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
One explanation offered by non-M/WBEs for the difficulty of meeting goals was that minorities
and women often lack the skills to manage their businesses.
We have to constantly assist them with certified payroll reports and those types of things
on a constant basis.… So now we have our office personnel assisting their office
personnel with certified payroll reports, invoicing, assisting with schedule of values. All
those things are expenditure on the prime or the contractor that is subbing out to the DBE
or FBE.… if [a non-certified subcontractor is] not doing their paperwork, we’re going to
tell them to get their stuff straight or we will use another contractor.
The biggest complaint or problem or concern that we have [is] they need to learn how to
run a business. They don’t need to learn how to fill out paperwork. They need to know
how to balance their money so that you don’t get all this money and [think] okay now
I’m rich.
[M/WBEs need training in] shop drawings.
One recommendation from larger, non-M/WBEs was for the City to rate or pre-qualify certified
firms.
Any program or any goal should have more to it than just meeting a goal. There should
be some sort of a process by, whereby you monitor how firms do as a part of this goal, as
part of the program. I mean my biggest disappointment is we have a goal but are these
firms really benefiting? I mean, are they maturing? Are they actually becoming better so
they can compete more competitively? And I think that unfortunately hasn’t been done or
it hasn’t been monitored or it hasn’t been tracked.
There should be some [City] evaluation [of MBE subcontractors] to monitor that are they
getting better, was the work acceptable or exceptional?
I would like to see that there’s some sort of way to measure, metrics [for the development
of certified firms].… Because if your intent is just to like set aside money and make sure
money passes through to firms then that’s all the intent is then, what’s the point?
Put like a little synopsis of what their project were [into the list of certified firms].… List
what [City contracts] they worked on.
Maybe they can prequalify [M/WBEs] for a certain amount of work, you know, until they
get to a point where the City and also the contractors know their capacity.
[The City] need[s] to look at … some type of qualification [process for certifying firms].
The problem with the program, at least from where we sit, is they don’t have to
demonstrate the growth three years down, five years down
NERA Economic Consulting 307