Tracking Success: How MWD Overcame Small Business Participation Challenges

Overview

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) is a regional wholesaler and the largest supplier of treated water in the United States. Headquartered in Los Angeles, it is a cooperative of 14 cities, 11 municipal water districts, and a county water authority, providing water to 19 million people within a 5,200-square-mile service area. Created by a California Legislature Act in 1928, its early operations were to build and operate the Colorado River Aqueduct to bring water to Southern California.

MWD implemented the PlanetBids PB System™ to augment their supplier pool with the Small and Disadvantaged Business program. The ability to perform quick quotes, including an easier way for bidders to accept contract terms and conditions, assisted field staff in contracting with suppliers and contractors quickly. The PB System™ provides greater outreach to small businesses, a primary goal for MWD. It also allows reciprocity of established vendor databases across multiple agencies, already used by other local California governments, provides greater outreach and access to small and disadvantaged businesses across the region.

Challenge

The MWD takes vendor outreach efforts and diversity inclusion seriously. With mandated goals on construction projects, as well as a robust certification program, Carmen Bermudez-Bracy, Certification Officer, states “with 1,000 new or supplier certifications and renewals annually; it is vital for our online system to be very user-friendly. With an annual $250M construction spend, it’s important to encourage small business and Disabled Veteran Owned Business participation while tracking and reporting on those projects.” MWD’s Business Outreach staff participates in numerous efforts to meet vendors who are unfamiliar with its Small Business Program that includes SBE Certification, SBE incentives, understanding its bidding process and providing information on other resources to assist the small business owner.

Results

Carmen Bermudez Bracy emphasizes that in the past 11 years in her position, locating subcontractors has been an important part of the outreach for awarded prime contractors t o achieve the mandatory SBE/DVBE goals. She states, “with a database of 20,000 vendors and over 4,000 certified firms this makes the goals of reaching small business entities more attainable. Upcoming plans include videotaping mandatory job walks, which are sometimes part of the construction bid opportunities listed in MWD’s bidding invitations, allowing visual access to both prime contractors and subcontractors for the work and services required to complete the job.

John Poli, Procurement Team Manager of MWD, acknowledges that automating bids and RFPs through the PlanetBids PB System™ has made the procurement department's job easier and more efficient. Poli is proud of how the MWD procurement team has handled their ongoing workload during COVID-19. As a long-time manager, he states, “it is easier to have a personal connection when seeing people every day and to have a daily ‘pulse’ on the team; furthermore, the move to virtual communications has taken place in a positive way. It is helpful to have the team using a common eProcurement system with centralized specifications to issue bids with suppliers submitting proposals as well as virtually managing the process from start to finish. One of the challenges has been physical job walks for construction and service-provided projects. While we are challenged with implementing social distancing and preventative safety measures, our team is exploring the option to film these job walks and eventually upload the video along with the bid opportunity to minimize in-person meetings.”

As a procurement trainer and speaker, John Poli remarks that procurement teams have been put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic. He believes that good managers provide regular communication through virtual meetings, emails, phone calls, and a powerful eProcurement system to stay in touch. However, he notes it is beneficial to be flexible and allow team members to take time for themselves during this stressful time. Poli concludes, “Trust is key to good leadership and our MWD employees have performed exceptionally during this time.”

Chosen PB System™ Solutions

• Vendor Management is the core of the PB System™ suite of modules. It offers a configurable and intuitive registration process to ensure that vendor registrations are complete and unique, avoiding duplicate records. Instantly gain access to vendor records, run advanced searches on multiple sets of vendor data, perform real-time verification of provided information (i.e.,certifications and licenses), generate comprehensive reports with visual charts, and broadcast messages to selected vendors.
• Bid Management is the most complete web-based system on the market today. Procurement professionals can quickly manage the process of issuing, monitoring, conducting evaluations, and awarding formal and informal bids. More importantly, the PB System™ can handle construction and public works projects – a feature unique to the eProcurement industry. Vendors can interactively search, view, and respond to bid opportunities securely over the Internet.
• Business Certification / Prequalification Management allows an organization to manage their certification programs such as Small Business Enterprise, Minority, or Diversity as well as Contractor Prequalification(s). Agencies can manage, maintain, and retrieve up-to-date information on vendor certifications and prequalifications. Registered vendors have access to viewing certified/prequalified vendors for potential subcontracting opportunities.