In the next 10+ years, UCSF will spend ~$11 billion on capital projects. “As stewards of this enormous budget, we want to both implement capital projects and create economic opportunities for local communities and diverse business owners who have historically found it difficult to do business with UCSF,” says Brian Newman, senior associate vice chancellor/vice president UCSF Health. We talked with Sharon Norwood about recent efforts to bring more small and diverse businesses on board and what stands in the way.
What has UCSF Real Estate been doing to increase supplier diversity?
Less than one percent of our capital project budget goes to small under-resourced businesses. It’s a big pie. We want the dollars that we spend to go to businesses that match the community we serve. Our goal is to bring down the barriers to entry. Our work centers on relationships, so we are taking a high-touch approach. We’ve held community outreach events focused on meeting small business owners, building relationships with them, and explaining the UCSF capital projects environment. By helping them understand our contracting process, we onboarded 35 new vendors, 23 of whom have received a contract. We realize this is a small piece of the pie but we have an opportunity to positively impact the lives of small business owners.
What stands in the way for smaller businesses?
UCSF is a highly regulated place to work; we are risk averse. Small businesses have been telling us that it’s too expensive for them. For example, they must be covered by $1 million dollars in bonding and insurance. Small vendors also don’t understand the kind of work that is available. Everyone has their eyes on the big projects, but we are encouraging them to look at the smaller work first to get experience.
