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

The City of Cleveland’s Cleveland Small Business, Minority Business Enterprise, and
Female Business Enterprise Program: Overview and Feedback Interviews
2. Access to Prime Contract Awards
As also reported in Chapter VIII, many minority and women owners who want to do prime
contract work were frustrated at not being permitted to count their own participation towards
meeting contract goals. Some large general contractor agreed that it is important to count M/FBE
prime participation to grow firms’ capacities.
I have a problem with that because the whole point of this is empowering the smaller
firms.
3. Contract Size and Complexity
Some problems were common to all firms, regardless of the race or gender of the ownership.
There was almost universal support regardless of firm ownership, size or industry for
“unbundling” or disaggregating contracts.
If they took projects, like a large project, and broke it up into certain [scopes].… And
each person did a package but we all came together to communicate what the progress
was.… If it’s something that a person can at least get their feet wet with the department
and let them see that that person can at least produce something. Let that be a feather in
their cap so that if they are looking for a team and they say, okay, well this person did
this, this, this, and this so that individual that is trying to get going has a little record of
some sort. So I’m saying if there were smaller projects where a person, a firm of a
specific size could do with an agency, if they could do that project and still get exposure
with the larger firms [it would be helpful to build capacity].
There’s so many things in there that could be chopped up for a small firm and it’s just
like [City staffers] don’t want to take the time, like oh well, we already did this study and
determined what we need so we’ll just put it all in one big bow and send it out and
whoever gets it, that’s fine.
4. Payment
Another universal challenge was slow payments. Subcontractors felt that prime contractors hold
their payments and general contractors felt that the City pays too slowly and creates unnecessary
and burdensome paperwork.
It’s impossible to get paid by the City of Cleveland. It’s bad.
We’re talking 90 days if you’re lucky.
You are calling [the City] constantly, chasing your money. In the meantime, the general
contractors … end up basically banking these [certified] companies. I mean they need a
check every week.
NERA Economic Consulting 303