Bart Creates Opportunities for Diverse Companies

It's just past noon at Bart's West Oakland station. Construction crews are busy making the main structure stronger....part of BART's system wide earthquake safety program. Carmen Borromeo is the project manager... Borromeo says she is grateful for the work because, she says, "I have a job." "And it gives me pride. For my kids and for me being a part of the project." Carmen is unique. There are very few women in construction especially a contract manager on a big construction job. Carmen says, "If a man can perform it, why cannot a woman. That's how I look at it." Exactly. Carmen and her employer work for BART because BART wants to work with THEM. The district has a well established program that ensures both women owned businesses and minority owned businesses get a fair slice of BART's billions of dollars of construction... Take Leo Choy for example. Choy is another BART minority contractor. He runs LC Construction...which is also doing earthquake retorofitting..this time at the Daly City station...He says.... "This is very important for us especially during this economy. So when we get a job, we put in roughly average days with eight to ten people working and they are all union people. It's really good. I am able to employ them and put them out of unemployment." Which is the whole idea. You see BART believes in small business. And it shows,. Recently the transit agency was visited by the National Director of the US Commerce Deopartment's Minority Business Developmenjt Agency....David Hin says, "Bart makes a difference because Bart is an organization that certainly has been effective in creating opportunities for diverse companies." And BART takes it seriously. For instance, let's say a bid shows a difference between a bidder's use of minority subcontractors and the availability of those subcontractors. BART then requires the contractor to prove there hasn't been any discrimination. If the bidder fails to do so or is found to have discriminated they don't get the job. And these are BIG BIG jobs.... Bart Board President James Fang says... "Bart is going to have approximately eight billion dollars worth of infrastructure projects in the next 10 to 12 years." Examples are all over the place... "Now take a look at this....workers are pouring concrete into this giant footing...each one about the size of a large swimming pool...of course what they are doing is, they are trying to shore up these giant columns that are underneath the elevated tracks so that they won't be damaged in an earthquake. Now imagine doing this job hundreds of times for column sets like these, all around the Bay Area." In all... hundreds of small companies--many minority owned..will join larger contractors in making BART bigger over the next decade. Maybe Minority contractor Doug Benton put it best when he told us... "We are a small company. And we work and strive very hard to be awarded and listed with general contractors and have a sizable piece of the work. It's a great feeling!" Jeffrey Schaub Barttv News.