Programs Aimed at the Underrepresented Change the Color, Gender of Construction

Large firms have taken minority- and women-owned companies under their wings to bring more diversity to the industry.

by Deb Woods

Breaking into the construction industry and learning to play at a high level poses challenges for minority- and women-owned construction business. Many national construction firms have stepped up with formal and informal programs to teach and mentor up-and-coming businesses to work with them at the upper tier.

“We have created some competitors, and that’s good,” says Hilton Smith, senior vice president of community affairs for Turner Construction Co. in Cleveland. “We also have created business opportunities for the minority contractors to joint venture with us on large projects around the country. We’ve had firms grow to that end.”

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Large, public jobs typically require minority and women participation. Finding enough minority- and women-owned subcontractors can be difficult, so Turner and some other majority firms have chosen to grow their own list of reliable companies.

“We have minority requirements we have to meet on certain public projects and to meet those requirements we need a number of qualified subcontractors and vendors to bid the work and keep the competition at an optimum level,” says Greg Nook, executive vice president of marketing for the JE Dunn Construction Group of Kansas City, Mo. “There were few subcontractors or vendors that fit the categories we needed. We wanted a vehicle to develop and nurture those businesses.”

A construction school

Smith developed the Turner School of Construction Management in 1969 to teach minority and women business how to grow and succeed. Participants learn about planning, safety, accounting, estimating, financing, marketing, contract law and bonding during the 10-week course.

“Thirty-nine years ago, minority businesses could only do certain kinds of jobs, and they were not included in major construction projects,” Smith says. “We wanted to do something about that.”

At the time, Smith worked for the City of Cleveland. Then Mayor Carl B. Stokes approached Turner about creating minority opportunities, and the school was born. Smith joined Turner and has headed up the program as it grew to sites throughout the country. More than 15,000 minority and women business owners have graduated from the school.

“We become familiar with each other in class and do business with each other,” Smith says. “A lot of them will never grow to do business with Turner, but they can learn to do what they do well and become profitable. A lot don’t want to grow too large.”

Luis Spinola, president of Azteca Omega Group in Dallas, called the Turner School one of the best programs he has ever seen. The knowledge he gained and the relationships that developed led to providing structural and ornamental steel for Turner on several projects, including the interior build out of the Comerica corporate office relocation in Dallas.

As with Spinola, graduates frequently seize the opportunity to work withTurner, as subcontractors or joint venture partners. Turner officials mentor them and help them grow.

“[The Turner school] turned my life around,” says Christopher Black,president and CEO of New England Construction Co. of Garden City Park, N.Y., who took the program about 17 years ago. “They gave me a full understanding about what it takes to take a trade and turn it into a business.”

New England installed drywall, ceilings and door frames for Turner on the Time Warner-CNN Conference Center in New York and ceilings at the Islip Court House in Islip, N.Y., for Turner. Black estimates 60 percent of his firm’s annual $40 million revenue comes from Turner projects.

“With this program, we’ve let billions of dollars over the years,” Smith says. Turner sets a 20 percent minority or women participation goal on all jobs and let $1 billion in 2005 and again in 2006 to such firms.

“That is our way of showing we have conviction of making this program work, and it can work,” Smith says.

Mentor-protege programsOther large companies have taken a slightly different approach to meet similar goals.

JE Dunn Construction Co. of Kansas City, Mo., began its mentor-protege program three years ago, after the company found it difficult to find qualified minority- and women-owned businesses to work with.

“They didn’t exist to this level,” says Marvin Carolina, director of diversity for JE Dunn. “Financing, expertise, bonding ability and workforce weren’t there.”

Twelve minority or women business owners graduated in the first class and 13 are currently participating in the two-year program. Classes meet every other month and cover a wide range of topics, starting off with professionalism, communication skills, problem solving leadership and motivation.

“Topics deal with the owner, because if you don’t have a good owner, it’s difficult for a small business to continue,” Carolina says.

JE Dunn then adds courses about the business structure, such as policies and procedures, accounting and estimating. The second year, the focus turns to presentation skills and helping participants overcome individual obstacles. JE Dunn pairs the minority firm with a large, successful mentor company in a different trade, typically also minority or women owned, but not necessarily.

“In just half a year of classes, my understanding has come light years,” says Dwayne Lewis, owner of Lewis Block & Supply of Kansas City.

Chester Hishaw, owner of Hishaw Construction of Kansas City, Mo., says the JE Dunn program has helped his company enormously. His business has picked up due to putting into practice the techniques he learned at the course, such as developing a policy and procedure manual and how to contact prospective clients.

“This program gives us an opportunity to find out and implement what it takes to build a business,” Hishaw says. Although relatively new, Carolina says the program has already helped JE Dunn find subcontractors to work with. The large firm uses those subs on all jobs not just those with minority-participation goals.

Several large firms tackle diversity at the local level, many of them participating in state- or association-sponsored activities.

In North Carolina, Balfour Beatty Construction in Raleigh and Charlotte participates in the state’s Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses mentor-protege program. Calvin Stevens, minority business development manager for Balfour Beatty, says that Bullock Building Co. of Durham, N.C., increased its business with the larger firm from $70,000 four years ago to $3 million in 2007.

“We brought them in and showed them the processes and procedures, and [Mark Bullock] implemented them on a smaller level,” Stevens says.

Bovis Lend Lease in New York has established an enrichment program to help minority- and women-owned businesses reach the next level, says Dorne Edwards, senior manager of the Bovis supply diversity program. During a quarterly forum, minority and women businesses are invited to present information about their firms to the Bovis senior management team. The company also sponsors a contractor fair, and its employees taught a seven-week training course for the New York Association of Minority Contractors.

Hardin Construction Co. in Orlando presents workshops for Florida Minority Supplier Development Council members. The company also has begun mentoring DeMor Engineering & Construction of Orlando and has hired the firm to work on the $100 million Darden Restaurants headquarters project.

“Our objective is to forge these relationships with minority businesses in Orlando, so when we are pursuing a public project or a high-profile project, such as the Darden project, that we have relationships in place,” says Steve Rivers, senior vice president and general manager for Hardin in Orlando. “Even when there is no goal set by the owner, we use these firms regularly.”

Bill Pinto, president of Hardin Construction in Atlanta, helped develop, in 1999, Georgia Gov. Roy Barne’s Mentor-Protege Initiative, which continues to serve minority- and women-owned firms. During an 18-month mentorship the minority companies take classes sponsored by the state. The mentor firm focuses on helping the protege develop sound business practices.

“When the governor asked us to get involved, it was an industry giveback, and I thought it was the right thing to do,” Pinto says. “There is a need to get more minority and women businesses into the mainstream of construction.”

White men are the most typical faces in construction.

It’s a profile that the industry has been trying to diversify. But there are mixed opinions among women and underrepresented groups regarding the aggressiveness of those efforts and how states may have helped or hindered the process.

In Washington, the arrival of Initiative 200 in 1998 ended preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, education and contracting.

Some minority contractors relied heavily on the initiative while others saw it as an opportunity to “get their foot in the door,” says Don Mar, one of the five Asian-American members of Marpac, a general contracting firm in Seattle. When some programs focusing on minority contractors vanished, some contractors quit.

Mar saw this as an opportunity to gain acceptance as a minority contractor based on the quality of Marpac’s work. Even so, Mar says there is “subtle discrimination” taking place when business is done based on who you know and who looks more like you.

With Seattle’s constant growth, Marpac marketed itself as a competent, price-competitive business and took advantage of the local economy’s opportunities, Mar says.

In Oregon, the state has focused its efforts on recruiting more American Indians to apprenticeship programs. Most recently, the emphasis has turned to filling gaps with the African-American community.

Penny Painter, an American Indian with 28 years of experience in the industry, recruited Indians to construction through a three-year Washington State Department of Transportation contract awarded to her employer, Cooper Zietz Engineers Inc. in Portland. It ended in June. That recruitment involved handing out information to tribes, placing newspaper advertisements that promoted the industry and offering job fairs.

The program helped American Indians consider construction careers that were unfamiliar to them because of lack of information, which is due in part to lack of emphasis on building trust with tribes and getting access to them, Painter says. “You have to be trusted by them before they’ll listen to you,” she adds.

The outreach appears to have worked.

The number of American Indians in construction has increased to 191 working in the field. That’s up from 73 in 2005, according to the Washington Department of Labor and Industries.

Recruitment efforts for underrepresented people in general have focused on drawing more people to the trades, Mar says. Construction associations have been going to colleges and talking to students about good paying jobs in the trades.

He says Latinos could be leaders in construction because many second-generation framers and carpenters are working in the industry. Mar started as a framer, working during high school and college. He attended the University of Washington and was one of two or three Asian-Americans in the construction management program. Women and African-Americans also were scarce in the student population, he says.

Still, Painter says women face more challenges than men from any group.

“I think it’s harder for females, honestly, than people of color,” says Painter, who herself worked her way through the industry from hanging siding to her current position as a workforce development specialist at Cooper Zietz.

Mar agrees with Painter.

Women face an “uphill battle” because construction is a male-dominated industry and “physical,” he says.

Jan Lawrence, president of the Puget Sound chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, says the physical demands of construction shouldn’t hold women back. She adds that women have learned to compensate in other areas like being highly organized.

“I think women have a lot to contribute and I think it’s not always recognized that the women work a little different than the men,” Lawrence says.

Although women face discrimination in construction, they face it in employment in general, she adds.

“Women in construction have to be willing to reach out and forge a path,” Lawrence says. “They can’t expect the network to do for them.”

Lawrence recalls that women represented only 20% of the students in the construction management certification program at the University of Washington when she attended. Lawrence, a freelance consultant from Sammamish, Wash., attributes that to women’s desires to pursue “safer degrees.”

Yet, she acknowledges that even she didn’t know that construction was really an option for employment for women.

That’s where associations like NAWIC can help, but grassroots efforts need to be intensified to attract more women and underrepresented people, Lawrence says.

“They could be a lot better at going and talking to high schools and finding the ones with interests and grooming them,” she adds.