The City of Pittsburgh awarded 29 percent of contract dollars of minority-owned businesses (MBEs) and 33 percent to woman-owned businesses (WBEs) for the year of 2019, according to a 2019 annual report recently released by the City's Equal Opportunity Review Commission (EORC). These figures are out of a total $37.5 million spent on total city and city authority contracts during 2019, for a total of some $23.5 million spent with MWBEs.
The City attributes this success to a number of steps taken after receiving feedback from the MWBE community. In February of 2020, the City launched a Buying Plan through the Living Cities Accelerator Grant, which provides an online and regularly-updated four-quarter forecast of contracting bid opportunities for the City and City agencies, so that MWBEs have a chance to look ahead to which bids they might be interested in. In addition, the City has made strides in using MWBEs as prime contractors in procurement, not just as subcontractors, which greatly increases the dollar amount of procurement participation that MWBEs have been awarded.
"I'm proud to see that the work we've done [is] paying off by creating tangible economic opportunities for all," said Mayor William Peduto in a statement.
For a press release from the city on the information, see https://pittsburghpa.gov/press-releases/press-releases/4089.
For the annual report itself, see https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/redtail/images/10224_2019_EORC_Annual_Report.pdf.
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