It’s indisputable that women and people of color are underrepresented in the architecture, construction and engineering industries. However, regional government agency Metro is engaged in efforts to help change that by bringing on a number of minority-owned firms in important projects.

One notable example is the current to modernize the 30-year-old building’s public areas and establish a better visitor experience. A in 2017 to Colas Construction to serve as construction manager-general contractor; it was the largest public contract in Oregon ever earned by a minority-owned firm.

“We competed against some of the biggest teams in town,” Colas Construction CEO and President Andrew Colas said in reference to Hoffman Construction and Walsh Construction. “That in itself was an exciting win.”

Colas Construction is a family affair. The firm was founded in 1997 by Andrew’s father, Hermann Colas Jr., who moved to the United States from Haiti in 1969. Andrew’s sister Aneshka Colas-Dickson serves as vice president and chief financial officer, and their brother Alex Colas is a project manager.

Another minority-owned firm, Raimore Construction, is also involved in the Oregon Convention Center project. It’s primarily working on the exterior.

“We’ve been able to start breaking that glass ceiling,” Andrew Colas said. “T���re’s no reason there can’t be 100, 200 other firms like us.”

Two others are serving Metro. When Portland’5 Centers for the Arts sought a roof replacement for Hatfield Hall, a building that contains several theatre venues, general contractor Pacificmark Construction and roofing/waterproofing company Sterling-Pacific, both minority-owned businesses, earned the contracts.

Nancy Strening, a Portland’5 project manager, said the organization has been trying to find ways to get more minority-owned firms involved in its projects, and has recently been working with the National Association of Minority Contractors (NAMC) in this regard. Historically, one of the hiring challenges, she said, has been that Portland’5 has had to abide by government regulations to accept the lowest bidder.

Strening said there was an argument to be made that using minority-owned firms is still in the public interest, because having diverse perspectives on a project is always beneficial. The hiring process was very competitive, and the two firms that earned the contracts were the best choice, she said.

“Price and value aren’t always the same thing,” she said. “I think we are getting better results; I don’t think we are sacrificing anything.”

One of the main barriers to entry for minority-owned contractors, Strening said, is that many of the older, larger and more established firms (mostly white-owned), have entire teams of administrators able to secure subcontractors and bid on many projects. Nascent minority-owned firms might not have staff dedicated to outreach, and might not even know about some of the projects available.

Nevertheless, Metro’s efforts have been noticed by at least some members of Portland’s building industries.

“I would put them kind of at the top,” Andrew Colas said. “It’s been really important for us to have a strong partnership.”

Ray Leary, commissioner of the Metropolitan Exposition Recreation Commission (MERC), a division of Metro, said the agency does perhaps more than any other government entity in Oregon to increase opportunities. MERC’s job is to protect investment in the Expo Center, the Oregon Convention Center, and Portland’5, which he said is especially important right now.

With more conventions scheduled than ever before, Metro’s venues are a welcome mat to the rest of the world, Leary said, and there is a responsibility to utilize Portland’s diverse workforce when improving these spaces.

“Historically, the city of Portland does not have an enviable record in terms of opportunities,” he said. “I believe (Metro) will ultimately be the leadership in integrating people of color into the economic opportunities that our government manages and facilitates.”

Nate McCoy, executive director of NAMC-Oregon, said Metro has been making huge strides in the past few years. While he would like to see greater diversity in the agency’s leadership, he said the kind of projects they’ve been contracting for are what take minority-owned firms to the next level in terms of business and size.

NAMC-Oregon has partnered with Metro on many of its biggest contracts, and McCoy echoed Strening when commenting on the difficulty smaller firms have in marketing themselves to subcontractors. NAMC’s partnership with Metro has alleviated some of that, because NAMC-Oregon can brings its members directly into contact with the agency.

McCoy said the partnership with Metro has been strong, and the fruits of their labor have already begun to show.

“T���y’re willing to take risks and be bold about these concerns,” he said. “T���y’ve taken those steps to show that they’re listening and responding.”

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The Burnside Bridge is gaining some much-needed upkeep, but even its overseer, Multnomah County, knows it’s only a stopgap.

The steel-and-concrete bridge, a vital connection between downtown Portland and the Central Eastside, is 93 years old. Crews are performing extensive concrete patches and repairs, removing rust and refinishing hundreds of structural steel beams. Also, sidewalks and ornamental guardrails are being refurbished.

“T��� Burnside Bridge maintenance project is really sort of a Band-Aid project to get another 10 to 15 years out of the bridge,” county public information officer Mike Pullen said. “Multnomah County is considering doing a much bigger project to make the bridge earthquake-ready, and that could even involve replacing the bridge, so the work we’re doing in this three-year project involves concrete repairs, some repainting and a little bit of minor electrical work.”

The project derived from the county’s 2015 Willamette River Bridges Capital Improvement Plan, which identified the Burnside Bridge’s structural and movable components needing major rehabilitation. The county put the bridge at the top of its list of priorities for near-term work, and bidding on the roughly $20 million project took place in early 2017. Springfield-based Hamilton Construction, the project’s general contractor, started work later that spring and is now expected to finish by the end of 2019.

Major issues that are being addressed include rusting steel truss members, cracked concrete, deck surface deterioration and outdated mechanical and electrical systems.

Crews began on the Willamette River’s west side, tackling concrete repairs and other work. West approach girders, bent caps and columns were all rehabilitated, along with steel support trusses.

Meanwhile, the west-side bascule pit and control tower were also renovated, and the span locks and motors also received attention. The west-side control tower, which normally houses the drawbridge operator, was emptied to perform a remodel and address water intrusion. Other issues were addressed in work done by subcontractor Pacificmark Construction.

On the top of the bridge, the deck and expansion joints were renovated, while sidewalks, guardrails and overhangs also were repaired as needed. Many of the issues being addressed were identified when the bridge was most recently resurfaced, Pullen said.

“When they did that 10 years ago, they didn’t do anything underneath the bridge, and that’s where a lot of the repairs have been,” he said. “It’s the concrete mostly; they had nets underneath the bridge to catch the little bits of concrete that were falling, especially around the Saturday Market. One theme of things like this is that it is really a Band-Aid. If I were to show you other things like the Hawthorne Bridge in the late ’90s, in restoring that bridge they repainted every single thing and did new decks. With this, we didn’t invest too much, and when this side opens in February (the public) will notice improvements, but they’ll also notice these patches.”

Masons with Pioneer Waterproofing apply exterior weather sealant to the concrete girders below the Burnside Bridge’s east end.

One new technology being used by subcontractor Pioneer Waterproofing to carry out concrete repairs involves injecting epoxy adhesive into holes in the concrete and then wrapping those areas with carbon fiber reinforced polymer. The polymer then dries along with the epoxy to create a stronger span than the original.

Other discoveries made during the project indicate that the bridge needs more attention.

“T���re were a few things that are bigger scale,” Pullen said. “T���y found a crack in the pier in the river that’s closest to the downtown side on the west side, so this summer we’ll be going in there and dewatering and basically bracing that crack with some steel that goes through the whole thing and tighten it up.”

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The regional government Metro has announced it intends to award Colas Construction its largest contract ever to a minority-owned business.

The $27 million contract is to serve as construction manager-general contractor for the Plaza, Entries and Interiors project at the 27-year-old Oregon Convention Center. Colas Construction will spruce up the facility in anticipation of the $244 million Hyatt Regency Portland hotel, which Mortenson Construction recently began building.

Portland-based Colas Construction will partner on the project with fellow black-owned firm Raimore Construction, which will perform civil work.

Metro issued an award notice Aug. 31. Team members are expected to sign the contract Monday, according to a Metro project manager. The contract will include a provision to give back to the community 1 percent of the project cost.

The contract award represents a sort of full-circle moment in the history of race relations in Portland, Metro spokeswoman Karol Collymore said. Many black-owned homes were razed in the 1980s to make way for construction of the convention center, she added.

Activist groups like the Coalition of Black Men protested loudly, believing that no jobs on the project went to people from the dislocated communities, said Tony Jones, executive director of the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership.

“It’s great that 30 years later, we have two African-American-led contractors finally getting the opportunity to work on the convention center,” he said.

Jones praised Metro’s procurement process, which gave added weight to firms that partnered with a woman-owned or minority-owned business.

Metro received two other qualified bids: one from Hoffman Construction, in partnership with minority-owned Pacificmark Construction, and one from minority-owned O’Neill/Walsh Community Builders.

In addition to altering the scoring of the proposals, Metro placed minorities with contracting experience on the panel that interviewed respondents.

“Colas and Raimore had the best interview,” Metro spokeswoman Karol Collymore said. “T���ir proposal was very strong and they were clearly the front-runner throughout the process.”

Colas Construction was founded in Oregon in 1997 by Haitian immigrant Hermann Colas. Today, his son Andrew runs the business and daughter Aneshka Colas-Dickson is vice president and CFO.

Raimore was founded by Andre Raiford and Jeff Moreland Sr.

Representatives of both firms were unresponsive to phone messages left this week.

Under the proposed project scope, an external plaza will be redesigned to create “clearly navigable space” for the public. The project also includes modifications to the convention center’s main entrances, which will result in improved access and visual identification, according to the request for proposals. The scope also includes upgrades to several lobbies, meeting spaces and concourses.

The project was broken into two packages for bidding purposes – an interior package focusing on the convention center, and an exterior package focusing on the plaza, Metro senior project manager Brent Shelby said.

“We were looking at that as a way of bringing a smaller, associate firm as a way for them to build experience as a general contractor,” he said.

Shelby said that also beneficial in procuring minority-owned firms is the CM-GC alternative contracting method, which allows the builder to get involved earlier in the process and build relationships with minority owners. The method, said to help on more complicated projects, will allow Colas and Raimore to work closely with Metro to sequence construction in concert with the convention center’s busy events calendar.

Other complicating factors include some structural work on the ceiling of the massive Oregon Ballroom, and high standards for sustainability. (A Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design rating will not be pursued for the improvement project itself; however, the convention center is rated LEED platinum, so the contract will include many green conditions.)

Work is scheduled to begin in August 2018 and conclude by May 2019.

The design team is being led by LMN Architects of Seattle and includes Portland-based Merryman Barnes Architects and Mayer/Reed Inc.

Of the 3,741 firms certified by Oregon’s Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity, 205 are owned by African-American men and 105 are owned by African-American women.

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Mark Matthews became interested in construction nearly 30 years ago when he helped rebuild his family home, which was a schoolhouse that had burned down in Hood River. “I was really going to school to be an architect and I ended up designing a little bit of this schoolhouse. I also helped build it and I really loved the construction part,” he said.

After working as a project manager for another construction company, Matthews decided it was time to start his own business. He and his wife, Deborah, founded Pacificmark Construction and serve as president and vice president, respectively.

When they started their business, they focused on residential remodels and some light commercial projects. Once they concentrated on the commercial market exclusively, they began winning public contracts performing interior renovations on city and county buildings as well as Port of Portland and TriMet projects.

Pacificmark Construction often partners with general contractors on large projects such as Randall Children’s Hospital. Deborah, who has a background in health care and management, said she enjoyed that project because of the health-care aspect. Pacificmark Construction continues to work as a prime general contractor on medical offices, public works and higher-education projects for clients such as Providence Health Services, Multnomah County and Portland Community College.

Pacificmark Construction partnered with Hoffman Construction on the PCC Cascade Student Union Building, taking on the largest project it had ever done before.

“We were the general contractor and Hoffman was the CM/GC. Hoffman shared its space in the job trailer and our project manager, office assistant, project superintendent and project engineer worked alongside Hoffman’s people and learned from their system,” Deborah said. “It really taught us how to create the system we needed in order to grow and complete large projects.”

A previous 91��Ƶ Top Projects award winner, Pacificmark Construction was named the 2015 Construction Company of the Year by the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs.

Pacificmark Construction’s community involvement includes volunteering for the Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.’s Women in Trades Career Fair and the Oregon Food Bank. The company also was involved in the renovation of the Billy Webb Elks Lodge, which was built in the early 1900s and served as a YWCA for African-American soldiers, a place where black musicians could showcase their work and a safe haven for people fleeing the Vanport floods.

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