Andersen Construction and Hermanson Company are inviting small and disadvantaged contractors to a virtual meet and greet at 1:30 p.m. on March 18.

The two large companies have noticed that more private projects have DMWESB (disadvantaged, minority-owned, woman-owned and emerging small business) requirements, said Melissa Tatro, relationship and business equity manager for Hermanson Company. As such, they’re eager to expand their lists of firms they can call upon for future projects.

Andersen Construction and Hermanson Company have worked together for 15 years. Most recently, they completed the $10 million Research Way laboratory building renovation for Oregon State University.

The event will open with a panel discussion about upcoming projects. Featured speakers will include Andersen Construction Executive Vice President Joel Rohrs and Business Relationship Manager Canaan Chatman as well as Hermanson Company Business Development Manager Dan Guglielmo and Tatro.

Trade partner CADD Connection LLC, an Albany-based company, will discuss its working relationship with Hermanson Company involving projects at Portland International Airport and Astoria schools.

MBE-certified firm PSA LLC of Kent, Washington, will discuss its six-year working relationship with Andersen Construction, including multiple large multifamily projects for the Seattle Housing Authority.

After the panel discussion, attendees will be able to ask each company about the scope of work and bidding opportunities for upcoming projects. To learn more, send an email to events@andersen-const.com.

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The Professional Business Development Group has a new executive director. Kenechi Onyeagusi took over on Feb. 17.

PBDG focuses on supporting minority-owned and disadvantaged construction contractors and professional services firms to become more competitive through training, mentorship and making connections.

Onyeagusi comes to PBDG from 12 years in commercial banking and portfolio management. A first-generation immigrant from Nigeria, Onyeagusi came to Portland from Cleveland, Tennessee. She has worked for several banks, most recently Heritage Bank, and served on the boards of groups such as Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

91��Ƶ: Do you have any near-term goals for the PBDG?

Kenechi Onyeagusi: PBDG’s been around for six years. I feel like it’s one of the better kept – it’s not a secret, because I feel like people in the industry know about PBDG. But folks outside the industry do not know about PDGB. And so bringing awareness to the work that we do and then really highlighting the folks that are members and the people who supported the organization in the past.

91��Ƶ: You mentioned bringing more awareness to PBDG’s work and highlighting what it’s doing. How can you raise its profile so it becomes better known in Portland and throughout the industry?

Onyeagusi: Well I think to do that, you have to highlight the whole industry. When I started doing my research on the subcontractor community, I was like, it’s not a community; it’s an industry.

There’s a whole movement around making sure that there’s equitable distribution of wealth and wealth creation in the community. I think organizations like ours are really one of the vehicles that this is being done.

91��Ƶ: We’ve seen some successful and growing DMWESB firms in Portland and Oregon. Colas Construction getting the Oregon Convention Center contract was a high-water mark. How can the industry or policymakers support contractors in getting those large public contracts?

Onyeagusi: Access to capital is a huge one. Subcontractors should not have to do some of the things they do just to get capital. I don’t know that there’s a lot of attention given to the construction industry – certainly when you’re a certain size. But there’s a hole, right between where you start to where you’re doing $200 million in contracts, and so this whole industry is being built on the backs of HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) and car sales and credit cards, and I think that’s a shame.

We can’t build a subcontracting industry on the back of credit cards or HELOCs. I think that serves nobody well. For a lot of subcontractors, that’s kind of the path of least resistance. You go and get a HELOC. You know, $10,000, $20,000, and you start with a truck and $10,000. But there are ways as a community, and I think Prosper (Portland, the city’s economic development agency) is in position to do this well, where they have a lending program and they can certainly use the resources they have to support a growing community and a growing industry without being in competition with any of the other CDFIs (community development financial institutions).

91��Ƶ: Are they doing a good job of that, or is there more room to grow?

Onyeagusi: There’s room to grow. It’s just starting. So I know they just put it out on the market last year that they’re doing it, so they’re tweaking. I think this is the time. This is the opportunity to really leverage their wealth-creation mission, right? Let’s create wealth in a way that is sustainable for a new industry.

If you’re talking about disadvantaged, minority, small businesses, giving them access to capital, giving them access to predictable capital, to sustained capital – you know, you can give somebody all the contracts you want, but if you don’t give them the tools to do it, that’s just setting them up to fail.

91��Ƶ: The city has some funding coming from the Community Opportunities and Enhancements Program. Where could that funding best be used?

Onyeagusi: Right now, the funding is for the apprenticeship and then organizations like ours that do technical assistance and business support services work, and I think that’s right on the money because we do need to make sure that our apprentices and our workforce get funding.

For the work that we do at PBDG, we can’t do the work consistently and with the right tools if we’re not properly funded.

So it’s wonderful that there’s a sustained channel, but I think the key is to make sure it survives government changes, that it’s not the whim of which politician is in the seat, that it’s really embedded in the framework of doing business with public agencies. It would be a shame to start all this work and then have to stop because a different person is in power.

It’s displacement when you think about it. When businesses start to expect the support we’re giving them, and start to rely on that and you yank it, you’re displacing their resources, and that would be too close to history.

91��Ƶ: It seems in the world of COBID contracts, there are a few fairly large firms that are getting these contracts. Is there too much concentration in the industry? Would it be good to broaden the number of firms who can compete for these contracts?

Onyeagusi: Yeah. That’s one of the things that I think we get through data. There has to be a granularity of data. If you’re trying to make impact, you have to be able to measure the impact of your dollars. How much of that went to job creation, and how many firms benefited from it? It’s time for us to start disaggregating data to really see who is really getting chunks of the money. It’s the only way to grow a fresh crop.

When you look at it from the perspective of money, people don’t want to talk about it because it sounds icky and they’re not doing anything wrong. But it’s not about the money, and it’s not wrong to make money. But what are we trying to do with this work? We’re trying to build businesses, and you don’t do that by doing the same old thing that’s always worked. That’s disingenuous.

91��Ƶ: What are the obstacles you’re seeing for COBID contractors and subcontractors?

Onyeagusi: Other than the lack of money thing? (Laughs) They need technical assistance, they need classes, they need education, being in the right rooms, being a voice.

I see the city and county and Metro really trying to figure out how to do this. And the policies they’ve put in place, they’re really putting the money where their mouths are. It would be great to have 10 companies the size of Colas and Raimore and O’Neill in five years. That’s when you build wealth.

91��Ƶ: If I could ask a more personal question, I’m sure it’s difficult to be an African-American woman in Portland. Portland and Oregon more broadly have a history of exclusion. How has that journey been for you and how could the rest of us do better?

Onyeagusi: It’s been interesting. I’ve always just looked for allies. Banking is one where it’s one of the whiter industries, but I’ve been very fortunate to find allies. And not just people-of-color allies, but white women allies, white men allies, allies that have mentored me and pointed me in the right direction.

I feel a personal … everything I do is in this goldfish bowl, and everybody’s watching, and I’m representing all the black women, and that has pressure.

But I’ve found just owning my voice and being confident in who I am to be helpful. Every room I walk in, probably 95 percent of the time in my career, I’ve been the only person of color. And so I’ve just had to be comfortable in those settings by knowing exactly what I bring to the table and knowing my craft.

It’s felt like a journey of just proving myself over and over and over again. Every room and every meeting, proving myself. I don’t know that that’s particular to me. I think as a woman, as a minority person, you go through that and there’s the pressure of needing to do that even faster than everybody else. But I’ve been fortunate. I’ve had some really good mentors and family support.

The post On a charge toward greater equity in contracting appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The city of Portland is moving forward on a two-year-old plan to increase diversity and equity in contracting by using money collected from major construction projects to advance opportunities for minority contractors and workers.

Portland City Council is set to authorize $2,234,786 set aside from three major city projects to administer phase one of the Community Opportunities and Enhancements Program (COEP). It has two main areas of focus – providing a path toward stable, high-paying construction jobs for women and people of color in the trades, and providing technical assistance to support disadvantaged, minority-owned, women-owned and emerging small business (DMWESB) and service-disabled veteran business enterprise (SDVBE) firms.

Following the City Council’s approval of the COEP in November 2017, the Office of Management & Finance (OMF) and the Office of Equity and Human Rights (OEHR) in 2018 began developing the program and initiated a request for grant applications for money from the pilot projects. Mayor Ted Wheeler subsequently halted the process and ordered OMF and OEHR to partner with Prosper Portland in developing the program as a means to reduce administrative costs by leveraging the collective experience of multiple bureaus and thereby maximizing available dollars.

The three city bureaus have reached agreement on a memorandum of understanding that clarifies each of their roles in the program. They now will work together to administer the first phase of the plan with funds using 1 percent of total eligible costs from three pilot projects: the Portland Building reconstruction, Washington Park reservoir improvements, and the 10th & Yamhill parking garage renovation.

A Community Equity and Inclusion Committee will be established to provide oversight and advice on how to allocate COEP dollars. After administrative costs, the money will be allocated with 25 percent going toward grants to assist DMWESB/SDVBE firms and 75 percent to workforce assistance for minority workers; those funds will be issued by Prosper Portland, which may subcontract some or all of the workforce assistance efforts to Worksystems Inc.

City Council is expected to soon authorize an intergovernmental agreement between OMF, OEHR and Prosper Portland for administration of the COEP, as well as authorize OMF to utilize money set aside from a Community Benefits Plan from the Washington Park reservoir improvements that predates the COEP. Prosper Portland anticipates issuing requests for proposals in early March and completing the RFP process in April or May.

The post Portland plan to boost contracting equity progressing appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Minority-owned businesses don’t get a fair shot when it comes to construction work in Oregon, according to an April report by the Minority Contractor Participation Equity Committee – a group of industry professionals and experts of various backgrounds. By sharing personal experiences, performing research and reading past news stories, the group found that despite state agency goals to increase workplace diversity, the status quo remains unchanged for many projects.

The committee was formed, co-Chairwoman Faye Burch said, after several stakeholders recognized that multiple segments of the construction industry were experiencing the same lack of diversity. This led her to ask for volunteers, who then formed the committee.

The group found that even with participation requirements that encourage industry groups to do business with minority-owned business enterprises (MBE), Oregon’s long history of resistance to inclusion is still present in several forms.

“I think it’s clear to see that disparities continue,” said committee member Ranfis Villatoro, state policy coordinator for the BlueGreen Alliance, an organization dedicated to creating a clean environment and fair economy. “It really does take a whole industry to stop and listen to tackle this problem.”

According to the report, some large, white-owned companies create smaller shell companies that either the owner or an owner’s wife run, potentially fulfilling certifications by counting as an emerging small business (ESB) or woman-owned business (WBE). For this reason, the report reads, ESB is an often known as the “everybody ‘sept the brothers” program.

“There’s not as strong a commitment to cultivate minority contractors and to seeing them as vital parts of the construction industry,” said committee member Roberta Hunte, an assistant professor at Portland State University specializing in gender and race studies. “Construction is a very competitive industry, and you don’t change the status quo without a commitment to cultivating what you want to see.”

Also according to the report, discrimination exists in unions and nonunion trade associations, which in the past have discouraged MBEs from joining. Usually there are costs associated with joining a union or association, which can keep newer firms from seeking membership, the report states.

Another problem, the group found, is the significant barrier to entry established by the network of industry professionals who have dominated the scene for decades. Well-established connections already exist between large industry partners, so it can be hard for smaller firms to break in and gain a reputation, according to the report. Those that do were often started by people who were previously part of larger firms and are well known. In this way, even companies that don’t intend to perpetuate systemic racism benefit from it, according to the report.

The report asserts that progress could be made toward equity if more authentic relationships could be cultivated, and suggests that most of the participants – from unions to individual companies to state agencies – have a role to play.

One method discussed in the report of achieving that progress would be via an increase of programs and education opportunities via unions, associations and industry firms – i.e., major companies interacting with and learning about smaller, minority-owned businesses. Establishing these connections, the report says, will go a long way in making sure MBEs have the chance to grow.

And expanding opportunities for minority contractors is a positive outcome for all involved, Hunte said. Retention has long been a problem for industry firms, she said. As far as government is concerned, fewer people need services and assistance if they’re working, she added.

While the industry is far from perfect, Hunte said there has been a greater focus on the importance of women and minorities in the workplace, and she credited Hoffman Construction and Multnomah County for helping spur efforts to hire more MBEs.

“I think we have a long ways to go,” Hunte said. “But I think we are at a promising moment.”

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday authorized an exemption to the low-bid process and an alternate contracting method for the city’s $350 million to $500 million project to construct a water filtration plant at Bull Run.

City officials have been wrestling with options to build a massive water treatment plant to address the persistent presence of cryptosporidium in Bull Run’s raw water intake. The waterborne parasite has been found in five samples taken by the city this year, most recently in April. It also appeared in several tests during the 2017-18 winter.

The parasite’s presence forced the city into a compliance agreement with the Oregon Health Authority to build a filtration plant. Terms of the agreement call for the plant to be in operation by Sept. 30, 2027.

City officials have selected engineering firm Brown and Caldwell Inc. to serve as project management consultant. The first reading on the firm’s selection was Wednesday, and the contract is expected to be formally approved during a second reading next week. The contract is worth $67.89 million.

Brown and Caldwell is based in Walnut Park, California, but it has a Portland office on Southwest Macadam Avenue.

Brown and Caldwell’s Jon Holland is listed as program manager. The consultant is required to adhere to the city’s guidelines for disadvantaged, minority-owned, woman-owned and emerging small-business contractors. The contract proposes 22 percent DMWESB participation.

According to the Portland Water Bureau‘s timeline, a construction manager-general contractor will be selected for the project in the fourth quarter of 2019. Hiring a CM-GC is likely to lead to lower costs and a faster construction schedule, said David Peters, principal engineer for the Water Bureau. The CM-GC will be selected through a competitive request for proposals process.

“This is a fully competitive process,” Procurement Services Manager Larry Pelatt said. “There is no limitation on who can bid, but you do want to get some specialized kind of people.”

City officials are considering a plant with capacity to filter 160 million gallons per day, according to documents presented to the City Council. That will meet peak-day capacity until 2045. A facility smaller than 145 million gallons per day would require increased use of groundwater, while a larger facility is not supported by growth projections, according to the Water Bureau.

The plant’s capacity, location and method of filtration are still to be decided, Commissioner Amanda Fritz said. Further community consultation is expected in early 2019.

Last year, the council voted to move forward with planning for a filtration plant. An ultraviolet light treatment system was considered but ultimately rejected.

The Water Bureau has applied for an Environmental Protection Agency grant, Pelatt said.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Dee White, a local resident who actively follows water issues, criticized costs of previous city projects and questioned the city’s process in selecting contractors.

“This is not so transparent,” she said.

The post Project consultant selected for water treatment plant appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Many architecture, engineering and construction companies are disappointed to learn that receiving doesn’t automatically secure projects.

Some firms try again and again to win jobs set aside for minority contractors, with no luck, and, they say, little feedback on why they weren’t selected.

Inclusive contracting has been a hard slog in Oregon. It’s been complicated by other well-intended efforts, like laws requiring use of hard-bid procurement for public projects.

“We thought having the WBE and ESB (designations) was going to help us compete, but it didn’t,” Emerick Architects principal Brian Emerick said.

Required delivery

COBID, Oregon’s diverse business certification office, currently recognizes 3,555 firms in its directory of woman-owned, minority-owned and emerging small businesses, plus members of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which it operates on behalf of the federal government.

Emerick Architects is one of the 88 firms that have “graduated” from the state’s ESB category since 2013 – the year its online database system was implemented. Companies graduate when they exceed either a specified average annual revenue or total number of employees, or because the 12-year time limit has passed.

Emerick Architects will probably continue to re-enroll annually as a WBE, however, because its leadership is proud of the “woman-owned” tag, Brian Emerick said. (Emerick runs the company with his wife, Melody; he said the firm tries to ensure that at least half of its employees are women.)

“It was never much of an advantage for us, honestly,” he said. “Prime contractors, from what I could tell, never put much stock in it.”

A number of COBID firms interviewed by the 91��Ƶ feel that they’re included in bid solicitations only so that general contractors can hit a quota. With enough COBID-certified firms in the pool, a contractor can claim to have made the “good faith effort” to reach out to disadvantaged businesses as required by state law for public projects.

Officials with some COBID firms say requirements for winning a bid aren’t clear. They also say they don’t know how big general contractors score bid packages regarding equity. For instance, a white male-owned firm can win a project over COBID-certified firms by prioritizing outreach efforts to women and minorities.

Several COBID owners said the process is a game, and general contractors usually end up going with the well-established subcontractor they wanted all along.

COBID program director Carrie Hulse said she is aware of such complaints, but one difficulty her office faces is in identifying which large general contractors are sincere in their minority outreach, and which solicit minority bids only as a perfunctory step.

“We hear those comments,” Hulse said. “It’s certainly something that we are attempting to address.”

Foot in the door

Mandates to diversify the construction workforce and redistribute wealth to minority-owned businesses often clash with the low-bid procurement method. State law requires low-bid on public projects, though exceptions can be made.

The original intent of the low-bid requirement was to increase fairness in contract procurement, along with ensuring tax dollars weren’t wasted. But, ironically, low-bid is often blamed for inequitable outcomes. Alternative contracting methods, like construction manager-general contractor, are said to do better with equity goals, by allowing an owner or general contractor greater freedom in selecting who works on a project.)

Second-generation flooring contractor Judith Huck said Oregon’s COBID program has been helpful, but not because it has won her firm any work.

“It doesn’t get us the job; it gets us a foot in the door,” said Huck, president of Classique Floors in Portland. “They don’t have any requirement to give us work.”

Large general contractors maintain contact lists of diverse subcontractors to help them meet minority participation goals. Then firms like Huck’s expend time and resources putting together bids. This would be fine, she said, if someone followed up to explain why the losing bids fell short. Huck knows many companies that lose bids regularly.

“We see each other in these meetings; we all know each other,” she said. “After a while, you start to think, huh, maybe they’re just going to go the way they intended all along.”

In fact, Classique has been passed over for nearly every public contract it’s pursued as a COBID bidder. But Huck is OK with it, because Classique has landed contracts for projects at Nike’s headquarters and for other large private owners through its COBID connections.

Government agencies are required to post winning bids on the Oregon Procurement Information Network. COBID’s Hulse said she advises owners to view past bids on ORPIN and see what type of bids have been successful in the past. She also suggests that when contractors lose a bid, they contact the contracting entity and ask why.

“I don’t think that many firms do that right now,” she said, “although they are learning that there’s that advantage.”

Do your part

Firms have to do their part to win a bid, said Nancy Bebek, owner of Prestige Tile & Stone. It’s certified as a DBE, WBE and ESB.

“There’s work on my half that I have to do,” she said. “And I have to give a good number. Being a minority contractor doesn’t give me work – it gives me no work. It gives me a lot of opportunities that I do not think I would have access to if I did not have certification.”

Bebek suspects that without COBID certification, her company would not have had the opportunity to pursue what became its first large job – installing flooring at Pittock Mansion.

The experience has also been largely positive for Sherlyn and Gilbert Martin of mom-and-pop GreenLife Construction. Founded in 2002, GreenLife primarily serves as a general contractor for small commercial tenant improvements, though it’s procured public work through programs with the city of Portland, Multnomah County and Metro.

The firm hasn’t grown larger than needed; the Martins are the only regular employees. Gilbert Martin said it would be nice if the state issued smaller set-aside bid packages for minorities, so firms like his could pursue them. The state of Oregon, like most contracting authorities, tends to favor larger bid packages, and letting winning bidders – usually large, white-owned companies – sub out most of the work.

“They’re basically in it to make money – just like we are – not to help somebody,” he said. “They’re trying to use you if they can, but they’re not trying to put any money in your pocket.”

COBID’s Hulse said the state is trying to be better at outreach. It held 104 meetings with minority owners last year, and hopes to hold more this year.

“There are many certified firms, when they initially get certified, that think that because they’re certified, the money’s going to come rolling in. And it’s not. Certification is just another tool to gain access to opportunities. But ultimately it’s the responsibility of the business to do what they can to be successful.”

Name game

The state of Oregon in 2006 restructured its diverse business certification office, resetting the 12-year time period firms may remain certified as Emerging Small Businesses. That means next year, the largest class ever – around 30 firms – will “graduate.”

2015 was another big year for the office. Some major rules were clarified or changed. Notably, the race- and gender-neutral category of Service Disabled Veteran was added.

The addition of SDVs brought about another change: Rather than add more initials to the name “MWESBs,” the state opted to rename the office the Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity.

COBID program director Carrie Hulse said the new name is a better fit. Certification is what the office does. Beyond that, if more categories are ever added, they can be absorbed into “COBID” without requiring a name change.

“What we’re attempting to do, is instead of everybody saying the ‘MWESB,’ we’re trying to get everybody to say ‘COBID-certified firms,’” she said.

Hulse acknowledges that more work on that front remains. Many COBID owners and others in the contracting community apparently are still unaware of the new name.

“We’re getting there,” she said. “People are just very used to saying ‘MWESB.’ So we’re getting there.”

The post A foot in the door, but nothing more appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In April, TriMet’s board of directors awarded a $6.7 million project to a Portland midsize heavy-civil contractor, passing over bids from three larger firms – including one 40 times its size.

The recipient was Raimore Construction, a black-owned business with a hand in the regional transit authority’s rapid and substantial growth over the past 15 years.

The yearlong project won’t be easy – with some complicated night work on active MAX light-rail stations. But just landing the project award represented a culmination of a 15-year transformation led by Raimore business partners Jeff Moreland and Andre Raiford, as well as TriMet.

It’s the biggest TriMet contract to go to a minority-owned firm, and a good example of what supporters of equitable contracting call “capacity building.”

‘Pit crew’ mentality

Though the ribbon’s been cut on TriMet’s $1.5 billion Portland-Milwaukie light-rail project, the orange line isn’t quite done (all told, light-rail projects generally require between 10 and 15 years, according to TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch). Several small projects, plus a study, remain.

The largest of these mop-up jobs involves the station platforms at each of the line’s 10 stops, which were originally envisioned to feature two standing shelters each – one to serve each end of 200-foot-long trains. The “second shelter” aspect was cut from the project’s scope when TriMet learned it would receive less federal money than thought.

But under an agreement with the Federal Transit Administration, TriMet was able to reinstate elements if the overall project came in under budget. The team accomplished that, to the tune of $48 million, according to TriMet – in large part, it says, due to historically low interest rates.

The agency planned “aggressively” to save this money, according to Steve Witter, TriMet’s executive director of capital projects and construction. For instance, platforms were designed with conduits and anchors, so the shelters – designed by Landscape Forms of Kalamazoo, Mich. – could be easily affixed later.

The second shelter project is now several weeks along, with canopies being craned in one-by-one, south to north, starting at the Park Avenue station in Milwaukie. Other improvements, like security cameras and rider information screens, are being added as well. The project should conclude by about this time next year.

It’s been challenging for several reasons, according to project manager Michael Kiser. To avoid interference with most MAX riders, the most invasive work is occurring at night – and all other work during the day. The hours that TriMet considers “non-revenue service” is only a two-and-a-half-hour window when the shelters can be lowered into place.

With overhead power lines to navigate and a narrow window in which to operate, plus riders to account for at platforms, the work requires a “pit crew” mentality, Kiser said.

“Everybody on-site really understands what they need to do, and is empowered to affect the final outcome,” he said.

The face of TriMet

Raimore’s history is deeply tied to TriMet. Its roots are in the Trucking Consortium – a novel attempt at pooling the efforts of minority haulers to procure larger bid packages. Led by James Posey, the consortium handled trucking and flagging duties for the Interstate MAX project beginning around 2000.

Posey sold his equipment to Raiford and Moreland, and the entity became Raimore – trucking and flagging came first, but expansion was in mind. After the Interstate yellow line project wrapped in 2004, Raimore performed masonry and brickwork on the green line and streetcar project. And it’s been all over the orange line, working on every platform, including a recent effort where it was co-construction manager-general contractor performing prep work for the upcoming installation of TriMet’s Hop Fastpass electronic fare system.

“They’ve really progressed through the projects that they’ve been involved in, taking on more complex work and really growing their organization around it,” Witter said.

TriMet’s effort in the arena of minority contracting have been recognized nationally. In several notable ways, the authority treats Raimore like a division of its services, rather than an owner and contractor. For this approach to work, its ethos has had to be adopted by TriMet’s regular general contractors, Witter said – notably Stacy & Witbeck.

TriMet has been thoroughly involved with Raimore’s operations. Kiser took an eye for the agency’s systems, helping it devise quality control measures such as rigorous safety training for all involved. Raimore was brought into preconstruction to start intensive coordination of operations – it’s been a process because one of TriMet’s goals has been to really look at how Kiser has worked internally to ensure that everyone is on the same page. That helps efficiency and improves relations and works out better for the customer.

“Obviously, we want them well-organized and when they are out there, they are the face of TriMet,” Kiser said. “Customers don’t always expect the contractor to play a positive role in that, and Raimore has really taken to stepping up in that area. They understand the critical role that they play just in terms of how they interface with the customers.”

The company worked on the early prep work on the E-Fare system, as co-CM-GC with Stacy & Witbeck, so this was kind of the next logical step. Raimore workers have erected shelters on the east side and the west side already, so they are already familiar with the process, and they’ve done lots of selective demolition and restoration. The firm was “strongly encouraged” to bid.

“It is a very logical next step for TriMet because they spent all this time growing us as a company and working with us really diligently,” Moreland said.

Moreland doesn’t often pose for photos, and he declined to do so for this story. He said he prefers to move forward, rather than dwell on success. The firm didn’t even celebrate when it won the bid for the second shelter project, he said.

“Our celebration is in our ability to be successful,” he said. “We aren’t going to celebrate until this project is complete – that’s our mentality. Then we’re really going to celebrate.”

The post Minority-owned firm not an overnight success appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

One of the first local examples of a large, white-owned construction company partnering with a minority-owned firm appears to have run its course.

Colas Construction will partner with a firm other than R&H Construction – Andersen Construction – for a big upcoming public project: the $85 million Grant High School modernization.

Representatives from both Colas and R&H say their parting was amicable, and that they achieved their goals over the joint venture’s planned five-year life span.

The arrangement helped both sides weather the recession, R&H principal Norm Dowty said.

“We mentored each other in various ways and it was quite successful,” he said.

Andersen head David Andersen and Colas founder Hermann Colas are longtime friends, said Andrew Colas, company president and Hermann’s son.

The Colas-Andersen partnership has been official with the Oregon secretary of state’s office since 2013. But the Grant High School project is by far the largest the joint venture has taken on.

“It’s always been a thing where, if we saw the right opportunity and the right project, we’d look at partnering,” Andrew Colas said.

R&H, a top-10 Portland construction firm according to local gross billings for 2013, was rocked by scandal this past November when its CEO, John Bradley, was arrested at his home following a domestic violence-related incident. Bradley has been on medical leave since December, though he still heads the company, Dowty said.

Andersen has been one of the busiest Portland firms through the current building boom. The company’s website lists 26 active projects.

Calls to Andersen were not returned.

Joint venture partnerships like Colas-R&H and another prominent one – O’Neill Construction Group and Walsh Construction – are seen as mutually-beneficial arrangements that allow larger, often white-owned companies to help reach minority participation targets, and allow smaller, minority-owned firms to access larger projects and other opportunities.

The O’Neill-Walsh joint venture began as O’Neill was coming to the end of an eight-year agreement with the federal government. Company representatives said the joint venture provided Walsh with connections in the DMWESB world, and gave O’Neill access to financing that allowed it to continue growing.

The original charter for O’Neill-Walsh specified the partnership would last six years, meaning in 2018 the parties will evaluate whether it should continue.

“We think it’s absolutely been a big success,” Walsh general manager and vice president Mike Steffen said. “It’s worked out nicely.”

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In 1996, stakeholders in Portland were fed up with the dearth of public contracts going to woman- and minority-owned companies, and the relative lack of women and minorities in the workforce. City leaders pledged to do better, establishing programs to increase “participation,” which hovered between 3 and 5 percent total for those groups.

Twenty years later, those facts are all roughly the same. O’Neill Electric President Maurice Rahming, a regular voice on this issue, said now he and others are working to keep things from getting worse.

“Ideally, we’d like to see those numbers go up,” he said, “but realistically, we’re fighting to keep those extremely low numbers. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. We’ve been setting goals, but we haven’t been meeting them.”

What’s new today is that the construction industry in Portland is beset by the disruptive effects of a building boom and a labor shortage. To adjust, there’s talk in City Hall of using less of the low-bid procurement method, and “disaggregating” DMWESB data. There are also calls on private industry to step up.

“Looking at the latest data the city has, it still shows very low utilization of minority and women contractors,” said Tony Jones, executive director of the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership. “While there’s been lots of effort over the last 20 years, when we look at the results, they’re the same.”

Eager for change, at long last

Earlier this month, a shaky half-year after the Portland City Council established the Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission, members – including Rahming and Jones – approved a no confidence motion against the city council. The vote will have little practical impact, city officials say. But it did lay bare tensions that had simmered on the commission for six months.

The city later delayed release of video of the meeting and left key details out of meeting minutes, as first reported in The Oregonian.

Commission members received an email asking them to not speak on behalf of the ECPC.

Josh Alpert, the mayor’s chief of staff, said he takes “full blame” for the flare-up. When Mayor Charlie Hales shifted his focus to addressing the problems of homelessness and housing affordability, the business of the ECPC and other matters were pushed aside. Alpert said the city could have done a better job preparing and communicating with the commission.

“There’s a lot that’s been tried over the past few decades, and the numbers really haven’t moved a whole lot,” Alpert said. “The whole point of establishing this commission was to address that.”

In 2007-08, the city awarded minority-owned businesses just $80,000 of $91 million in construction contracts, according to a by the Center to Advance Racial Equity at Portland State University. In 2013, the state of Oregon awarded minorities less than $2 million out of $2 billion, or less than 1 percent.

Last week the commission held a retreat, to “hit the reset button,” according to Alpert. The city hasn’t been effective in finding incentives for established construction firms, he said, “other than all the good reasons that are already out there.”

There are several notable examples of partnerships between a large general contractor and a large DMWESB firm, including R&H Construction and Colas Construction, and Walsh Construction and O’Neill Electric.

The city of Chicago has policies that support large firms that already work with diverse subs on their private projects, Jones said.

“They’re looking at: How do you act when no one’s looking?” he said.

Last week Rahming attended an input-gathering session related to the impending $195 million overhaul of the Portland Building. The council has committed to spending 1 percent of the construction cost on efforts supporting diversity. The meeting was one of two held to determine how that money should be spent.

Interested parties filled out comment cards, calling for pre-apprentice training for women, and for data breaking down minority goals by ethnicity. Nkenge Harmon Johnson, president of the Urban League of Portland, wondered why they weren’t discussing the “99 percent.”

“We’ve heard all this before,” she said after the meeting.

The city is still hopeful that women and minorities play a major role in the interior remodel and seismic upgrade of the 33-year-old Portland Building. The project team opted to pursue the “progressive” design-build method, which brings builders into the fold earlier and allows for closer collaboration between private parties and city staff, according to Christine Moody, the city’s chief procurement officer. This could go a long way toward ensuring diversity targets are reached, she said.

The customary low-bid method required by state law tends to favor larger companies, Moody said. And those larger companies tend to favor larger subcontractors they’ve worked with before.

“In my experience, doing an alternative method allows us more flexibility,” Moody said.

Under Oregon law, getting a project exempted from the low-bid requirement is a lengthy process, one involving completion of a 14-finding test and posting notice for two weeks. One of the findings is for cost savings, meaning alternative procurements are chosen typically for larger projects, where the city can make up costs in the design phase.

Advocates like Nate McCoy of the National Association of Minority Contractors‘ Oregon chapter and Jones of MCIP favor breaking open the initials DMWESB to “disaggregate” the data used by governments. Too often companies will circumvent hiring goals by playing with these numbers, McCoy said.

“Pretty much, most of the certifications are white-dominated certifications,” he said.

At last week’s input-gathering meeting, several attendees said there’s no need for the city to spend money on further studies when their groups have already studied the issue.

Moody said that for the city to use such outside data, it must have been gathered using methodologies that would hold up in court. She suggested at the meeting that a portion of the 1 percent set-aside could be used on a study disaggregating the city’s data – an idea met with frustration by some in attendance.

Acting in ‘good faith’

The city isn’t the only institution in the Portland area performing projects. TriMet, Metro and the Port of Portland fall under the guidelines of the federal Disadvantaged Business program. Multnomah County has a big upcoming courthouse project as well and also maintains six bridges in the Portland area. Portland’s public school districts, subject to state law, also offer opportunities to contractors.

Since 1996, the Portland City Council has adopted a number of policies in this arena, for construction as well as professional services. For each city project, there’s a workforce goal of 18 percent minorities for apprentices and journey-level workers, and 9 percent women.

There are also subcontracting goals, which the city is in the process of changing. The city’s existing “good faith effort” program requires that 35 percent of subcontracts go to women and minorities, and that general contractors act in good faith to reach that total. (State law currently prevents disincentives from being attached to diversity goals.) The city hopes to roll out in the next few months a new program requiring that 20 percent of the overall construction cost go to DMWESBs.

“If you’re not subcontracting anything, it’s kind of easy to meet that existing goal of 35 percent,” Moody said. “When we move to the 20 percent, the contractor can decide what they want to self-perform, and what they want to sub out; they just have to worry about meeting that 20 percent.”

The city also has its Prime Contractor Development program, which emerged from a 2009 disparity study finding that far fewer prime contracts went to women and minorities. The program allows state-certified DMWESB firms to bid against each other – rather than against major firms – for smaller city projects.

Swimming with sharks

Gale Schmidt, who owns A2 Fabrication, said there are lots of “sharks” out there.

“If you’re small, you really get tossed around and chewed on quite a bit,” she said.

Schmidt has been in business since 1996. She has nine employees and recently completed her largest project to date, a $3 million job supplying about a mile of railings for TriMet’s Portland-Milwaukie light-rail line.

Sizable change orders that a major contractor wouldn’t bat an eyelash at can mean success or death for a firm like A2. Schmidt says there’s subtle pressure by general contractors to be agreeable to such changes, or risk not being included in future projects.

Another factor, Schmidt said, is that often bid packages for public projects are too large for a small startup. Last week she saw a posting seeking a steel supplier, including $100,000 in structural beams, along with ornamental steel, railings and other materials. Schmidt could’ve provided the ornamental steel, she said, but not nearly all the steel for the entire job. So she didn’t submit a bid.

It’s this way for other trade divisions. Schmidt said this issue comes up often in conversations with other minority subcontractors. The city’s Christine Moody said alternative procurement methods like construction manager-general contractor or design-build have a better track record because they give general contractors the time and flexibility to break down those large bid packages.

Val Solorzano has operated COAT Traffic Control for more than 10 years. The acronym stands for Chick of All Trades, though these days she focuses mainly on flagging-related work. Many minority owners operate on the fringes, as subcontractors in fields like flagging and custodial work. This helps explain why total wages for minorities are lower than white for large projects like the recent Sellwood Bridge replacement.

Swimming with the sharks on large projects – where payments can take up to 90 days – can quickly sink small, emerging firms. Solorzano suggested establishing a fund for small businesses to draw off.

“You have to be tough, or they won’t respect you,” she said.

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The Business Diversity Institute is celebrating minority- and women-owned businesses in Oregon this week with a series of events focusing on innovation and leadership.

The 2015 Minority Enterprise Development week began Tuesday with a reception. A Diversity Practitioners Summit from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday was scheduled to feature guest speakers Collette Holt and Kimberly Papillon.

The events will wrap up Thursday with a morning of workshops for small businesses and an awards luncheon at the Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland.

Workshop session topics will include using social media as a marketing tool to reach multiple generations, an overview of legal and legislative changes resulting from this 2015 session of the Oregon Legislature, and a series of TED talk-type presentations by three small business owners.

Award recipients to be honored during the luncheon include Energy Performance Engineering, the winner of the 2015 Minority Business Firm of the Year; Raimore Construction, selected as the Minority Construction Firm of the Year; Christine Moody, winner of the Leadership Award of the Year; and Gale Castillo recipient of the Legacy Award of the Year.

General admission for the workshop sessions and luncheon is $100 per person. A special rate of $60 for the workshop sessions and luncheon is available for DMWESB-certified firms.

For registration, visit BDI’s .

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