The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

Anecdotal Evidence of Disparities in the City of Cleveland’s Market Area
Networking is the key. If we know that there is work coming up. Not everyone will have
the time to go and sit in Council meetings. There’s got to be a way of streamlining and
letting the community in construction know … that there is something in works.… So,
that we have enough time to establish these teams. Especially with design-build.… When
the project is posted, these teams are already established.
You have to team and get to know the people on the other side of the equation because
people do business with people they know, like, trust and have commonality with.
After my years in business, you begin to realize that people do business with people they
are comfortable with.
3. Barriers to Obtaining Public Sector Contracts
Overall, there was near universal agreement that the race- and gender-conscious programs
remains necessary to reduce these types of barriers and open up opportunities on City contracts
and subcontracts. Without affirmative action goals, minorities and women believe their firms
would suffer or even close.
The goals are helpful. I worked on projects where we were hired for a couple of projects
but not to meet a goal, because of our design ability. And then we were hired on another
project because of a goal. The one where there was no goal we had very difficulty getting
paid. We didn’t get our name on the drawings. We were kept from the clients in terms of
we weren’t invited to any of the meetings. They didn’t want us to sort of be known as
helping them with the design. Versus the one with goals we were right there front and
center with the clients. We were able to get a letter of recommendation from the City, you
know, at the end of the process, etc. So I would say having the goal, having the, that, that
rule, it’s helpful.
The goals are good because we have bid as prime, and we get beat out by the national
companies. What happens is they have to bring us on board because we’re a minority.
And we are local. And then they run into issues that only local people understand. And
what ends up happening is that small piece of the pie that we were supposed to get, gets
bigger and bigger and bigger.
If they didn’t have the goals, we wouldn’t get any work.
I’m prime on certain projects and then there’s other times I go as a RSB, a registered
small business. And an MBE. And as far as my marketing as an MBE, I get no response.
We’re only being called because they need to fill a quota.… A lot of our clients only
work on the City and State projects and they know to call us because we’re EDGE
certified, we’re City of Cleveland certified, we’re Sewer District certified. You know,
we’re certified with everybody. But they’re only calling us because they have to fill the
quota. A lot of architects would do what we do themselves if they [didn’t need to meet
the goal].
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