AGENCY SPOTLIGHT
are huge fans of the City ’ s set-aside programs because they concretely help to level the playing field . Are there other strategies and programs that could be developed to help level the playing field particularly with respect to contracting opportunities arising from the investments being made in infrastructure ?
Shamann Walton : I continue to promote as much participation as possible from contractors who are from and live in the communities where the infrastructure improvements and expansion are taking place . There is always more that could be done to help expand inclusion opportunities for those who ’ ve historically been left out , but we have to work within the existing legal framework for public contracts . In terms of legislation , we ’ ve made important progress with the 14B Ordinance . Still , I would like to see even more strategies and policies to enable our microlocal businesses to be successful and thrive . As the representative for District 10 , where a lot of the work is , I think it would be beneficial for our District 10 companies to have greater participation in all the projects underway and for the residents of our District to be able to work on all these projects .
Ingrid Merriwether : As you know , our Contractor Development Program was established in San Francisco but we ’ ve replicated it throughout the State . One of the ways that we ’ ve seen a public agency effectively achieve higher local small and minority contractor participation is to incentivize the private sector by making inclusivity and local community participation optimization goals part of the RFP ( Request for Proposals ) or RFQ ( Request for Qualifications ) scored evaluation criteria . When the co-equivalent priority of local community inclusion is included alongside the usual criteria of low cost , approach , experience and qualifications , then firms actually have to compete on achieving that goal because it ’ s part of the scored evaluation criteria . There is nothing illegal about making local community inclusion part of your project goals and scoring because no specific group is being singled out as a beneficiary . Would you be interested in seeing if this approach might be of benefit to your district and even throughout the city ?
Shamann Walton : Yes , I ’ d be interested in talking more about that . We ’ ve had something similar with the work at SFPUC ( San Francisco Public Utilities Commission ) Solar System Improvement Program – that ’ s the model we ’ ve been using to offer incentivized opportunities for our large corporations that bid on the project . They ’ ve had to have workforce and education goals and make sure that they put things in place that were going to benefit the community . It ’ s given them the opportunity to compete to achieve success in the RFP process based on what they were going to do for the community and what their community benefits and improvement package was going to look like . We ’ ve seen that and done that and that ’ s definitely something that should be in place – I think all bids should include something that benefits the community . Yes , it ’ s shaped as an incentive for the business , but the reality of it is that it ’ s best practice .
Ingrid Merriwether : I agree wholeheartedly . We were amazed to see the creativity that came to the forefront when firms had to compete on these criteria , because as is true with any other area of an RFP , they realize that they have to get creative and outperform their peers in order to win the contract – it really changes the paradigm when you may win or fail to win an opportunity based on how well you address the project inclusivity goals . We saw one instance in Los Angeles where the winning firm committed to a higher overall goal of small local business participation and that additional commitment translated to $ 80 million more work being awarded to small local contractors within that zip code . It seems like the time for this – diversity , equity and inclusion are becoming mainstream now , so it makes sense to optimize them in every
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