Being a business owner was always part of the dream for William Jackson, president and founder of Global Electric.
He launched the electrical contracting firm in 2006 and built it up to 25 employees, taking on public works projects in the Los Angeles area and beyond with clients including the city, county, LA Metro, and Metrolink. The team is currently working on light rail vehicle projects and making improvements to stations and platforms for LA Metro.
As a certified small, minority, and disadvantaged business, Global Electric is the type of contractor that public agencies are supposed to be leveling the playing field for when it comes to competing for work. Winning a contract is still rife with hurdles for small businesses, though, from qualifying for various bonds — essentially promising the contractor will meet the project requirements — to having the right insurance.
These are some of the barriers the Equity in Infrastructure Project is trying to dismantle in California and across the country, especially as money pours into public infrastructure projects following the $1.2 trillion federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. California has already received more than $42 billion of those funds.
Denver International Airport CEO Phillip A. Washington and others started the organization in 2021 with the goal of creating more opportunities for small, minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses. The vision is to build generational wealth and reduce the racial wealth gap by breaking down barriers to contracting opportunities, Washington said.
The Equity in Infrastructure Project is building a coalition of public agencies and private sector companies to support its work. More than 60 infrastructure-related businesses and public agencies, such as airports, ports, water districts, and state departments of transportation have joined.
Public agencies that sign the project’s pledge set a baseline against which they will measure themselves through December 2025. They are asked to submit information on their existing contracting efforts, including any category of historically underutilized businesses — such as disadvantaged, small, minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses — for which they accept certifications or have targeted procurement programs.
“We see this as an economic development tool, to increase competition to do infrastructure work in this country,” Washington said. “If we knock down some of the barriers for historically underutilized businesses, then they can compete.”
The increased competition leads to taxpayer savings, Washington added. That is proving out in the efforts of San Francisco-based Merriwether and Williams Insurance Services, a project coalition member. Merriwether and Williams offers various programs to help historically underutilized businesses compete for public contracts.
Public agencies that have sponsored the bonding program have saved more than $22 million as a result of low bids from participants, said Ingrid Merriwether, president of aligned risk management for the firm. It makes the idea of removing barriers, helping small businesses, and increasing competition an easy sell.
“I can’t tell you how many construction department leaders have said to me, ‘Well, if what you can do can bring me more bidders, I’m all for it,’” Merriwether said.
Global Electric is one of the companies the program has helped by providing training and resources to navigate complex contract processes, along with obtaining financing to help with cash flow until enough contract revenue arrived.
The equity project’s vision of building generational wealth becomes real when companies like Global Electric land contracts and hire from the community where they are doing the infrastructure work. Global Electric, a union shop, often hires people from the zip codes where it has projects, Jackson said.
“It has been a fantastic opportunity to share the wealth with some of the taxpayers and citizens of the city and the county that maybe aren’t exposed to these opportunities,” he said. “When you’re building a transit line through someone’s neighborhood, they should be able to participate and not just receive the negative aspect of the growth, but be a part of the opportunity to learn a skill and receive a nice income.”
Fourteen public and private sector infrastructure executives from across California signed the equity project’s pledge last fall, launching the “California Plan” initiative. The local governments and public agencies in the initiative spend a combined $82 billion annually, a massive coffer they have promised to make more accessible to historically underutilized businesses.
As part of that effort, Los Angeles County committed to establishing a $2 million revolving loan fund to support small businesses with startup costs as they work to earn county contracts, along with naming small business advocates in every county department. For fiscal years 2022-2024, Caltrans has committed to putting 22.2% of dollars for federal-funded projects, an estimated $2.4 billion, toward work with certified disadvantaged businesses. Caltrans has reached the $1 billion mark in federal-funded work with those businesses as of fiscal year 2022-23.
Caltrans had a 37% increase in African American companies that signed up to compete for federal-funded state infrastructure work, from 410 to 563, along with a 21% increase in Latino businesses, from 986 to 1,196, from 2019-2023.
Toks Omishakin, Caltrans secretary and chair of the equity project’s California Plan, often talks about making the shift from symbolic to systemic change. He is reflective of how much progress has been made, he said, but also about “how much work there still is to do for communities that have been implicitly or explicitly left out of opportunities.”
“By doing the work that we’re doing, we’re going to create, ultimately, more competition in the state,” he said, “and we’re going to provide more opportunities for small businesses to be successful and thrive.”
