SMALL BUSINESS COUNCIL SPOTLIGHT


Small Business Council Spotlight: Abbigail Brown Helping Small Construction Businesses Succeed


By Carol Eaton


lished, large-volume prime contractors, president and owner Abbigail Brown is well-acquainted with the hurdles that California’s small and disadvantaged businesses face. Like prompt pay. Cash flow. Limited resources. Understaffing. And a learning curve when it comes to industry knowledge and experience. Helping small businesses navigate


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those challenges, achieve certified SBE and DBE status and ultimately, have a voice and a seat at the table has been a motivating factor for Brown during more than two decades in the construction industry. In addition to running a successful small business herself, she is bringing her construction industry and small business know-how to her role as chair of AGC of California’s Small Business Council for 2019.


Unplanned Entry into Construction Career


Brown said she stumbled into


a career in construction almost “by accident” after applying for and getting a job as a project coordinator with a steel company in Tracy, CA, while in college. Right away she knew she had found her calling. “I loved it,” she said. “Te dynamics of working in an industry where every day there were new and different challenges – it was great.” After obtaining her undergraduate


degree in business administration followed by a master’s in public admin- istration, she worked in various project management capacities with larger contractors and then as a program manager running a bond program


14 May/June 2019


ven though the clients of Oakland-based CPM Logistics, LLC are mostly well-estab-


in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. She moved back


to California and, six years ago, started CPM Logistics as a one-person contracting and consulting company. It quickly grew to nearly a dozen employees performing work on heavy civil infrastructure projects including Presidio Parkway Phase 2 in San Francisco, the I-680 HOV completion and express lane project, and the State Route 99 Cosumnes River Bridge Replacement in Sacramento County, among others.


Bridging the Gap & Building Connections


A few years ago, CPM Logistics


decided to refocus exclusively on consulting work and scaled back to a handful of core employees. It remains focused on its original core values and mission: “Establish and nurture connections between DBE/SBE/ DVBE companies, prime contractors and governments to smooth out the ‘wall of silence’ between each.” Te company has successfully


aligned itself with a half dozen large contractors operating in the trans- portation and infrastructure market for the bulk of its work, helping them fulfill their small and disadvantaged business hiring goals on publicly funded projects. Brown also spends plenty of


unreimbursed time mentoring and offering advice to small businesses. “A lot of times it is just listening to them, offering suggestions or talking them through how to grow their businesses – providing that technical assistance,”


she noted. Helping small


businesses succeed not only fuels the company’s corporate mission but is also personally satisfying, Brown said. “We sort of organically grew into this company that helps small contractors, and we feel good about that.” With an estimated


5,200 certified DBEs statewide – less than 500 of which work in


the transportation and infrastructure markets – California has a critical need for more certified small and disadvan- taged business contractors to meet the infrastructure work on the horizon, Brown asserted. In Caltrans District 4, for example, there are only around 66 certified contractors (as of March) listed on the agency’s website. “With the gas tax doubling the


workload along with the various bonds that have passed, we feel it is critical mass right now,” she said. “Tis is a red alert situation.” Caltrans’ program goals for DBE participation on its projects statewide is 17.6 percent and for SBE participation is 25 percent.


Seeking Solutions – the Prime-DBE Cooperative


Solutions are clearly needed to


bridge the gap between the increased demand for DBEs to fill goals on public projects and the deficit of qualified and certified DBEs to do the work. Brown counts herself and her staff among the problem-solvers constantly looking for ways to increase those numbers. “We don’t rest well without trying


to figure stuff out,” she noted. “We want to leave this better for everybody,


California Constructor


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