A Day in the Life of an EOPA

Each morning I begin my day (Monday thru Friday) at 8:00. I have my own office because the information that I work with is highly sensitive, containing personal financial as well as pre-award contract information (bid submittals, proposals, etc.). The first thing I do is check my email for any new assignments or customer service concerns.

 My customers are my supervisor (EO Program Coordinator), the EO Deputy Director, EO Management Assistant II, four EO Specialists, any one of the City's 34 customer departments, SBE/DBE subcontractors and prime contractors working on current projects that have SBE/DBE subcontractor participation goals.

Once I answer any outstanding voice mails or emails, I start by processing any incoming new SBE/DBE certification applications or Annual Update applications. Applications are submitted via an electronic we portal, the Certification and Compliance System (https://phoenix.diversitycompliance.com/Default.asp?), where information is typed into application fields and documents must be electronically uploaded. New applications take considerably more time than Annual Updates because all of the information about the applicant firm must be reviewed for the first time. Annual Update applications are submitted by certified firms once a year, to ensure that the firm is still eligible to participate in the program. I devote about two hours of my day to this task

At about 10:00 I take a 15-minute break, run to Starbucks for some coffee (or some MORE coffee) and come back to my office.

If I don't have any meetings scheduled or presentations to facilitate, I get started on Contract Compliance work. This work consists of entering new contracts into the system and monitoring contracts for prime contractor payments to SBE/DBE subcontractors. The money that the City pays to prime contractors should be filtered down to SBE/DBE subs, and the system automatically tracks the progress and status of this contract activity. Only when a sub hasn't been paid or hasn't confirmed payment do I get involved to facilitate communication between parties. I also oversee preliminary documents on contracts and projects pre-award. This entails attending pre-bid, pre-construction or pre-submittal meetings to communicate with everyone involved on the project what EOD's expectations are to avoid sanctions and penalties.

I take an hour lunch, sometime between 12:00 and 1:00p.m., and then it's back to work.

Sometimes EOD will get requests from customer departments, like Streets or Water, for example, for bid verification and this entails my review of the documents that were turned into the customer department from all of the submitters who are interested in being the prime contractor for a project. This documentation basically tells EOD which small businesses the submitter has reached out to for subcontracting opportunities and what percentage of dollars the prime is committing to spend on those businesses selected to do the work.

That pretty much sums up a typical day that ends at 5:00p.m., but no day truly typical in my line of work.