Emerald Cities Collaborative Blog

ECC joins The PostCarbon Institute's on-line course on Resilience!

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 10:50:09 -0400

Want to help your community respond to our climate, energy, and inequity crises? Build your skills with Think Resilience, a guided online course from Post Carbon Institute. A special six-week offering of this course starting October 9th features group webinars led by PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg, who will be joined by special guests climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and Emerald Cities President Denise Fairchild. You'll learn:

* The key differences between sustainability and resilience
* How our sustainability crises were created—and what we can do now
* Why re-localization is so important to our future

Webinars on Tuesdays, October 9 - November 13, 2018
10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern

Enroll today: http://bit.ly/ssf-pci

NEW REPORT ON ANCHOR-COMMUNITY RESILIENCE STRATEGIES

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 15:23:24 -0400

Inclusive Procurement and Contracting:

Building a Field of Policy and Practice

"ANNOUNCING NEW REPORT ON ANCHOR-COMMUNITY RESILIENCE STRATEGIES

Health Institutions are increasingly looking upstream - to social, economic and environmental factors -- to promote wellness. As a result they can potentially become valued partners in advancing community resilience. Central to this effort is adopting a community resilience framework and authentically partnering with community organizations and residents in the community change process.

Community Resilience. A Community Engagement Primer for Health Professionals is the 7th in a series of ECC publications on its Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) project. ARC represents a multi-year learning laboratory for anchor-community partnerships that have been documented in case studies and lessons learned. This new report is specifically for health institutions/professionals. It looks beyond traditional efforts to improve health services and health promotion to catalyzing health institutions as partners in addressing the deeper structural barriers to community health, wealth and climate resilience. The report includes: 1) The Community Resilience Framework; 2) Metrics: Measuring Community Resilience; 3) Mapping: Community Assets, and 4) Mobilizing: Community Change. The companion report - The Community Engagement Workbook is also available.

Read The Full Report

Inclusive Procurement and Contracting

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 15:55:00 -0400

Inclusive Procurement and Contracting:

Building a Field of Policy and Practice

Denise Fairchild and Kalima Rose

"Announcing New Study on Inclusive Procurement and Contracting"

This study, co-authored by Emerald Cities and PolicyLink, and generously supported by a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, surveys the current landscape on inclusive procurement and contracting policies and practices in the infrastructure and construction industries. The goal was to specifically determine how to best position minority-owned, women-owned, and disadvantaged businesses (MWDBEs) to effectively compete for large-scale construction projects in these industries.

A successful inclusive procurement program of action is key not only to providing jobs, but also to closing the wealth gap needed to secure the well-being and future of children, families, and the regions in which they live.

This report details the rationale for inclusive practices in this industry and includes historical and current equitable development policies and trends. It also identifies challenges and best practices and sets forth recommendations for strengthening the field of practice. The report provides insight into inclusive procurement and contracting policies within the energy, water, transportation, health, education, and public housing sectors. It also considers the field of practice in different geographic regions of the United States.

Read The Full Report

Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) Case Studies Now Available

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 11:35:34 -0500

Anchor Institutions Help Build Community Health, Wealth, Climate Resilience

With support from the Kresge Foundation, ECC has produced a set of reports detailing how its work harnessing the purchasing power and presence of anchor institutions – primarily hospitals – is helping to build health, wealth and climate resilience in three low-income communities of color: East Bay San Francisco; Miami, FL; and Bronx, N.Y. Each project is a collaborative endeavor of ECC with Health Care Without Harm and MIT CoLab.

The reports include:

Background report on anchor strategies
Case Study on East Bay San Francisco ARC project
Case Study on Bronx, N.Y., ARC project
Case Study on Miami, Fla., ARC project
ARC project Lessons Learned
Excerpt on ARC from Kresge Foundation 2016 Annual Report

ARC launched as demonstration projects in three of the nation’s most climate -impacted urban areas, with each site acting as a learning laboratory for building community resilience and focusing on different strategies towards that end. Specifically:  

ARC San Francisco-East Bay targets anchor procurement strategies to strengthen economic resilience by reinvesting in building a local, sustainable food and energy sector;
ARC Miami forges a labor union-hospital partnership to conduct community outreach and education around community wellness and climate resilience, with the goal of producing an authentic Community Health Need Assessment (CHNA) and re-investments in community resilience; and
ARC Bronx leverages the resources of its anchor partners to focus on both the energy and economic resilience of its target community.

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Summit on Water Infrastructure Investments Draws ECC Delegation -- Water infrastructure Issues Resonate with ECC’s Focus on Equity Inclusion

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 10:11:00 -0400

With ECC increasingly addressing the energy-water nexus and working to ensure that water infrastructure investments equitably benefit low-income communities of color, a group of ECC board and staff members attended the US Water Alliance’s recent One Water Summit 2017. Comprising one of 25 delegations to the summit, they brought ECC’s focus on equity inclusion in the green economy to discussions on maximizing the community and economic benefits of water infrastructure investments

During the summit’s closing plenary, ECC President and CEO Denise Fairchild discussed ECC’s commitment to collaborate with the Alliance on a water equity strategy. As a first step, ECC will use the Alliance’s briefing paper, An Equitable Water Future, to craft such a strategy for the Emerald Cities network.

That briefing paper set the stage for the summit, noting that “water is essential to prosperity and progress,” and that “smart and equitable water management can foster opportunity for all people and communities.” However, it continued, “The sad reality is that water challenges disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in America.”

An Equitable Water Future
The briefing paper – which was informed by both formal research and discussions with more than 125 thought leaders, including Fairchild – opens by stating, “Water is the defining issue of our time…Water shapes economic growth, the environment and the very social fabric of our communities.

Ensuring that all people have access to safe, reliable and affordable water and wastewater systems is the cornerstone of a sustainable and prosperous nation.” The 64-page document is divided into two sections, the first looking at water stress and vulnerable communities and the second section sharing promising practices and strategies for advancing water equity. Elaborating on the paper’s introductory statement, the first section points out that communities “already overburdened with economic, environmental and health challenges are especially vulnerable” to the challenges associated with water resources.

Three Pillars
The second section of the Alliance briefing paper defines and provides case studies for three “Pillars of Water Equity”:

Ensure all people have access to clean, safe, affordable water service;
Maximize the community and economic benefits of water infrastructure investment; and
Foster community resilience in the face of a changing climate.

Regarding community and economic benefits, the paper says that as utilities undertake capital projects, “they can advance water equity at every stage of the process” and provide “solid, living-wage jobs that are excellent stepping stones to the middle class.” It adds that partnerships with community organizations, nonprofits, labor and philanthropy maximize opportunities for local employment, career paths, business development, contracting, education and neighborhood improvements.

Emerald Cities’ Water Commitment
While ECC’s work in the water space is emerging, its local coalitions have begun to make meaningful connections and inroads. “The agenda of the One Water Summit resonated with ECC’s work in a number of areas,” Fairchild observed

One example described in the “Equitable Water Future” briefing paper involves work Emerald Cities undertook with the Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity in Portland, Ore., leading to adoption of a community benefits agreement (CBA) aimed at diversifying employment and contracting for large city construction jobs. The CBA was successfully incorporated into two Portland Water Bureau projects, each of which then exceeded apprentice and journeyworker employment goals for women and people of color.

In addition, EC Cleveland is working with its local water/sewer district to increase jobs and business opportunities that will be generated from the major investment underway to rebuild its water/sewer system in compliance with an EPA consent decree. This includes opportunities in both hard and green infrastructure projects.

And EC Seattle is using water conservation measures in its RENEW Multi-family affordable housing projects to achieve as much as 50 percent savings in water utility expenses, with those savings subsidizing a significant share of the total energy retrofit.

In California’s Bay Area, EC San Francisco is working with its local water/wastewater utility, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), to audit and incorporate water conservation measures in its RENEW Multi-family affordable housing projects to drive savings in water utility expenses. Also, EC San Francisco is partnering with CleanPowerSF, the local community choice aggregator housed at the SFPUC, to help launch an on-bill repayment program whereby customers pay back the cost of energy and water upgrades on their properties via their monthly utility bills.

ECC’s Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) program is also pertinent. ARC alleviates intertwined economic, environmental and health burdens by leveraging the assets and capacities of community anchors to improve the local economies, climate resilience and health of low-income communities of color. ARC East Bay is focusing specifically on the energy-water-food nexus to strengthen climate resilience through locally-owned, sustainable agriculture that also uses water-saving technologies.

Putting Water Investment in Perspective
Also distributed at the summit was The Economic Benefits of Investing in Water Infrastructure, a product of the Value of Water Campaign that the Alliance coordinated. Putting water infrastructure investment in perspective, it notes: “The U.S. needs to invest a total of $123 billion per year in water infrastructure in the next 10 years (in current 2016 dollars) to achieve a good re of repair.

While this might seem like a daunting amount of money, the report continues: “The U.S. economy would stand to gain over $220 billion in annual economic activity by meeting its water infrastructure needs,” and “service disruptions put $43.5 billion in daily economic activity at risk.”

In other words, “The funding gap is significant, but the benefits of filling the gap are far greater.”

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BuildNOLA Advances Minority Businesses, Workers in New Orleans

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 10:25:00 -0400

In less than two years, BuildNOLA – a city program that prepares local small and disadvantaged New Orleans contractors to bid competitively for public- and private-sector projects – is already improving the landscape for local African-American-owned companies and local workers.

Network for Economic Opportunity Executive Director Ashleigh Gardere assembled a team to implement Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Economic Opportunity Strategy -- a comprehensive effort to connect disadvantaged job seekers and businesses to new opportunities through partnerships with local training providers, social service agencies and community advocates. The city ultimately hired ECC as consultants to adapt ECC’s economic inclusion programs, including the E- Contractor Academy, to NOLA.

At the time that ECC was hired, Gardere commented: “As we have implemented the mayor’s Economic Opportunity Strategy, we have leveraged our partnership with Emerald Cities, to establish strong local policies, monitoring and compliance systems and partnerships with numerous labor, workforce and business development organizations to implement a comprehensive and integrated approach to the city’s overall strategy and goals.”

The eight-week BuildNOLA program takes place in a classroom setting and is free of charge to participants. BuildNOLA instructors use real bid specifications from public and private agencies as the foundation of each training module, and participating contractors and professional services firms acquire the skills needed to win public and private contracts.

BuildNOLA offers both opportunity-specific training and ongoing technical assistance on basic skills such as estimating, scheduling, project management, safety, change order management and invoicing.

More Than $5 Million and Counting
Since its September 2015 launch, BuildNOLA graduates have won 54 contracts worth a total of more than $5.3 million, with 74 percent awarded to African American-owned firms and nearly a third to firms owned by African American women. The successful bidders have hired 81 new workers, giving priority to New Orleans residents – in some cases from the very neighborhoods where the projects are taking place.

For their part, several recent BuildNOLA graduates interviewed by Emerald Cities give rave reviews to the program and the knowledge of the subject matter experts who lead the training. They uniformly attest that BuildNOLA has helped them grow their businesses while also bringing new job opportunities and career paths to their communities.

The contractors are:

Deborah Heinville, President, and Robert Thornton of Thornville Services, who have been awarded some 20 contracts and hired more than 23 individuals, including college interns, to undertake projects for the City of New Orleans, The State of Louisiana and other public entities. Just recently, the company learned it was the winning bidder on yet another City contract.
Otis Tucker, Jr. of Trucking Innovation, who has won more than six public-sector contracts since completing BuildNOLA, doubling his receipts in the first year.

Marlene Wade of HAS Construction, who, as a first-time public contract bidder, was awarded eight contracts and hired four new employees. She has since competed successfully for several additional public and private contracts.

BuildNOLA Profile: Marlene Wade, HAS Construction

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 14:50:00 -0400

An email promoting BuildNOLA caught the attention of Marlene Wade of HAS Construction because of “the curriculum aimed at helping small businesses compete” in areas such as bonding, insurance and estimating costs for construction, marketing and goods and services.

The New Orleans native’s career has grown and evolved over the years. “I never turn down an opportunity,” she says. She was an accountant for 25 years, including for a construction company where she met various subcontractors and learned a lot by seeing jobs “on paper,” such as a $13 million home construction project. “I also went out in the field to see the job first-hand and enjoyed it. So I thought, why not get a contractor’s license, especially because I do my own jobs around the house? I passed the exam for a commercial license in July 2015 and then got my residential license.”

BuildNOLA Filled in the Gaps
Wade then got some experience but still didn’t know estimating – a gap that BuildNOLA filled. She noted that many large prime contractors say disadvantaged and small businesses cannot perform, but Build NOLA puts them in a position to do so. “BuildNOLA stepped in and prepared us so primes cannot say that. We covered all the pieces that were needed to say, ‘Here we are, and we’re capable now.’”

Wade added that the program’s trainer/experts are people who “currently work in that field. They do that job each day, so they could bring us up to par to be competitive and get opportunities to bid on projects.”

She continued, “We did mock bids on actual jobs that the facilitator was familiar with – the costs and the actual winning bid,” lending real-world credibility to the training. “All the facilitators are easy to engage in conversation,” she added, “and they are reachable by email and phone. Even after the training I still contact them, as they said to call anytime.”

From Interior Home Painting to Full Renovations
After completing BuildNOLA, Wade started with interior house painting for various local nonprofit organizations. “Painting is something I do at home and am comfortable with, so I wanted to start with that,” she said. “I wanted to take on small projects that I could perform well and build a resume and a set of references before going on to larger jobs.”

Since then, Wade has done several home renovations, including a $186,000 project converting a double home to a single and adding a camelback; she did the electrical, painting, plumbing and roofing. She has also completed a $110,000 home renovation and another project to rehab a flooded house – she stepped in after problems arose with the first contractor and did siding, sheet work, painting, new flooring, cabinets and fixtures, as well as tying into the existing second floor plumbing and electrical.

She currently has several projects in the pipeline – contracts won on which work has not yet begun – including three painting jobs with the city. She also recently bid on another small painting job at the Century Utility plant at the airport.

Hoping to be a Prime Contractor
“I hope to take on larger contracts as a prime contractor, now that I understand how all the pieces go together,” Wade said.

Wade currently employs eight permanent workers and will hire more if needed for a new job. Like Thornton, she puts a premium on local hires, especially if she is working on a job covered by Section 3 of the law governing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Section 3 says jobs and “other economic opportunities created by federal financial assistance for housing and community development programs should, if possible, be directed toward low- and very-low income persons, particularly those who are recipients of government housing assistance.”

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BuildNOLA Profile: Otis Tucker, Jr., Trucking Innovation

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 14:35:00 -0400

Otis Tucker, Jr., owner of trucking and hauling firm Trucking Innovation, has been in that line of work since March 2013. Since completing BuildNOLA in late 2016, he has won more than a half dozen public-sector contracts.

Tucker heard about BuildNOLA at the city’s Office of Supplier Diversity, which “was created to help mitigate the effects of past and present social and economic discrimination by increasing the utilization of certified disadvantaged business enterprises in the procurement of goods and services by the City of New Orleans,” according to the office’s website. In that vein, the office oversees certification, compliance, outreach, training and capacity building for local, small and disadvantaged businesses.

Says Tucker, “I knew where I wanted to be, but I didn’t have a road map.” He praised the “tremendous training” and good teaching delivered by BuildNOLA, as well as the “phenomenal cohort that I graduated with.” He concluded, “I greatly attribute the success that my company has received to Build NOLA."

Sharing the Success
That success has enabled Tucker to hire his first three full-time in-house employees; engage consultants in areas such as financing, marketing and business development; and contract with some 30 “owner-operators with their own trucks and equipment. We put them to work daily.”

In short, “A lot of people are benefitting as a result of the BuildNOLA training,” he said.

He added, “We are constantly connecting to new contractors who are excited that we talk their lingo. Due to the BuildNOLA training, we are able to connect with them strategically.”

Now, with a new office and several contracts with the city and prominent general contractors in the region, Tucker says his “top-line revenue has increased by about 3,000 percent. “It’s a dream come true,” which he attributes to BuildNOLA’s subject mater experts. “Thanks to the training,” he says, “I can respond to RFPs and RFQs, and my response is competitive with those of competitors who have their own teams of experts.”

BuildNOLA Profile: Deborah Heinville and Robert Thornton, Thornville Services

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 14:15:00 -0400

Robert Thornton, who started in the construction industry some 40 years ago, is now in partnership with Deborah Heinville at the firm whose name combines their surnames. They set up the business in 2014, making their first sales in 2015 and enjoying what Thornton called “modest growth,” thanks to a City contract for cemetery maintenance, which was renewed for a second year.

“We grew one job at a time,” Thornton observed. They met the BuildNOLA coordinator last year and decided to attend the training, because “our own experiences are never enough.” At that time, Thornville was continuing to bid on projects and to grow modestly – “maybe $150,000 in sales and an equal amount of contracts,” Thornton said.

After utilizing the skills learned at BuildNOLA, the company has grown further and faster by staying close to the program and its staff, who have become mentors. Thornville employees have taken the training, too; and Robert and Deborah have learned about new business opportunities from program staff.

Last November, Thornville submitted a winning bid on a Louisiana-U.S. Department of Labor project involving supervision of workers dislocated by the August 2016 flood that devastated Baton Rouge and beyond.

The resulting 2,080 hours of work, which Thornville is carrying out in two locations over a three- to four-month period, consists of training and supervising workers who are doing general laborer work such as cleaning up a state highway. “We are providing basic skills training – some workers had never before used a weed-eater – as well as workplace readiness training on how to get a job and keep it,” Thornton said. “So far our workers have completed 27 separate tasks in the Baton Rouge area and have begun work in Ascension Parish.”

Meanwhile, Thornville is still bidding on new projects, including one to rebuild and remodel a city park.

Hiring Local – a Personal Goal
While the public contracts have not required companies to hire local workers, Thornton said his company’s policy has always been to do so, because he and Heinville “understand the benefits. For example, it’s easier to get to work if you live down the street! Also, we are a small, minority-owned business ourselves. We know what it’s like to be disadvantaged. We’re all from the same neighborhood.”

He continued, “Another benefit is the positive effect on the job if people come from the neighborhood. Residents get tired of seeing people coming in from elsewhere, but if the workers are local, they are less likely to complain and are even encouraging about a project” that may disrupt their streets for a time.

Creativity, Flexibility
Thornton also brings creativity and flexibility to his employer role. For example, when he got a job with Southern University at New Orleans – a historically Black University – he went to the engineering department in search of applicants for summer jobs. “We got about a half-dozen senior engineering student applications,” he said. Rather than hire only one, he said, “We picked three of them and staggered their work assignments” to allow more students to get their first jobs as engineers.

This also meshed with his approach of keeping workers close to the work – “Why work on campus and not hire students?” he asks rhetorically.

Thornville has a new contract that does require meeting local hiring goals, “and we know what to do,” Thornton says. “We will train neighborhood people who have no prior experience and pay them living wages.” He adds, “It’s almost like having a security guard in place – no one will vandalize or steal equipment from the place they or their neighbors work.”

He continues, “We know that if we have success, it leads to the growth of our company. And we understand the limitations of our employees, and we can work with them. My mother was a single parent,” he says. “It took extra for her to get to work.”

Better Than the City's Minimum Wage
As an example he mentions one employee, a mother of four, who needs a good-paying job to care for her family. She is earning $18-$20 an hour – considerably more than the city’s $10.55 an hour minimum wage applicable to companies with “significant” city contracts – to clean trash off the interstate through a Louisiana Workforce Commission program funded by the U.S. Department of Labor aimed at helping dislocated workers, in this case from the Baton Rouge flood.

Thornton says that this worker has demonstrated, with her regular attendance, that she can overcome obstacles, assisted by his worker-friendly policies. He allows her to start work at 8 am instead of 7, so she can get her kids to school, and “she has never missed a day of work, other than an excused day,” he says.

By being flexible, he adds, “We have a lot of success, while setting standards up front. When we started this project we knew it shouldn’t work like a traditional project where you might discipline people or let people go. I made a decision that I wouldn’t do that with these workers, which is an unusual approach in this part of the country. But I do hold them to an accountability standard.” He adds that when he had to let one worker go, it was due to a domestic – not job-related – situation.

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ECC to Launch E-Contractor Academy Serving Cleveland & Cuyahoga County

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 16:57:42 -0500

ECC and Emerald Cities Cleveland proudly announce the launch of the E-Contractor Academy in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which will train minority, women, veteran and small contractors to compete for energy efficiency and other green construction projects. Thanks to financial support from JP Morgan Chase and in-kind contributions from the county, the seven-week program of one-day seminars, which begins in February, is free of charge to qualifying local contractors.

The E-Contractor Academy originated in Los Angeles in 2013 as a Citi Community Development-sponsored partnership between ECC and the County of Los Angeles. To date, academy graduates have landed more than $3 million in contract awards from LA County and another $12.46 million from the county’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

“The Cleveland/Cuyahoga County E-Contractor Academy will prepare small, minority, women and veteran contractors to successfully compete for, win and perform public- and private-sector energy efficiency and renewable energy projects across the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area,” said EC Cleveland Director SeMia Bray, who will manage the Academy. Her work includes informing local contractors on how the program can help them expand their businesses while also improving the environment, growing the economy and ensuring equity for minority and other disadvantaged contractors.

Bray added, “E-Contractor Academy graduates will be in a position to participate in the up to $15 million in public- and private-sector projects currently in the pipeline for funding through the county’s Clean Energy Financing Hub, a resource that ECC helped create in 2015.”

Seminar Offerings

The seven-week program – to be held at 6100 W. Canal Road, Valley View, Ohio, 44115 – will begin February 1, 2017, continuing through March 8, with a graduation ceremony on March 15. Interested contractors can apply online.

The class schedule is as follows:

February 1: Introduction to procurement processes and bid requirements for public sector projects
February 8: Accessing capital, bonding and insurance
February 15: Contract bidding principles
- How to bid on energy efficiency and renewable energy projects
- Introduction to green building basics
- February 22: Contractor 101 – Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), local hire requirements, benefits of becoming a building trades signatory contractor
- March 1: Worker and site safety programs
- March 8: Labor compliance (e.g. certified payroll), LCP Tracker software
- March 15: Closing ceremony and graduation

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