09-03-19 MBE/WBE - Laserfiche WebLink

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conflate the two (2). We should be able to push a button and see all of the minority-owned businesses, and then another one (1) to see all of the certified minority-owned businesses. If you were just looking at the list of certified businesses, you would think that minority-owned construction businesses do not exist here. They do exist, they just aren't showing up on any lists. You would never know that unless you go looking for them, like I did. Boardmember Alexander asked, So who is going to create the plan? Ms. Brooks replied, Part of the responsibility of this board is to provide feedback and make recommendations for final policy changes and final amendments to the ordinance. She continued, The study's results support the City's interest in implementing a new race and gender conscious MWBE program. One (1) of the recommendations is to continue to do race and gender-neutral measures, but really beef up and have some type of electronic contracting data collection and monitoring notification system. The City is in the process of upgrading our City- wide system and our accounting system has a procurement module.There are some things that this study recommends that we will have to incorporate into the system we are adopting so we can do it well. Also, we want to provide resources to implement the program. The recommendation is to have personnel that specializes in not only contract compliance but also in labor compliance. Then also focusing on reducing barriers to MWBE prime contract awards, so unbundling where it is appropriate and within the scope of State law, and also review experience requirements. Sometimes some of the language in our bid packages require that they have X number of years of experience which cuts out anyone who is just getting started. Then we want to review the bonding and insurance requirements because some of the bid packages have requirements for insurance that don't exist. It is definitely not intentional. It is a matter of using the bid package language that was on the last contract without reviewing the insurance language. MWBEs will look at that and work for three (3) weeks trying to find insurance, but people who have already worked with the City already know to ignore it, and then they submit their bids. She went on,Adopting a small business enterprise target market is where,to your point earlier,we look at what we can do for the City of South Bend. We know what our target marketplace is, but how can we support businesses right here within our City? We could establish a small business enterprise target market, which would include all small businesses, race and gender neutral. An example would be for professional service contracts under $50,000 that are subject to informal procurement policies. We could be better at increasing vendor communication and outreach and create matchmaking sessions. Contract forecasting is something that we have been doing for the last couple of years in our annual report. That is forecasting, by department, how much each department is going to spend, and then being specific as far as what exactly the money will be spent on.This will give emerging businesses in the City a heads up on projects that will be bid out. Also, offering debriefings after bid awards, that is something I do now. So,when smaller MWBEs go through the process for the first (Pt) time, they can find that they were way out of their league when the bid is read and they look at all of the stuff and what was included, and they didn't know anything about it. This is happening, but not at the rate that it could be. We could also offer more training, possibly online.