With federal funding on the table, many Texas municipalities are rethinking processes for collecting HUB certificates and reporting on outreach to HUB vendors. Categorizing and reporting these local vendors has become a demanding task for procurement teams.
While reporting is crucially important, increasing participation from these suppliers is another matter altogether. In reality, small and disadvantaged businesses more often participate in public works projects as subcontractors, yet have little methods to make themselves known to larger prime contractors. Creating effective processes for larger prime contractors to identify and leverage small HUB firms as a part of bid submissions is crucial to increasing engagement and spend.
We invited local leaders to discuss how to create effective processes that allow teams to lower the barrier to entry in reporting and engaging HUB firms.
We covered topics such as:
- Create an engagement plan and develop methods to report on diversity initiatives
- Simplify processes for diversity reporting when leveraging federal funding
- Provide methods and incentives for prime contractors to engage HUB and local subcontractors
- Break down barriers in your procurement processes
Panelists included:
- Andre McEwing, Supplier Diversity Manager, Purchasing at Tarrant County College
- DeNita Lacking-Quinn, Supervisor, City of Dallas of Procurement Services
