the San Francisco region, MWH/ Webcor further concentrated that focus to “hyperlocal” hiring of residents from the three nearest zip codes to the work site. “When we packaged contracts to bid, we’ve also checked who was available in that hyper local community, what their capacity was, and tried to make sure that the contracts, even if won by a larger general contractor, required a percentage of work to be hyperlocal participation,” Ota explained.
• Targeting specific contractors – Te team looked for strategic scopes of work that could be packaged in such a way that they targeted a specific genre of contractors in the neighborhood, making these smaller scopes of work more attainable to bid out and be won by these small, local firms.
• Higher LBE percentage goals – Te team included higher LBE percentage goals on some of the larger prime contracts bid out for the project. Tat strategy encourages the general contractors awarded the contracts to engage local area subcontractors within their overall scope of work and to mentor these smaller local contractors in order to help them be successful on this project and, in turn, on their future projects.
Measurable Results To date, these efforts have delivered mea- surable results. BDFP project outreach manager Chris Bardales reported that as of late August 2023, approximately 45 local and apprentice hires had been brought onto the project from local union pre-apprenticeship programs. Te team has awarded over 200 contracts to general contractors and subcontractors, of which 93 were LBEs and of those, 65 were hyper- local contracts awarded to LBEs within the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.
Representatives from the MWH/Web- cor team highlighted the success of the project’s local hiring program in a pre- sentation at the “Scaling Pre-Apprentice- ship to Support Equity in Infrastructure” session during the U.S. Department of Labor’s ETA Vision 2030 conference in Washington, D.C. in May 2023. In addition to the solutions enacted to meet workforce goals, the project team has contended with a variety of technical and logistical challenges that are typical with a project of this size, scope, and complexity. These have ranged from dealing with the COVID-19 pandem- ic early on (which slowed the project start), to ongoing material cost escalation, working within a highly constrained site, and accommodating approximately 500 workers on the jobsite each day.
Team Brings Solutions Te MWH/Webcor team has employed an array of solutions to address these challeng- es, including implementing a high level of BIM that models down to the rebar and nuts and bolts, and utilizing laser scanning and other tools. They have engaged in formal partnering at multiple levels with the owner and other key stakeholders to ensure the project remains on track and successfully meets all of its critical cost, schedule, quality, and safety goals. While many of these solutions are
noteworthy, Ota said he continues to be particularly proud of the team’s efforts to push the bar and find workable strategies that help ensure the surrounding com- munity is benefitting from and involved with the delivery of this important infra- structure project that will serve the City of San Francisco, and be part of their neighborhood, for years to come. “We are not just building project, but
we are building people,” he commented. “Tat will be the legacy I take from this project.”
CALIFORNIA CONSTRUCTOR NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2023
15
“This neighborhood is a marginalized community, but the people who live and work here deserve the same respect as everybody else. We realized we could put dollars into the local community by emphasizing local hiring from the surrounding area.”
– Lance Ota, Senior Project Manager for the BDFP team
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28
