appear to have been overblown.

“It’s been an ongoing issue in Oregon for some time,” he said. “We saw it pass in the state of Washington, and it really offers more stability in the wage rates. That’s good for public works and public employees.”

Opponents of the two bills include the Oregon School Boards Association, the League of Oregon Cities and other organizations that represent public agencies. They say the bills could significantly raise labor costs.

“We are highly concerned that relying upon one collective bargaining agreement, which could reflect specialized work or unique project-based needs, could result in significant wage spikes and contribute to a lack of certainty for cities when planning and budgeting for public infrastructure investments, school capital construction projects and some affordable housing projects,” Tracy Rutten Rainey, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, testified during the House committee hearing.

Washington’s policy has increased costs of public projects such as affordable housing, and generated litigation, Rainey and others say.

“If this bill passes and becomes effective, we expect wages to increase,” Lori Sattenspiel, director of legislative services for the Oregon School Boards Association, said during the House committee hearing. “T���se eight districts going out for a bond now may find themselves short of funds to complete projects.”

Robert Camarillo, executive secretary of the Oregon State Building and Construction Trades Council, said this stance could be the result of a lack of understanding of how prevailing wage works.

“I think a lot of them, from what I hear, they don’t understand the concept of prevailing wage,” Camarillo said. “T��� goal is never to increase the cost of projects. We’re all taxpayers, and we want to see our tax dollars spent responsibly.”

Instead, Camarillo said, it is more likely that a higher prevailing wage will allow contractors to attract workers with a higher skill level, leading to a need for a smaller labor pool.

The current annual wage surveys fail to accurately measure wages across all trades, he added, because they do not capture the entirety of the projects being queried.

“Our concern is when the survey is done, we don’t know what phase of the project that survey will capture,” he said. “If we had all the crafts on the job all the time it might be a better snapshot. But to come in only those four weeks, we can’t get an accurate snapshot of the work being done that week.”

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Upcoming bidding opportunities were announced at the NAMC-Oregon general meeting on Wednesday night. Project managers for Andersen Construction, Hoffman Construction, Mortenson Construction, Skanska and the Oregon Department of Transportation presented project overviews with anticipated bid dates.

Erin Storlie, an Andersen Construction project manager, announced that Benson High School‘s trade package five will be issued around mid-February. The package includes interiors, miscellaneous metals and railings.

The school modernization project is 230,000 square feet of renovation and 135,000 square feet of new construction. The renovations include the main classroom building built in 1916, the old gymnasium, the auditorium building, the foundry building, the radio building, and the library and health services building.

Andersen is seeking trade partners with COBID (Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity) certification for the Benson High School project to either bid or develop partnerships with noncertified partners in order to achieve a minimum 18 percent MWESB participation goal.

Andersen Construction will release another bid package on Jan. 19 for Portland Community College‘s Metropolitan Workforce Training Center. Bids for package three, which includes steel supply, installation and excavation, are due Feb. 5.

Business equity goals for the project are: 20 percent COBID participation, 20 percent minority workforce, 20 percent apprenticeship workforce and 15 percent women workforce.

Stephanie Coyle, a Hoffman Construction project manager, announced that bid package six for work at Lincoln High School would be issued early next month. Phase two of the project includes flatwork, landscaping, and demolition of the old building to allow track and field construction.

Bids will be due in early March and awarded in the spring. The project’s equity plan calls for 18 percent or more of the contract to go to a COBID-certified business and 20 percent minimum to apprentices for minorities, women and disadvantaged individuals.

Jacob Erven, a Mortenson Construction project manager, announced that the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Resource Center project has a green light after a pandemic-related delay. The project includes a 4.5-story seismic upgrade and complete interior renovation. Bidding is open; construction is anticipated to start in April.

The project’s equity plan calls for 25 percent COBID participation, 20 percent apprentice participation, 25 percent minority apprentice participation and 14 percent female apprentice participation.

Daphne Patrick, small business outreach coordinator for the Hoffman-Skanska joint venture, discussed the 175,000-square-foot main terminal project at Portland International Airport. The main terminal will have a nine-acre roof prefabricated on site and then erected in 120-foot-by-220-foot sections weighing nearly one million pounds.

The project has a 20 percent MWESB participation goal and an 8.5 percent MBE goal for certified firms. Both Oregon COBID and Washington state-certified firms can bid because of the project’s location near the Columbia River.

Andrew Warren, small business programs manager at ODOT, discussed project work on Interstate 205. Improvements are being made to address congestion and traveler safety on a seven-mile stretch between Stafford Road and Oregon Route 213. The project will add a third lane in each direction as well as seismically upgrade the Abernethy Bridge and eight other bridges over I-205.

A northbound auxiliary lane is being built between the Oregon Route 224 Sunrise Expressway on-ramp and the Sunnyside Road/Sunnybrook Boulevard interchange exit ramp.

Also, design is under way to bring intersection and ramp safety improvements to the I-205 and Division Street interchange in Portland.

NAMC-Oregon is looking to host more meetings with trade partners soon.

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In anticipation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s long-term impact, leaders of two Portland-based minority contracting organizations are pressing state and local officials to update rules for public projects in order to help keep their members in business through a looming economic downturn.

In to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and other elected officials and public agency stakeholders, representatives of the National Association of Minority Contractors‘ Oregon chapter and the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership (MCIP) warned that minority contractors are the worst hurt in economic downturns. The 2008 recession, the letter states, put a large number of minority contractors out of business because they lacked access to working capital, and prime contractors reduced the amount of work they subcontracted out.

“We don’t want the recovery this time around to be as slow for our industry, so we’re trying to make sure we amplify our very targeted, intentional concerns that our businesses were left behind 12 years ago, and we don’t want to see that happen again,” said Nate McCoy, executive director of NAMC-Oregon.

Maintaining cash flow and payroll are crucial in the short term, as is the ability to apply for Small Business Administration loans and grants, so among the requests are that the state provide immediate technical assistance funding to help minority contractors apply for aid related to COVID-19.

“That only straps you down for the next 30, maybe 60 days, though,” McCoy said. “So the big question is how we stabilize long term.”

The answer, he said, is lifting some of the regulatory requirements and easing the financial burdens of work on public projects, as well as steering procurement toward minority firms.

The groups propose raising the state limits for direct award of contracts to certified businesses from $10,000 to $250,000, increasing the state limit to competition for a contract from $50,000 to $300,000 for certified businesses, lowering or providing financial backing for bonding requirements, and requiring payment of invoices within 30 days.

Because bigger general contractors during lean times self-perform more work and compete for smaller contracts, the groups are asking for a requirement that general contractors on all public projects bid out all scopes of work and limit self-performed work to 10 percent.

The goal, according to McCoy, is not to create a sheltered market, but one of support to keep opportunities within reach of small businesses that can compete among themselves for contracts.

Another request being made is for an immediate moratorium on state-regulated apprentice ratios. While stressing the importance of apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training on-site, McCoy said members are questioning the practicality of on-site training during a health crisis.

“Right now, is that ultimately a safe thing to have people learning on the job during a crisis?” he said. “Some of our members don’t think that’s a fair proposition when key employees are leaving. So who’s going to be working with these apprenticeship program participants?”

Also, failure to adhere to apprenticeship requirements can result in liquidated damages, creating another barrier for small contractors that need barriers lowered, McCoy said.

In addition to easing regulations, the letter’s signers – McCoy, NAMC-Oregon board chairman Andrew Colas, MCIP board chairman Erik Esparza and MCIP interim executive director John Jackley – are pushing for a change to a common parlance for minority contractors.

Firms certified as minority-owned, women-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, and emerging small businesses are registered through the state’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity – COBID for short. The similarity in name to the respiratory illness could be harmful to smaller businesses, McCoy said, so the group is suggesting that such businesses be referred to as “certified firms” rather than “COBID firms.”

“We don’t want there to be any moving stigma that continues to make these firms feel marginalized,” McCoy said. “T���y’re already small businesses trying to survive, and people can joke about how closely related they are, but at the end of the day the firms are telling me that they don’t see it as a laughing matter. That’s a very easy thing for us to start thinking about and considering.”

The requests aren’t being made with a concrete timeline in mind, McCoy said. Ultimately, the goal is for NAMC-Oregon and MCIP to have a seat at the table for decisions impacting their members and the minority contracting community as a whole. The organizations are not expecting change to occur overnight.

“It may not be impacting you today, but I guarantee our industry will be impacted a month from today,” McCoy said. “We don’t want to wait for that storm to come, so we’re trying to be proactive with things that people need to be considering.”

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For Colas Construction, landing the $32 million contract in 2017 to serve as construction manager-general contractor for interior renovations at the Oregon Convention Center was a landmark. At the time, it was the largest contract ever for Colas Construction, and the largest one ever to be awarded to a minority-owned firm in Oregon.

It didn’t take long for Colas Construction to top that. The Portland company has been selected as the construction manager-general contractor for an affordable housing project at 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. for Home Forward and the Portland Housing Bureau that will exceed the value of the Oregon Convention Center project.

Colas Construction has elbowed its way into several large projects, often on behalf of government clients. In some cases, the family-owned firm has won the jobs over larger firms.

The company has striven to make a diverse workforce its calling card.

“While providing a quality product at a good value, we also are contributing to our community in a way that’s different from any of our other competitors, and that’s by being extremely inclusive and intentional about that at all levels of our business,” Colas Construction President Andrew Colas said. “Every level of management, every level of the trades, we want to make sure that our industry is more so reflective of our community.”

The company has grown rapidly since it was founded in 1997 by Hermann Colas Jr., who had emigrated from Haiti in 1969. The next generation now owns and operates the firm, with Hermann’s children Andrew Colas serving as president, Aneshka Colas-Dickson as vice president and chief financial officer, and Alex Colas as project manager.

Colas Construction has come to occupy a unique position in the Portland area as perhaps the largest minority-owned contractor. That makes the firm a natural fit for public agencies looking to fulfill diversity and inclusion goals, and demonstrate they’re making progress on including minority-owned firms in large construction projects. Colas Construction’s status as a contractor certified by the state Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) often is an edge in competitive bidding.

“Colas Construction being a COBID, minority-owned firm was definitely a factor” in it being awarded the Oregon Convention Center contract, said Brent Shelby, senior construction project manager for Metro. “We’re awfully proud of the fact that it was at the time of bid the largest award for a minority contract.”

Half of the Oregon Convention Center project funding, or about $16 million, went to disadvantaged, minority-owned or woman-owned businesses, Shelby said. Colas Construction delivered the project on time and on budget, he said.

The firm’s success in procuring public projects has led to private grumbling from some competitors. Yet the contracting policies appear to be working as designed, providing a leg up for a Haitian-American family firm.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think my father would have been able to found a construction company in the ’60s in Portland, Oregon,” Andrew Colas said. “That’s a sad reality and truth to this state and city.”

Colas said his company now competes against seasoned contractors that can lean on many decades of accumulated capital and business relationships.

“If you look at the majority of the businesses of color that are in the construction industry you won’t find many, if any, that are over 30 years in business,” he said. “So there is no advantage there. Most businesses, they’ve had the ability to have retained earnings for 50 years, and build up huge capital, and that’s a real thing in a very capital-intensive industry.”

Other contractors, including Andersen Construction and R&H Construction, have worked with Colas Construction in joint-venture partnerships. Those collaborations allowed a growing firm to gain experience on large projects.

“Our team enjoyed the opportunity to partner with Andrew Colas and the rest of the Colas family during the early years of their company’s growth as a commercial general contractor,” Norm Dowty, vice president of business development and marketing at R&H Construction, wrote in an email, in response to questions. “During that time, our teams collectively delivered several notable projects for nonprofit entities in the Portland metro area.”

Now, Colas Construction is increasingly getting sizable contracts on its own.

In September, Prosper Portland announced it had selected Colas Construction to build a five-to-seven-story building on a roughly quarter-block parcel at Northwest Fourth Avenue and Burnside Street. The two parties have entered into exclusive negotiations for the project, and Colas Construction is working with Resolve Architecture and SERA Architects on early designs. If the project moves forward, Colas plans to take a floor of the building for its own headquarters. The construction firm’s offices would move from the current location at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Couch Street.

Bow Leung Bing Kong Tong, a local Chinese cultural organization, is also involved in the project with an eye toward taking office space. The project would also include residential units and ground-floor retail space.

“If we were to move forward with this project … we’d want to make sure that it represented as best as possible some of the cultural heritage – Chinese culture, Japanese culture, even African-American culture – within this neighborhood,” Colas said.

Colas Development Group LLC, a new entity formed in June, would serve as the project’s developer.

“We’re not looking into development,” Andrew Colas said. “This is more of an opportunity to put our construction company’s headquarters in what I think is a very unique neighborhood, and we want to add to the fiber and fabric of this neighborhood.”

Another upcoming project would bring a sizable affordable housing development to 3000 S.E. Powell Blvd. The city purchased the former Safari Club parcel near Cleveland High School for $3.72 million in 2017. The Housing Bureau later announced it would use affordable housing bonds to develop the site.

Colas Construction has been tapped to build the project, which will have approximately 175 apartments on four stories over one story of retail space.

Colas Construction is also working with Beam Development to build the ODOT Blocks project in the Central Eastside Industrial District.

Colas Construction executives are well-connected with public agencies. Aneshka Colas-Dickson served a term on Prosper Portland’s board. Andrew Colas currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the University Oregon, his alma mater. Colas said the firm has avoided projects in Eugene during his time on the board to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. Colas Construction worked on projects in Eugene prior to Andrew Colas’ time on the board.

“We’re a business that stands out and is looked at, so I would never want to do anything that would create that perception,” Colas said. “Long-term-wise, we’ll look to move into other markets. But for now we’re just focused on being really, really good at what we do on our home turf.”

Civil court records show no major cases involving Colas Construction, but only a lien with a developer that was moved to arbitration and a pair of personal injury matters related to vehicle collisions – not uncommon for a construction company. The developer did not respond to a request for comment.

Hermann Colas Jr. came from a family that owned the second-largest rum distillery in Haiti. He started Colas Construction after becoming frustrated with an incompetent contractor who was building his house.

Hermann still comes into the office regularly, even though he sold the business to the second generation years ago. He said he was not surprised Colas Construction has grown large enough to tackle major projects on its own.

“T���re was never a thought to do something small,” he said.

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Portland architecture, engineering, design and planning firm Mackenzie is partnering with Multnomah County to offer a minority business owner the chance to attend a business workshop.

Mackenzie and the county are helping fund a scholarship for an owner of a business certified by Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) to attend the Minority Business Executive Program at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Program participants will spend a week on campus in Seattle. The scholarship will offset the cost of the course, which otherwise is $4,380 per person.

Participants will learn about financial principles, practices and tools such as use of data for planning and decision-making. Leadership and decision-making principles will be taught throughout. Instructors also will discuss strategic thinking and planning, new and disruptive business technologies, scaling operations, branding and marketing, accessing global markets and more.

This year, the program will run Sept. 15-20.

Prospective applicants can learn more by contacting Multnomah County Supplier Diversity Officer Lee Fleming at lee.fleming@multco.us. Applications are due by April 15.

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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  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.

“At this point there’s no system in place to track minority contractor participation,” Perez said. “We’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.”

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.

“I have a thorough understanding of the business and workforce equity policies and the expectations from the agencies,” 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.

“T���re’s quite a bit of underwriting with the certification process you go through with COBID and that portion is great,” she said. “However, 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.”

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

“T���re’s no system in place to track minority contractor participation,” she said, “regardless of whether or not that contractor is certified; so that’s kind of the big picture of the problem.”

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.

“Really, the analogy is like going to the doctor,” she said. “T��� doctor is going to assess, diagnose and treat. And so with a CAP, we assess. We have a 50-question assessment … 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.”

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.

“So, we are here to support them to ensure they are set up for success,” Perez said. “And 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.”

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The Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs on Friday will host a networking event for qualified minority contractors at its headquarters, at 731 N. Hayden Meadows Drive, Portland.

The event, sponsored by Skanska USA Building, is called “Get Certified / Meet the Primes” and will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Attendees will learn how to maximize small business opportunities with large, prime contractors on the projects they work.

Event leaders will demonstrate the process by which Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) certifies businesses owned by minorities and women to work on public capital projects. Certified subcontractors often are sought by prime contractors or others looking to fulfill state or federal diversity mandates for public projects.

Participants in Friday’s event will become prepared for current and future projects, understand how to streamline the certification process, maximize those certifications and understand how the process allows business growth.

Representatives from state agencies will be on hand and offer unique opportunities for certified firms.

For more information or to register, visit .

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John Downing has started his own business, worked in the public sector and now has returned to the private sector with Skanska USA Building.

All of those roles have prepared him well for his new position as director of outreach and diversity for Skanska’s Portland office, which is responsible for some of the largest construction projects in the metro area.

Oh, and Downing finished earning an MBA from Corban University in September while also learning to ride a unicycle, publishing several children’s books and helping raise his three children. It’s a busy life, and all in all, he’s glad to be back to work in Portland, where he already has deep roots.

“I was in the Portland community with (the Oregon Department of Transportation) for quite a while,” he said. “T���re were a lot of partnerships and collaboration efforts, and I’m getting plugged into those once again and really re-establishing myself in those communities.”

While Downing once ran Atlas Professional Services, a short-lived firm that worked with underground construction, public infrastructure and utility acceptance testing, he also made his mark in the ODOT civil rights division as its business programs manager. There, he worked to provide equitable contractor engagement throughout the state as he developed programs to connect small businesses with governmental agencies and their capital projects.

Now he’s back working in a familiar role, albeit in the private sector. In short, Downing is looking to find minority-owned businesses interested in partnering on projects with Skanska, much like he did for the state up until three years ago. This primarily has to do with Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity, or COBID. This program certifies qualified businesses or contractors owned by minorities or women. Using those certifications, prime contractors or others can fulfill state or federal diversity mandates required of public projects. These standards are also widely used in the private sector, which is where Downing comes in with Skanska, one of the largest prime contractors on the West Coast.

“It’s a lot of public-facing interaction,” he said. “I work with a lot with advocate groups for small businesses owned by minorities and women, and we talk about anything and everybody.”

Community building is a big part of this process, he said, noting he works with groups such as the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Program, the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs and the National Association of Minority Contractors‘ Oregon chapter.

“I interact with those groups that are trying to build their communities in different ways through construction, specifically,” he said. “And then I collaborate with a lot of public agencies, prime contractors and growing contractors to help those same communities.”

In the Northwest, Downing has found it difficult to find enough certified contractors for Skanska to partner with. The same was true when he worked for ODOT.

“We do these big projects with a lot of requirements, a lot safety involved,” he said. “So how does someone like Skanska work with an owner to help remove the barriers to make it more appealing for small companies? That’s a challenge … the reality is there are not enough out there, there’s too much work and not enough contractors to fill these goals.”

Trust issues also come into play.

“You have companies out there, and I was one of them, not really trusting the government,” Downing said. “T���re are some businesses out there that just won’t go down that road.”

Part of the issue could be the amount of financial and other confidential information required of applicants. But Downing doesn’t think that’s the entire story.

“It’s really not that invasive, but some people are overly cautious,” he said. “T���re are a fair amount of people who wouldn’t necessarily get certified, yet public agencies want us to use certified firms. So there’s this gap; how do you bridge that? It usually takes seeing other small businesses getting certified to break down those barriers.”

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