The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) has announced that it is expanding and formally establishing its Small Business Enterprise (SBE) Program, which was originally launched in October of 2022 under the auspices of SEPTA's Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program.
Eligibility criteria for the SBE program listed on SEPTA's website include meeting Small Business Administration (SBA) size standards, annual gross receipts averaged over a three-year period not exceeding the similar cap instituted by SEPTA's DBE program, and meeting other ownership and management related requirements instituted by the DBE program. The expansion of the SBE program is supported by SEPTA raising the threshold of contracts that can be included in the SBE set-aside program from $3,000 to $250,000.
The expansion of the SBE program follows the issuance of rulemaking from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) last year which required DBE programs to recertify all DBEs that had been certified under race- or sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage using race- and sex-neutral criteria.
Read the press release from SEPTA at https://wwww.septa.org/news/small-business-enterprise-program/.
Read more at about SEPTA's SBE program at https://wwww.septa.org/dbe/.
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