Another duty of mine is ensuring that our customer departments (Water Services, Street Transportation, etch.) are in compliance with federal mandates as they pertain to the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program.
If a project is funded with federal dollars, sub recipients like the City of Phoenix are mandated to find DBE certified firms to participate in available subcontracting work, provided there are firms available within the project's scope of work (i.e., asphalt, paving, landscaping, etc.).
A part of this requirement involves paperwork. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!!! I DROWN in paperwork on some days. Okay, it's not really physical PAPER, but today for example, Streets sent me a bid verification submittal that was 132 pages long!!
I got the email, which basically included the qualifications submittal of four contractors responding to this bid. They have to provide the EOD with documents that tell us: 1) WHO of the pool of DBE subcontractors they solicited to participate on the contract IF they are awarded the job; 2) HOW they communicated the scopes of work and project details; 3) the outcome of this outreach (no response, received a Letter of Intent to perform with cost breakdown; and finally 4) WHAT percentage of the work they are committing to DBE firms.
So, I have to read through 132 pages and make a determination of EACH submitter's "responsiveness" to the DBE portion of the qualifications submittal. This is HUGE. Let's say, a contractor bid the lowest price and has the most experience of four submitters. If they do not include ALL of the required information for the DBE portion - NON-RESPONSIVE! Boom! They're out of the running.
It's a pretty big deal.
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