A very full house at our November On-Call Engineering Consultant Services outreach event.

PWSA is committed to providing meaningful contracting opportunities to a broad range of diverse vendors through our Supplier Diversity Program. In the past few years, we’ve accomplished a number of goals set forth as part of that program, helping PWSA attract and establish partnerships with talented small businesses and those owned by veterans, women, minorities, the LGBT community, and the disabled.

Supplier diversity is a topic of critical importance for our organization, and one that is supported fully by our Board of Directors. Partnering with diverse businesses helps bolster the local economy, improving the economic vitality of our region and keeping dollars in our communities. These partnerships are a win-win for both PWSA and our contractors. On the one hand, building a large network of diverse suppliers helps us build capacity. For contractors, these partnerships are a way for them to gain experience working on government contracts, thereby growing their capacity in that space.

In 2022, we further bolstered the program, implementing and holding office hours for diverse businesses interested in working with us, creating a Supplier Diversity Program annual report, hosting two outreach events, and completing project audits for diversity goals.

This all culminated in 2023, where we again improved upon our initial accomplishments. We increased the number of outreach events, created targeted procurement announcements sent directly to vendors, and began recognizing our outstanding vendors through the RAVE profile series.

For our largest outreach event, held in November, we partnered with Southwestern Pennsylvania Engineering Outreach to host a two-hour informational session on one of our most popular contracts – the On-Call Engineering Consultant Services.

In all, 83 attendees from 58 individual firms – 27 of which were small or diverse businesses – joined PWSA, learning directly from our procurement and engineering departments about expectations of the upcoming 2024 contract. A panel of current on-call prime contractors and subcontractors answered attendee questions around a variety of topics and suggested ways contractor teams can work well together.

In the upcoming years, we’ll continue to focus on growing our Supplier Diversity Program. With more outreach events planned, we’ll build upon successful events – like our Meet the Team event, where diverse businesses can network with our project managers.

Diverse businesses interested in contracting with PWSA are encouraged to schedule office hours with our Senior Manager of Performance and Program Administrator, Emily Pontarelli. To stay up-to-date on events and other upcoming Supplier Diversity efforts, please create an account with our procurement platform.