My supervisor is Lee. He has been with the City of Phoenix for the last 25 years! He began his career in the Neighborhood Services Department as an Inspector, ensuring that those properties that were being rehabilitated were following permit requirements.
While Lee does not hold a college degree, he has a lifetime of knowledge and 25 years of experience. He came to the Equal Opportunity Department as an investigator of employment and housing discrimination complaints. Fortunately, the City provides excellent training and employee development programs and in his tenure, Lee took full advantage of any training opportunity available, and worked his way up with hard work and dedication to EO Program Coordinator.
AS EOPC, Lee oversees BOTH the Certification and Contract Compliance Monitoring teams, conducting secondary reviews of certification application determinations (approved/denied) and assigning newly awarded contracts to staff for monitoring (ensuring SBE/DBE utilization and participation goals are being met). He wears many other hats and wears them very professionally.
When asked about what advice he would give to someone interested in this type of work, Lee stressed that the hiring practices are very different than they were 25 years ago. Today, the City is only looking for the best and brightest and that means having at least a bachelor's degree or better. He then suggested that a potential EOD employee first work in an internship! This job requires extensive knowledge of local, state and federal regulation and Civil Rights law. The person would have to have top-notch interpersonal skills and be able to manage multiple, conflicting priorities.
Personally, this is my current career. I have worked full-time with the City of Phoenix for the last 10 years and I chose my degree program because I am working in the public sector (BS Public Service and Public Policy).
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Leadership in EOD
My job definitely requires strong leadership skills. I took a leadership course as part of my degree program and was inspired by what I learned. The first key to successful leadership is to truly care about the mission and goals of your organization. My division is committed to helping small businesses in our local community grow and become successful. It is with pleasure that I conduct outreach to these socioeconomically small business owners and teach them everything I know about becoming SBE/DBE certified by the City and how they can network and connect with our prime contractors for subcontracting opportunities.
Leadership is also about trust. It took a long time before I was as knowledgeable about our program as I am today. When I speak to a group of small business owners or a conference room full of City Contract Specialists, Project Manager's and Engineers, I bring with me a wealth of knowledge that exudes strong credibility. I get phone calls and emails daily from different people asking me questions about the EOD business program and contract compliance. I feel like my ability to speak comprehensively and educatedly about these things is how I demonstrate leadership.
Having a forward-thinking ability and being able to come up with new, more efficient and innovative ways of doing the work we do is also demonstrative of leadership. I suggested a couple of years ago that instead of trying to get individuals to physically attend EOD meetings, that we use 'Go To Meeting' to facilitate online meetings. I also changed the format of the presentations I give to make them less technical and more replaceable to the target audiences.
While I do not have anyone that I supervise, I still look to leadership staff, including co-workers for direction and advice. My EO Specialists have been in this department, some for over 20 years! These are the people I would go to for historical information - "How did we do this before, etc.", "Has this ever happened before and what did we do?", etc.
My direct supervisor is fairly new and while I do look to him for leadership and he is a great leader - we look to each other for leadership as well. This creates a collaborative relationship and it's been nice being student and teacher, simultaneously!
Leadership is also about trust. It took a long time before I was as knowledgeable about our program as I am today. When I speak to a group of small business owners or a conference room full of City Contract Specialists, Project Manager's and Engineers, I bring with me a wealth of knowledge that exudes strong credibility. I get phone calls and emails daily from different people asking me questions about the EOD business program and contract compliance. I feel like my ability to speak comprehensively and educatedly about these things is how I demonstrate leadership.
Having a forward-thinking ability and being able to come up with new, more efficient and innovative ways of doing the work we do is also demonstrative of leadership. I suggested a couple of years ago that instead of trying to get individuals to physically attend EOD meetings, that we use 'Go To Meeting' to facilitate online meetings. I also changed the format of the presentations I give to make them less technical and more replaceable to the target audiences.
While I do not have anyone that I supervise, I still look to leadership staff, including co-workers for direction and advice. My EO Specialists have been in this department, some for over 20 years! These are the people I would go to for historical information - "How did we do this before, etc.", "Has this ever happened before and what did we do?", etc.
My direct supervisor is fairly new and while I do look to him for leadership and he is a great leader - we look to each other for leadership as well. This creates a collaborative relationship and it's been nice being student and teacher, simultaneously!
Dissapointing Day
I had mentioned in a previous post that I am responsible for attending pre-submittal meetings and communicating with bidders on their submittal requirements to the Equal Opportunity Department. This step in the process of awarding a contract to a potential contractor is vital to ensuring SBE/DBE subcontractor participation on the project. This is especially true on federally-funded (FHWA = Federal Highway Administration) projects that have strict mandates for utilizing DBE-certified firms. If these rules are not followed precisely, future funding could be heavily impacted, leaving much needed infrastructure projects in a stale-mate.
On Monday I received a request for Bid Verification document review, for the EOD required documents portion of the bid submittal. This means that I have three days to respond to the customer department (in this case, Street Transportation) on the "responsiveness" of those bidders who have submitted the EOD documentation with their qualifications packet to Streets. It doesn't always take the full three days, but in this case I had about 50 pages of documents to review and I took my time to make sure it was done right.
Out of the six bidders, NOT ONE was deemed "responsive". Every single submittal was missing some required criteria. I was sweating. The reason is - I've never had this happen. When every bidder is deemed non-responsive, the customer department is required to START ALL OVER in the selection process. I have no idea how much time, resources and MONEY this is going to cost, but I would imagine A LOT.
I look over the documents again and again and AGAIN and even called the contract specialist working on the contract to see if maybe, by some miracle of God, there would be some piece of information she left out (there wasn't). I went to my Deputy Director and we went over the DBE Clause together, to see if maybe some instruction may have been to vague. Nope. Crystal clear. Black and white. There was no disputing what EOD required and what the bidder was required to submit.
At the end of the day, I had to send the memo to Streets with the bad news. I felt responsible somehow. So, I looked to see who attended the Pre-Submittal meeting. Only TWO of the SIX bidders attended the meeting where I practically draw a picture and spell out word-for-word what they need to submit to EOD.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is so important for these potential contractors to attend my meetings! Sheesh...
On Monday I received a request for Bid Verification document review, for the EOD required documents portion of the bid submittal. This means that I have three days to respond to the customer department (in this case, Street Transportation) on the "responsiveness" of those bidders who have submitted the EOD documentation with their qualifications packet to Streets. It doesn't always take the full three days, but in this case I had about 50 pages of documents to review and I took my time to make sure it was done right.
Out of the six bidders, NOT ONE was deemed "responsive". Every single submittal was missing some required criteria. I was sweating. The reason is - I've never had this happen. When every bidder is deemed non-responsive, the customer department is required to START ALL OVER in the selection process. I have no idea how much time, resources and MONEY this is going to cost, but I would imagine A LOT.
I look over the documents again and again and AGAIN and even called the contract specialist working on the contract to see if maybe, by some miracle of God, there would be some piece of information she left out (there wasn't). I went to my Deputy Director and we went over the DBE Clause together, to see if maybe some instruction may have been to vague. Nope. Crystal clear. Black and white. There was no disputing what EOD required and what the bidder was required to submit.
At the end of the day, I had to send the memo to Streets with the bad news. I felt responsible somehow. So, I looked to see who attended the Pre-Submittal meeting. Only TWO of the SIX bidders attended the meeting where I practically draw a picture and spell out word-for-word what they need to submit to EOD.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is so important for these potential contractors to attend my meetings! Sheesh...
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