City of Fort Worth Texas issued the following announcement on Nov. 30
Applications are now open for certified minority-owned businesses to participate in the Beck School of Construction.
The Beck School of Construction is a partnership between the City of Fort Worth and The Beck Group, a local integrated architecture and construction firm. The program provides comprehensive training sessions to help certified minority-owned businesses increase their industry knowledge, grow their expertise and become more competitive when bidding on construction projects.
The Beck School of Construction recently completed the third year of its program. As of 2020, graduates of the program had been awarded $14.28 million in contracts.
Eligibility information
To be eligible to participate in the Beck School of Construction, businesses must provide construction or construction-related services and be certified as a minority business enterprise (MBE) by the Dallas/Fort Worth Minority Supplier Development Council (DFWMSDC) or the North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency (NCTRCA).
A certified MBE includes Black-owned, Hispanic-owned, Asian-owned and Native American Indian-owned businesses.
Program participants must also have been in operation between one and 10 years, have an average gross income per year of $100,000 or more prior to January 2020 (before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic) and be located within the city’s six-county marketplace of Tarrant, Dallas, Denton, Johnson, Parker and Wise counties.
Applications for the Beck School of Construction must be completed by 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. Staff will notify applicants about their acceptance into the program by the end of January.
Improving business equity, one firm at a time
The Business Equity team, a division of the city’s Diversity & Inclusion Department, partnered with CH Advisors to conduct an Availability & Disparity Study during 2020.
While the goal of this study was to identify disparities in the City of Fort Worth’s contracting and procurement processes – which eventually led to the implementation of a Business Equity Ordinance requiring the city to use certified minority- or women-owned businesses for 25% of its annual contracts – the study also revealed several challenges that local minority business enterprises (MBEs) were struggling to overcome, such as capacity building.
“The Beck School of Construction is one of several programs that allows the City of Fort Worth and our partners to work together to address some of the gaps in our local business ecosystem, especially when it comes to the development and growth of local minority-owned businesses,” said Gwen Wilson, assistant director of the Diversity & Inclusion Department.
“Building these relationships between smaller minority firms and larger established developers like The Beck Group, while developing mentorships that can help the smaller firms grow and scale their operations in sustainable ways, is critical to their long-term success,” Wilson said.
Original source can be found here.
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