 Good morning, everyone. I want to thank you for joining us today. We know how busy your schedules are, but we're extremely happy and glad that you found time to be a part of this event today. I know a lot of you are used to our in-person event where we actually have a full house of people. Unfortunately, due to the current climate, we're unable to do that, but we still want it to hold this event because we understand the diversity and inclusion, how important it is to our overall city and how important it is to our procurement process here at the City of Columbia. As a city, we exist to meet the needs of a very diverse community, which requires that we not only understand, but also implement principles of equity, diversity and inclusion. Most of you are aware of our citywide 10% goal. It was initially 10% in 2015. That was actually established by our city manager in an effort to make sure that we increase participation of our minority and women-owned businesses in our procurement process. Because of how well our city departments have done since 2015, last year, Ms. Wilson actually increased that goal to 15%. I'm happy to say that as a result of this effort, last year in 2019, over $35 million was spent with our minority and women-owned businesses within the City of Columbia. So we're very happy about that. That's a great tremendous accomplishment. And again, it's because of our leadership and it's because of the community. Because we also understand the vested interests that you have as a small business owner is succeeding. So without further ado, I want to turn this over to Kalina. But again, thank you so much for being a part of this. You will have an opportunity to have a full listing directory that we put together for you of all of our small businesses that usually you would be able to meet in person. If everyone could please mute the phone for me. I remember it was right before I think it was at the end of last year beginning this year that I was reaching out. Aisha, can you go ahead and mute everyone's phone for us? Yes. Who had been kind of my contact. Be able to. But again, we have a number of those partners. Our departments are on the phone from the City of Columbia, as well as our community partners, both public and private. They're also part of this event today and they're on the phone. So although they're not able, you're not able to start directly with them. They're here. Most of them will probably, we will acknowledge them at the end of this conference. But please understand, we have an open door policy even during this event. And even through the current environment that we're living in, we still want you to do like you have a counseling. Kalina or Aisha, can you all please have them mute their phones? Thank you. But we will certainly make sure that you have a listing of all of the departments that are part of this process at the City of Columbia, as well as our community partners, both public and private that are here today. And we have a number of technical assistance providers that can help you with your business and help you put the infrastructure in place that you need to make sure that you're successful and also able to pivot during this crisis that we're in. So thank you again for being here with us. You don't understand how important you are to us as a city. We can't do well unless you do well. So we're here. Melissa, you're muted. So again, thank you again for being with us. We look forward to having you today and I'll turn it over to Kalina. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you again to everyone who is on the call to this morning. We understand that this is kind of, you know, a little different from what we usually do when we have this event in person but due to the current environment and taking precautions and being socially distant. I wanted to provide this in a safe environment. And also, we just want to let you guys know that we have a lineup of some great presenters today and we did something a little different. Now traditionally in years past we heard from either the community partners but today you're also going to hear from those in the private sector to talk to you about supply diversity and supply diversity is something that did not just come up. Due to the current current social climate, a supply diversity has been around for many years and many companies in the public and private sector are using this initiative to help those small businesses to grow and to expand. And also if they also look at supply diversity as a way of kind of expanding their services to to minority owned businesses and to business and to people of color as well. So, while with all that said I just want to give a few housekeeping rules again if you are on this call if you're dialing in by telephone or if you're on a device. We ask you to please keep your device on mute so that way our attendees can hear all of our presenters today. Also, we will have a question and answer session toward the end of the conference so if you have any questions, please put your questions in the chat but make sure that you put either the, excuse me, the speaker's name or their company name so that we can continue to address that question to. And so we'll go ahead and start with our first presenter. And our first presenter is Miss Beth Ruffin that spent 20 years in corporate America before realizing her dream of entrepreneurship, owning her own boutique consulting firm the everyday inclusion is that this committed to making our world more inclusive and consulting coaching and speaking. She's also the host of at the table, a weekly podcast about elevating the voices of the underrepresented best first book get up details her journey to self acceptance. Her second book you belong here explores the topic of self inclusion. Everyone has a purpose and has the power within them to impact life. She is a mom to one daughter in her spare time blogs and travels. Please welcome our first presenter, the owner, owner principle of the everyday inclusion is LLC, Mr. Thank you, Kalina and good morning, everyone. I am going to request access to share my screen. And funny enough, the picture that Kalina had up on the screen. I had the same shirt on don't you just love when that happens. So all of all about consistency here. So good morning everyone. Today, we're going to spend a total of 30 minutes together. We're going to spend 15 minutes together now, and then we're going to come back after both of our guest speakers have spoken and we're going to spend some time then and so let's talk a little bit about what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion. You're not there you go. Thank you. We're going to talk about inclusive spending, and then after and we're going to talk about the value bring as a minority business owner. And then at the end we're going to talk about what's next so again if you have any questions put them in the chat, and I'll be happy to answer them for you during the Q&A session. So just a quick level setting here, let's talk about the difference between diversity and inclusion. All right, because a lot of people use them interchangeably but they're actually not the same thing. So when we think of diversity, diversity is a fact, right, it just means that we have differences. And so if you have two people in the room, you have diversity. And for the purposes of the city and for many supplier diversity programs, diversity usually rests on people based on their race and ethnicity and based on their gender. Right, but we have a lot of ways that were different. So remember diversity is a fact. Now, inclusion is a behavior. It's a feeling, right. And what inclusion is, is it tells someone you belong here, right, you can be unique and you still have value. So it's about acceptance, belonging, collaboration, commitment, right. And so a lot of times when people are looking at supplier diversity, as indicated by the name, they just want to make sure, let's just make sure that we have this many vendors who are different. But instead, people should be looking at this as inclusive spending. Right. So let me tell you the differences. Sorry, can you speak a little closer to the mic? Some people have some trouble here. Sorry, yeah, is that better? I forgot to pull my mic down. So let me, so let me just go back really quickly and recap since people couldn't hear me. Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a behavior. And let's look at how they are different. So diversity could be the number of minority owned companies that are registered with the city of Columbia, or with an organization, right. But inclusion would be how many of those companies are actually doing business. Right, so that's the difference between that fact and that behavior. Let's look at some facts though when it comes to diverse businesses. Businesses owned by people of color are significant in the United States. Right, look at this. 22%, almost a quarter of US businesses are owned by people of color. Women own almost 30% of US businesses. And as many of you probably know women of color owned businesses are the fastest growing market. And then let's not forget for the LGBTQ community, they are approximately 1.4 million US businesses. Well, what does this mean. This means that organizations both both public and private cannot ignore the fact that diverse businesses exists. They cannot deny the fact that diverse businesses bring value, and they cannot deny the fact that they need to work with them, right. There are huge and a large significant portion. So let's look at what how inclusive spending is different than just saying hey we just want to have diverse vendors. When someone is inclusively spending, they are deliberately making sure that they're purchasing goods or services from specific underrepresented categories right. What does this do what are the benefits of this. Well it advances social and economic development because we know that if businesses in our community are thriving, our community thrives, right we know that. And focusing on the inclusion of our suppliers, it positively impacts our communities. And it helps us deliver our product and services right our value to diverse communities. So it's more than just, I need to meet this percentage that I've been given. It's about I want to make an impact in the community. And you are a huge part of that. Right. Let's look at the benefits to a company or an entity when they're practicing this right. It's promoting innovation, because if you keep if an organization keeps firing and contracting with the same vendors. Right. There's no room for innovation. As a diverse business, you bring different experiences, expertise, perspective, different ways of doing business. Right. It also provides multiple procurement channels. So now you get to spread. Right. They are able to now have a variety of vendors to choose from. And we've also talked about that community impact. Right. Where, if you are working with businesses within different communities, it impacts that community, right. There's also that economic impact. Right. And then it broadens that access to a network. So again, we're not just, you know, companies are not just using the same businesses, the same vendors over and over again. But here's what's exciting. What are the benefits to you. As a diverse vendor. Well, studies show that minority business owners who participate in a diverse or an inclusive spending program. Their businesses are 15% more profitable. And at the end of the day. Right. I'm a business owner right with you. And I love what I do. I love the impact I make. But it's also about the financial impact to my business right. And so think I want you to think about as we hear from the next two speakers. I want you to think about your value. Often times, we hear businesses who they want to hear from the organizations that they want to work partner with right, and we play so much value on them, but I want you to think about your value. I want you to think about what you bring to an organization. How are you different. What's the value you bring and how are you helping them meet their goals see it's not just that we need them they need us as well. So I want you to keep those thoughts forefront. I'm going to come back after the next two speakers and we're going to now talk about how do we make the connection and how do you position your business as a minority vendor with private and public organizations. So I'm going to now turn it back over to Kalina. And she's going to introduce our next speaker. And again, just want to reiterate just to make sure that each of you that are on the call right now that have heard breast presentation she is going to come back after our last presenter and just kind of give a brief overview of what was discussed on today. So please, if you have any questions for bed, please put those questions in the chat. And also for those of you who are on the on on the phone right now, please hold your questions until about 1035 and we'll be answering all of our questions then. So we'll go ahead and move on to our next speaker. Our next speaker is Mr Dallas Simmons he is the supply diversity program manager for the mean energy. Dallas Simmons is supply diversity program manager in the SCM procurement and center of excellence department with the main energy incorporated as supply diversity program manager he is responsible for promoting and implementing the main energy supplier diversity as well as driving value enhancement in supply chain management strategies. He is a primary contact with external supplier diversity advocacy groups, diverse suppliers and peer utility supplier professionals. Simmons joined the many energy in 2001 as a manager in accounting. He became the manager of accounting services in 2003 project manager six Sigma in 2006 and manager of shareholder services in 2009. He assumed his current position in 2016. Before he joined the many energy Dallas serve as comptroller for Virginia Union University from 1990 2000. He oversaw the university's accounting financial aid and student accounts departments. Prior to joining the administration at Virginia Union in 1990 Dallas word in the corporate accounting department for Duke Energy and Charlotte North Carolina. In that role he was responsible for preparing the company's monthly income income income statement and balance sheet as well as analyzing monthly earnings for upper management. Dallas received his bachelor's degree in accounting from North Carolina Central University, and he is a certified public accounting. He currently serves on the board directors for the Metropolitan Business League. Carolina is Virginia Minority Supply Development Council and team Richmond a a you boys basketball. Please welcome our speaker today from the million energy Mr Dallas Simmons. Thank you Collina can you hear me. Yes sir we can hear you. Good. Good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to be here and talk with you about our supplier diversity department at demean energy and why supplier diversity is important to us. How we're structured. How you as a diverse business can introduce yourself to to do mean energy and hopefully do business with this in the future. If you can go to the first slide for me clear. Thank you. So our supplier diversity department is governed by our executive diversity council. They oversee the company's diversity and inclusion strategy, which includes our commitment to diverse suppliers and our community partnerships. So the question we are always asked is why supplier diversity why is it important to us. One we feel that it's the right thing to do as a company we are supported by diverse population. And we believe we have a responsibility to reciprocate and do business with companies that look like our constituents. We actively partner with over 20 government agencies minority business groups and advocacy organizations across our footprint, and I am the primary person responsible for for these relationships. And I'm going to take a step back. I took the assumption that many of you know what, what we do at demean energy but let me take a step back we are an electric and gas utility company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. But we do operate in 16 states across the country. For electric side of our business we have operations in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. We have gas operations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania. We have a nuclear plant up in Connecticut, gas operations out West and Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and we have solar farms across the United States. So jumping back into the presentation. When we're talking about supplier diversity and why we do it. It's also good for our business. A diverse supplier base leads to improve supplier performance, competitive pricing and enhance creativity and innovation. And our partnerships with diverse suppliers translate into economic growth and in our service territory. Next slide please. In energy for diverse classifications we we look for companies that are minority owned women on service disabled veteran, small disadvantaged businesses veteran hub zone, LGBTQ and disability on businesses. We encourage third party certification but we do not require it. We do require self self certification. The only diverse classification that we require a third party certification is hub zone. The types of spin that we capture for our diverse spin. We have prime diverse spin spin directly with our diverse players. Tier two spin, where the diverse player is a subcontractor with one of our nine diverse prime suppliers. We also capture diversity spend from use of our flex card or our credit card information our bank is able to provide us monthly reports on our spend and which of the vendors are diverse. Next slide please. So how do you become a vendor at with demean energy. Number one just like any other company you need to register in our portal. If you visit our website demean energy calm back slash suppliers back slash potential suppliers. You'll see the information to join our reba network. There is also a job aid on this particular page that will help walk you through registering in our portal. And if you have any questions there's a contact us button, and you can reach out to our reba support team. Now, one of the we just went to a reba less than a year ago. And what I hear from a lot of vendors is, well, we're already registered and a reba for other companies. Well, that's great, but you still need to register in our portal to do business with us at dominion we will pay for that registration and your access in a reba to be on in our system. So once you're registering in our system then you're able to link your other a reba account with our information but you do have to go through our portal and register. Next page please. So on the potential supplier registration form. And when you first go in what we call it internally as the proof registration form. It's going to ask you for very basic information company information, your ownership information, which will include your diverse classification, your contact information. Meet a representative at dominion whether it was at a conference or an event or through an affiliation. Again, this is just very basic information that gets you into our system. Next page. So, so some of the key points that that we want to highlight here is is make sure that you complete all of the fields in the registration form. To help our sourcing specialists be able to find you when they're searching for a supplier that can provide a particular service or or product to invite you to participate in our one of our upcoming bids. So please make sure you complete all the fields. And again, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our reba sourcing team or you can reach out to me directly. So after after you complete the pre registration form, you will receive an email confirmation that your form has been received and approved and at that point no further action is needed from you. Again, once our sourcing specialist category managers search and find your information in our portal and invite you to participate in the bid. You will be invited to complete the registration process in a reba and that's where you'll add your insurance information, financial information, safety, you can upload capability statements, certifications, etc. We do not post any of our opportunities on our website or anywhere else. So it's very important that our buyers know who you are, the service that you provide that way they can invite you to participate in our bid process. So you may be asking what are we currently buying. This is just a short list of some of the high level items or services that we constantly are looking for. So we're an electric and gas company so we're always looking for electric transmission overhead construction companies, electric substation construction companies, right away access and road building site preparation, landscaping environmental services. So solar is in renewables are huge for us right now. So we're constantly looking for solar companies that can be in the solar on M or even solar construction. We're looking for traffic control, gas distribution services, gas surveying, gas locating services, plastic pipe replacement, general construction services such as carpet drywall painting, etc. Again just general construction, when it comes to facilities construction and maintenance. Those are services we are always looking for it for new companies. You know, when you drill down into some of those services and the types of business that we do. Sure. Time to time we will look for staff augmentation companies, marketing companies, various consultants, whether is HR consultants or diversity inclusion consultants so those are the one offs. Naturally, if that is your lot of business, we'd love to meet you to learn more about the service that you provide. Include you in our database, so that when those opportunities arise, we can give your names and forge your information to our sources specialist to talk with you more about the service you provide. And is it a good fit for demean energy. Next page please. So as I mentioned earlier, we work with over 20 advocacy organizations across our footprint and this map sort of gives you an idea of the companies we currently work with and or sponsor and where they're located so out of the 20 plus organizations. We have a relationship with five national organizations, the NMS DC NMS DC, we bank NGL CC disability in the National Veterans Business Development Council. And then as you guys are aware, each of these organizations have various regional affiliates. So, because we're spread out across the country, we are members of their regional affiliates as well, such as in North Carolina South Carolina Virginia, we're members of the Carolina's Virginia Minority Supply Development Council. We're also members of the Greater Women's Business Council with women owned businesses as well as women's presidents educational organization in Virginia, along with various chambers of commerce across our footprint. So we, we look to partner with them, meet their members, learn more about the services and the materials that they provide. And then introduce those businesses to our supply chain organization and or business unit to hopefully enable us to do business with them in the future. Next page. So this page is just gives you another breakdown from the previous page and know that the previous page is a little busy. So these are the, again, the various organizations that we sponsor and and our members across our footprint. Next page. Again, thank you for giving me the time to talk with you a little bit about the mean energy and our supplier diversity department look forward to your questions and meeting you a little bit later this morning. Thank you, Mr. Simmons. That was a great presentation. I hope that all of our participants that are what our attendees that are on these on the conference today, had the opportunity to absorb and learn more about the many the mean energy and their supply diversity program. We're going to take a quick a little brief direction and we're going to recognize some very important people that we have on the phone and to do that I'm going to turn it back over to the director of the Office of Business Opportunities, Miss Melissa. Thank you, Collina. I just wanted to take time just again to recognize our city departments that are on the line today. The tremendous increase in utilization and the utilization of minority vendors at the city of Columbia could not have been done without the city staff and the leadership from the top. And also the staff that are committed that work with our vendors on a daily basis. I would like to recognize two of our assistant city managers that are on the phone right now. Mr. Clint Shealy. I don't know if he wants to say anything. His department. He's over Columbia water. And as many of you know, there are a lot of different opportunities there for minority participation in different contractual procurement opportunities. Clint, would you like to say anything. Hey, thanks, Melissa. Appreciate that. Good morning everybody. Yeah, pleasure to be with you. And just as Melissa said, we are our utility operation water and sewer and storm water is a is a big, a big enterprise large enterprise for the city and we do a lot of business with folks and are always looking for good local business partners to work with so very keenly interested in attending this conference and helping support Melissa and the overall city goals and we just enjoy building relationships with our local businesses and as many of you on the phone. I see a lot of names that we recognize so we appreciate and what y'all do with us already and for us already and look forward to continuing and building other relationships. So thank you, Melissa. Appreciate it. Thank you, Clint. And we also have assistant city manager Henry Simons. Mr. Simons, would you like to say anything. Good morning. And I am very grateful to be with you this morning. And I echo Clint's comments. I think this is very important. Inclusion and diversity is certainly important to the city of Columbia. So thank you so much, Melissa, for the opportunity of being being with you today. Good morning to everyone. I'm excited to continue here. A lot of the good information that I've already heard but also what we have coming up so so thank you so much Melissa and to the entire city team. Thank you. And I also want to say thank you to all of our partners again our community partners both public and private. There's been a joint effort really over the last couple of months due to COVID to really try to leverage our resources and make sure that we are doing all that we can to work together to get information out into our minority and women on this community. To make sure that you're aware of opportunities but also to make sure you know how to access those opportunities. So I just want to say that and also again thanks to the entire Columbia team. We are all committed to working with you. And we look forward to hearing from you after this event as well. I'll turn it back over to Kalia. Thank you Melissa and thanks again to all of two assistant city manager Shealy and assistant city manager Simons for attending our call as it was stated that we are one big team with the city of Columbia and we are here to serve and to support our minority and women on businesses. So thank you again for participating this morning. I just a couple of things I wanted to kind of bring up to everyone this morning. There were some questions that were kind of putting in chat but I want to go ahead and state those. First off, we are currently live streaming this conference on our city's YouTube page so it will be available to playback if you would like to watch this or if you missed it and just wanted to see how we all look this morning. If you would like to watch it again on the city's YouTube page, we will have the slides and the presentation available at a later time. And for you to view if there's any information that you may have missed or if you something that you may have some questions about. So I just wanted to restate that before we go into our next presentation. And our next presenter is, and I hope I don't get his name messed up is Mr. Jay Alex agony with he's the small business liaison officer for Savannah River nuclear solutions. He is responsible for managing planning, directing and monitoring the activities of the small business program and key supply relationships. He has oversight of SRNS mentor protege program, a DOE department of energy headquarter initiative to assist in you related small business in enhancing their business and technical capabilities is responsible for managing supply relationships and all supply development activities to ensure the successful completion of the SRS mission. Prior to joining SRNS house was a senior supply chain planning analyst with the Northrop Grunman Corporation. Some of his major projects were implementing lean six Sigma improvements in the pipe supply chain, we in the category management strategy for commodity procurement and establishing the capstone program, a talent management program from high potential employees. He is an API CS certified supply chain professional. He was a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy in a former Air Force officer. He was the Department of Energy fiscal year 2017 and 2018 facility manager facility management contractor small business program manager of the year, the Department of Energy fiscal year 2018 mentor of the year, the recipient of the Department of Energy fiscal year 2018 directors award for excellence over was recognized as a 2019. Caroline's Virginia Minority Supply Development Council coordinator of the year in the 2020 recipient of the GM SDC George lotter rising star award. I was received the Northrop Grumman corporate contracts pricing and supply chain award and was also recognized as one of the top 40 under 40 business leaders in Hampton rolls Virginia. Please welcome today Mr. J Alex Agony small business liaison officer with Savannah River nuclear solutions. Okay, well good morning everybody. I will say that my last name is at your mom but that's a great, great start and I know I didn't give you an opportunity to prep so. Thanks again for everything you guys are doing cleaner thanks for putting this together Melissa thank you for reaching out very happy to support. I'm looking at the clock and it's 940. I was supposed to start at 950 so does that mean I get 30 minutes. It does. It does. It does. I'm going to go ahead and schedule. Thank you. Thank you. We want to leave time at the end for questions and for some more interaction we have our city departments on the line to. Any specific questions we want to make sure that we can cover them at the end, but please take your time sir. Oh, no, thank you so much. Thank you. So I'll tell you, I've done a few of these now and they're always challenging so I'll tell you. I've always experienced technical problems so this has been probably one of the better ones I've attended because everything is gone fairly smoothly. The next thing is, you know, in this virtual environment there's no immediate feedback so you don't know if your messages is being heard or not. So I'm going to be looking at the chat and see if there's any comments in there for us. And I'm going to ask you all as much as possible to to participate in this presentation otherwise these get to be dull, and we don't want to do it. I don't see anything in the chat. I'm looking at the pictures and I don't see anybody moving their face. Let's start. So I did this format of talk in August for the Carolina's Virginia Minority Supply Development Council, and they had, or still do actually have a format called straight talk. And I really liked the fact that it asked essentially me to address the membership in three primary areas. Motion, preparation and positioning. And so I thought for some of the talks that I do that are a little bit more concise. This is the perfect format to really get straight to the point and help you all understand what we do. And then more importantly, some of the things that we're doing within the four walls of our company to advocate for you. So who is Savannah revenue solutions we are the management and operating contractor at the Savannah Riverside. This slide kind of gives you an idea of the, I'll say the breadth of scope that we've got. And in terms of landmass and and folks and budget so 310 square miles. I will tell you that's not all populated. In fact, the we have more trees than we have people. We've got a budget of about $2.3 billion, but I will tell you that is our total budget and not our procurement budget or procurement budget for the last two years has landed somewhere just south of $500 million. And we were just shot a little bit above 11,000 employees currently. Next slide please. So what do we do. That's probably one of the things that's that's most important is, as you begin to understand how you can help us you first have to know what we do. So, Savannah Riverside is is Department of Energy site. We were one of the sites that participated in a Manhattan project that help with, we'll say ensuring our superiority during the Cold War. So there's always going to be some form of environmental stewardship because of what we've done right. So that's probably one of our bigger mission missions. The next thing we do is supply Tritium. And that's for the war fighting mission. We secure nuclear materials that that's part of our proliferation mission. And then we do down blend, which is taking highly enriched material and down blending it into lower enriched material. And some of that feedstock goes into other will say commercial nuclear power generation. Okay, we have a national lab, it is the environmental management national lab which is something that we're very happy about excited about. And then we also have support services. I like showing that first slide, because it shows you how large we are in terms of landmass, but also the work and the requirements that we have. It's like maintaining a small city. Next slide please. Okay, so how do you prepare to do business with Savannah urban and clear solutions. So one of the things that's important to you and I think that we've done an excellent job up until this point to speak to what it is in terms of supplier diversity and how, how it works. My role is really to help make sure that we ensure small businesses always have opportunity. What I like to share more than anything else is the federal government is the largest provider of goods and services in the world to the tune of about 220 billion dollars just in procurements. So what does that mean that means that if we are not engaging small business, it's very easy for us to essentially create a problem. I think we had the foresight and Eisenhower had the foresight to understand this. And when we created the small business act, one of the things that they said is the federal government will always be sensitive to the needs of small businesses simply because small businesses are more innovative. There's less bureaucracy. They're able to pivot quicker overheads typically or lower. So with large businesses, the number may look smaller but it's spread across more people. So it's a larger overhead. And then also, we're more likely to pick up the phone and get someone high enough in the organization to make a decision when we call. So when you look at our small business program, one of the things that I really am excited about is we have a small business first policy. And that policy essentially says, if we're going to solicit anyone other than small businesses. It requires my approval. And also one of the procurement managers approvals. So our posture is first to do business with small businesses. And we do require that the buyers when they bring us those waivers they're called that they substantiate them. And if it doesn't pass muster we ask them to go back and look again. So I report directly to the procurement director. And the reason that change was made is because sometimes you'll find that your small business liaison officer or the supplier development person or the small business manager will be buried within the procurement organization, or they won't even be in the supply chain organization and that limits their ability to influence the procurement process. I sit at the table with the procurement director as we're making our strategies so that I can influence to ensure that we are advocating for small businesses to ensure you have opportunity. That being said, our procurement director before the one we have now had the foresad to say to ensure that you continue to have the amount of influence I need you to have. I'm not just going to give you small business relationships to advocate, but I'm going to have you responsible for all of our key supplier relationships. And so I am our supplier relationship. I'd say manager in terms of understanding and working with all of our businesses to help us move our business forward. Okay, next slide please. Okay, so how do you position yourself. I'm going to hit some things here. And I'll tell you when I develop these series of slides, I work very closely with our procurement managers. Here's the piece that I think is the most important to you. It's really easy for me to kind of lay out. These are things you should do. It's more important that I tell you, hey, these are places people consistently make mistakes. And so if you're aware of that, then you can at least not do these things and it kind of gives you a leg up. Is that fair. Okay, let me check the chat. Let me check chat. Okay. So I have a question I'll hold. I will tell you that first for us, we define a small business based on the NAICS requirements. And if I need to I can talk to you more but there's the North American industry classification system basically helps you understand which businesses are large and small, either by revenue or by a number of employees, and it dictates which ones you should look at. Okay, so things you can do, learn the ins and out of government contracting. The worst thing you can do is win a subcontract award, and then not be able to perform because it's one of those things that will really hamper your ability to get future awards. Government contracting is very prescriptive. When you receive the solicitation, you'll find there are a lot, a lot, a lot of pages attached to that request for proposal. But also, there are links within those terms and conditions that you should go look at because it gives you more information. So understand how to do what it is we're doing in the federal government. Also understand that there's a lot of paperwork required. So you want to look at that solicitation and say, what are the requirements I'm required to address in my proposal and ensure you meet every one of them. Okay. At the Savannah Riverside, the number one thing to us is safety because of our mission. And so if you're going to work with us, it's very important that you understand that, and that you make that a priority as well. So, one, safety and security are critical to our business. Also, I kind of gave you an overview of what we do, but go to the website, there's a lot of good information there and I think you should have gotten that in the beginning of this presentation. So when it goes back out, you'll have the website, you'll have my contact information, as well as Lori G nipple who's on my team. But learn what we do and be able to communicate to us in terms of what your value is to us. All right, I can tell you as a small business liaison officer. And Dallas will probably laugh when I say this, one of the things I hear more often than not is they'll ask me what we need. And then I'll say okay well tell me what you do because in the back of my mind I'm thinking okay who do I need to partner with them with what conversations will I need to facilitate. And the answer I receive is well I can do whatever you need. And immediately my brain shuts off because I'm thinking okay, you can't possibly do everything I need because we're so diverse and the requirements we have. I've got time because a lot of times at these conferences you've only got a few moments. I'll stop and I'll coach and I'll say okay I understand what you're saying to me. I understand you want to work with us, but I can't help you if you can't tell me what you do well, because competition is really that start. Okay. So try not to be all things to all people. Tell us what you do. And then it's incumbent upon me to go back and find out which conversations we need to have or if just from our brief conversation I see that maybe you're not ready to do business with us yet. It's to facilitate future discussion so that we can get you there. Okay, next slide. I saw your note Dallas. Thank you. I appreciate that it gives some validity to what I said. Again, communicate your value. I will tell you from a procurement standpoint I used to be a buying manager. One of the things that you may not see is buyers have a ton of requirements that they have to process. So at any given day we work 10 hour days, but on any given day they may have 12 hours of work to do. So when they take time off of their deaths to meet with people. A lot of times they're really looking for you to speak to them in terms of value. So a conversation where you're cultivating them for opportunities to them is not value added. What it is they have what they might have on their desk, and that's part of my job is to prep you for that meeting so you know who's in the room. But speak to them in terms of value and you'll find not only will they find more opportunities for you, but they'll begin to solicit you more right. So that leads me into my next topic. If you receive a notice or solicitation or an email from a buyer. Always, always, always make sure you respond. And here's the reason why. Because there are so many people that they have the opportunity to solicit. If you do not respond. A lot of times what will happen is they'll think you're not interested. And they won't solicit you anymore. And so I would encourage you, even if you're not able to compete or provide a proposal, send a note back just saying thank you for the solicitation. I'm very interested in doing work with Savannah of nuclear solutions. Unfortunately, I don't think that I can propose on this but I'm very interested in future opportunities continue to keep me in the loop. I also like to tell people, because in conferences like this when they're face to face you will find it. And those of you who have done this you'll smile as I say this, if you're a presenter there will be a line wrapped around that exhibit hall to meet with you. And what you'll find is the people you're standing either before behind may have an opportunity they're working on that you can help them with. So as you participate in forms like this, get to know the folks that you're working with get to know the people who are around you. They may have opportunity for you as well. Okay, next slide. These are our existing opportunities. And if these are things that you do in your business, please reach out to me. I can tell you janitorial supplies is one that's a little large. It takes a little bit longer to solicit so I'm not, I'm sorry, sidewalk janitorial services. So if this is something you do please get in touch with me so I can put you in touch with the buyer. Okay. Next slide. Let's hold here because I'm going to say a few things I don't want to give up. I don't want to steal my thunder by going to the next slide. The last two things I talked to you about were preparation and positioning. I like really talking to this slide because it speaks to the things that I'm doing for you, which a lot of times you don't get a chance to hear you just hear us tell you. And here's what we need from you. Please provide this and X, Y and Z. But you need to know that I'm actually within my company advocating for you to receive opportunities. So if you will go to the next slide, it speaks to the things that I'm doing that help you. And you don't even know I'm doing them. So how about that. Part of my job is to make it easier for you to do business with us. A lot of times the requirements and federal contracting can be daunting. I'm actively working as well as the headquarters department of energy to make it easier for you to understand those requirements so you have better opportunities at success. I'm also developing strong relationships. That's why I'm working with listen and the city of Columbia, because we want to access to the best suppliers that are out there. That's part of what I've given myself a charge to do is, if you're out there and you're good, I want you to do business with us, because it raises the bar on the level of goods and services that we have the opportunity to engage in. So now that being said, I'm not promising work to everybody. But the one thing I can promise you is if we do link up, I will do my best to make sure that you at least have an opportunity to be seen by the current managers. We host the meeting once a month. I take all the capabilities of statements that I received all of the emails all of the phone calls. We consolidate that and we bring them to the procurement managers and we asked them which of these people interest you. And then we facilitate face to face meetings we're in the process now of moving those meetings to virtual because it looks like we'll be in this posture for a little while yet. But those are things that we're doing internally to make sure that you at least have opportunity. We partner with different companies and different agencies to ensure that we understand what's currently happening in this supplier development field, so that we can make sure that we're positioning ourselves to have access to the best suppliers. And then obviously continuing to perform next slide. Okay, I like this because it's very succinct. As you're reading I can speak. So I talked about how do I make it easier for you to do business with us. This is one of the examples. I do quite a bit of work with companies and agencies that have out have an outreach mission to engage suppliers to find opportunities that they can participate in. And so I'm always looking to increase access to you, in so many words, in the process of doing that and in giving these talks. I'm also helping to educate you on our supply chain management process so that you understand how we go to market what types of things we're looking for proposals, the kind of cheat sheet I just gave you on hey these are mistakes you don't want to make. And then always we post most of our opportunities on our website. So you can always go out there to the acquisition opportunities forecast and begin to understand the types of things we're doing I see your note on men approach a I'll cover that a second. And then also strengthening advocacy development. So this is a good segue into the men approach a program we currently have the most proteges within the Department of Energy complex we're currently mentoring six companies. It's a lot because I've just got to associates myself and Lori G who works with me. But our men approach a is actually one of the few that's a deviation from the SBA's program. The SBA has an all small men approach a program, but do we does have a variance from that program and so we participate in the DOE program. One of the ways we manage that program is we've created what we call a protege center of excellence. That center of excellence essentially is designed to do three things. One, we want to make sure you have access as a protege to our executive team to understand what we're doing. And, and the things that are important to us so that when we finally get there your position well to capitalize on opportunity. The second thing we're interested in is peer to peer interaction. So one of the things we found is a lot of development takes place just in protege is talking to each other. Now, the next question I can anticipate is okay well what if you've got a staffing company and ID staffing, we try our best not to have like companies in our project program. And that gives you the ability to kind of relax and speak freely without fear of giving away trade secrets right. So that's the second part. The third piece is and I'm very excited about this. We've created a very strong relationship with our corporate continuous improvement group. It's important to you because in this center of excellence, we're able to provide sling six sigma training to you at no cost. Now, granted it's yellow belt training which is basically the bare minimum. But just that knowledge helps you be able to see where there's rate, excuse me waste and inconsistency in your processes, so that you can make those changes and ultimately, it really speaks to your bottom line. So, metaprotege program. Let me see, I saw someone asked about that. We can get to that in the question and answering portion partnering. So, we partner with the city of Columbia. We've also got partnerships with MSDC and their regional affiliates, both the Carolina Virginia and the Georgia Council. And, and we partner with our local chambers of commerce. The reason we do that is, we're not a company that you probably would hear about it, unless you were in the local area. And we're not a company that on the face of it, you would think you could do business with. So, to me, success is you one, recognizing the names of animal nuclear solutions to saying, you know, I know a God there who I might be able to ask this question, who can help me. And that's what my job is. So, we're looking to work with a lot of different agencies and advocacy groups to ensure that we can get our message out and help find those suppliers that we're looking for. We also do a lot of supplier conferences, more virtual now than before, but still always open to those opportunities to help people understand. The final thing that I'd like to point out to you is, I am very committed to performance. What does that mean? It means we exceed all of our small business goals and the socioeconomic categories. Why? Because it is a deliberate effort for us. We started the beginning of the year forecasting what we think we're going to do and spend, and we begin to talk to the buyers at the beginning of our fiscal year in October on where we think we're going to have challenges so that they have the opportunity to look for those types of suppliers before the opportunities pass. It is a really bad thing to be chasing spend in July and August, because most of your opportunities have passed. You'll get a bit of a pump because people will like to buy things right before the end of the fiscal year. But the greatest opportunity to affect your goals is in the first quarter of that fiscal year. So we like to do the hard work of identifying what the forecasts are for opportunities, partnering with our procurement team to make sure they understand, and then managing performance throughout the year. Okay, next slide. SRNS, we make the world safer. I think what I'll do is wait. I will be available. So if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them. But again, I would say thank you, Melissa and Collina. This has been an outstanding opportunity for those who are looking for opportunities. Pay close attention. I've already heard some really good things, and I'm happy to share whatever knowledge I have in the Q&A. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Alex. And just to kind of give a side note, when you hear talk about nuclear, nuclear has a special place in my heart because that's what my professional career started in nuclear. I worked at the VC Summon Unit's two and three construction project for six years before it shut down. So I learned a lot from nuclear, and I have a lot of family members that are still in nuclear at VC Summon Unit one. So this is something that is very special to me, but also is very important information. So thank you so much, Alex, for providing that great wealth of information on to our attendees. We hope that you got so much out of that. So we're going to move on to, we're going to bring back Ms. Beth Ruffin. She is going to come back on and talk to you guys about what you have learned today and making those connections and positioning your business for those opportunities. Beth, are you there? I am. Thank you. And I just want to thank Dallas and Alex. That was amazing. You are the type of organization that we want to work with because you're willing to share with us your time and knowledge so that we know the best way to interact with you. So you all are just prime examples of partners that we'd like to have. So I'm not going to take too much of your time this morning because I know we want to get to the Q&A session. But I did want to just recap some of their comments as well as some of my own of how you can position your business for opportunities. So go through some of them. You know, be willing to negotiate, right? Be willing to take the time to grow those partnerships. You know, you may do a proposal, you may have a conversation that may not go the way you want to, but just be willing to grow that relationship. Let the vendors know, let the organizations know that you're willing for new opportunities. So I'm going to go through those, Alex and Dallas said, make sure that you fully understand the process and the procedures that are required for you to work with those clients. And you should be able to, you know, see that whether it's on their website or whether they do a webinar or you reach out to them, make sure you have all that information. And remember that this is a two way relationship. So make sure that you let those know who are making purchasing and procurement decisions. Let them know what you need to grow a partnership as well. Right. Again, this, they need you just as much as you need them. And make sure that you're listed as a vendor on the minority on their minority business list if they have one. Be proactive. Start to build relationships now. And I love what Alex said, always respond to the RFPs of the RFQs, even if you can't propose at that time. Let them know that you're interested you'd love to do business with them. Start to build that relationship. And there's one to that could really help you stand out. Roll model inclusive spending for your own business and be open about this when bidding for contracts. There, there's a case study that Harvard did up in Massachusetts about the transit system. And when they put out their RFP, one of the requirements for contractors was that they also had to have a, I think it was 25% of their income to be diverse. And so how can you use this to leverage how you stand out from your competitors. And listen, due to the current social climate companies are looking at ways to be more inclusive. This is the time to really stand out. How do you fit into that as a minority business. And then going back to one thing that Alex said, be able to communicate your unique selling position, be able to say, hey, this is how I stand out from my competitors. Such great advice. So how do you carry this forward, right, participate in events, which is what you're doing now. We talked about that relationship building, right, continue attending things like this so you can learn and develop. How you can better position yourself. And again, meet with the procurement offices, schedule a meeting with OBO if you need some help they're there to help you with this. You're not in this alone. And remember your value as a minority business owner, you have unique knowledge perspectives expertise experiences, right. As a minority business owner, you bring innovation and creativity. How do you do things differently. Because of the network that you have, you have access to resources that other businesses may not have. And in addition to that, you have market intelligent intelligence that other businesses may not have. So if you don't remember anything I say today, I want you to remember, you have value, be able to clearly communicate what that is. And remember that as much as you need these organizations to partner with, they need you as well. I'm going to turn it back to Kalina for the next portion but I'm here for Q&A as well. If anyone has any questions, and here's the information to reach out to me, if anyone would like to speak further. Hey, thank you Beth for that great presentation. We hope that you all have received the information that has been given by our presenters and as we stated we are going to come back toward the end of the conference and we're going to do Q&A portion. There's someone that is on the call and I saw they were putting some information in the chat and I wanted them to kind of introduce themselves and who they are and what they do. Is Dominique Milton, are you on, are you on the call? I am here. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Yes ma'am we can hear you. It's been so informative this morning and I thank our corporate partners SRS and Dominion for speaking this morning. Thank you Dallas and Alex. Yes, I wanted to share with your audience that we are having a year in conference. It's called Re-emerge. It is a combination of our business opportunity conference and our MBE summit. We're going to bring together hundreds of corporations and MBEs to do matchmaking. This year we're going to have matchmaking a general matchmaking session and a construction matchmaking session. We're going to have about 11 workshops for corporations and minority business owners. We're going to have some international consultants that will be speaking to the audience and so I invite everyone listening today to join us for that event. We have a certified MBE with CBM SDC. You've already heard this information but please register today. If you're not a certified MBE you can still register and I've dropped a code into the chat for everyone listening today as your gift. If you use BOASD that will give you 50% off your registration for MBEs. And for our corporate partners I invite you to join us as well. There will be a wealth of information. So thank you so much for the platform to be able to share this with your audience. Thank you Dominique. You're welcome. So again we're going to, we'll put that information back out on our webpage and on our social media. If you are interested in attending the reemerge conference that's going to be held in December. And if you have any questions or concerns Dominique, how can they get in touch with you? So our organization is Carolinas, Virginia Minority Supply Development Council. You can just email us at info at CVMSDC.org and I'll also drop my phone number in the chat. People can text me if they have a question. Thank you Melissa. Thank you Dominique. I don't want to add also, turn my camera back on, I also wanted to add that all of this information, contact information for the presenters that we're here today. All of our partners, Dominique, everyone, SBA, talking about our 8A program, we mentioned certifications. If you would like to learn more about those, not just the products and services that these, our partners provide and these entities provide, but also to hear about the certification process and the value of having your DBE or NBE certification. That information will be contained in the directory that is ready. We're going to send it out to everyone at the end of this event or it'll be one of the last things that you get before we close out. But it does have all of the contact information of all of our departments, our partners, and everyone that was on the call today, and everyone that you see here. So don't worry about the contact information, it will be contained there along with the services products or technical assistance that they provide. So thank you again, Dominique and everybody else for all that you do. Thank you again Dominique and thank you Melissa for those comments. So now we're going to get to another speaker that is on the call today. And she's representing the City of Columbia Department of Procurement and Contracts, her name is Ms. Elizabeth Beth Marsh. And she's the procurement manager of goods and services and she's going to come on and talk to you about how can the City of Columbia procurement process and how can you potentially become a vendor with the City of Columbia. Beth, are you there? Good morning everyone. So today I'm going to talk to you about how to become a vendor for the City of Columbia and do business with the City of Columbia. But before I start I want to tell you a story. So we had a vendor that was registered and this is a true story. It's not fake. So we had a vendor that was registered in our EBIT system. Our department now for goods and services has decided to do small quotes through our EBIT system. We hadn't done that before. What went through our EBIT system was everything that was 25,000 and up. So we had actually put a quote through there and there was a small business that had been registered for I think three years. It was a minority business and they actually were awarded that quote for that business and it was like $1,500. It was for debris removal and cutting bushes. So in normal circumstances the way that we normally operate we would have went to who we always go to because that's what we know. When we have those types of things we only, in the city we only have to get one quote, we have to get two if it's over $5,000. We would have went to who we know but we decided as a team and procurement that we want to put more of those small bids on our EBIT system to reach out to everyone that's registered. Because OBO has done a lot of work in making sure that when they do these conferences that they have the business register in EBIT. Well there are some things that we would we never advertise in EBIT that would be one of them. So I just want to stress the point that EBIT is very important if you want to do business with the city of Columbia. We're going to use that more and more to solicit. And so if you need any help registering we have some simple directions, we can help you with that my department can help you. We have any of our departments are able to buy on their own we sort of work in a decentralized procurement because they can buy on their own. But anything over 25,000 obviously we have to purchase in in procurement. I also wanted to talk about making sure that you prepare for the bidding on solicitations just make sure that you take your time, you read all of their requirements for anything that any solicitations that you're sent. If there are questions, you must ask those questions in the time of the question and answer period. If, if you don't ask questions we have to assume that you understand what we met. You need to pay close attention to dates and requirements and scopes of services, complete all the forms and attachments and make sure you get bids in on time. The city of Columbia, we solicit for everything from paper to police vehicles to buildings we do construction services, we do, we procure everything that a city needs to run to operate. So, there are a lot of things that we procure. So we would, we do want to make sure that we reach out to all of the vendors in Columbia, the more vendors that we have that can bid on on our type of procurements, the better pricing we get. So we want it to be competitive we don't want to keep going to the same people, but we have to have businesses register and reach out to us and reach out to our departments to let us know. My office if anyone reaches out to me, when we were able to take people coming in the office I would always meet with everyone. And if you are a business and you want to come talk to me about what you had I'll take the time to sit in the conference room and talk to you about it and see what department would be best. I know OBO does that too. Once they talk to you all they send that contact to me, and I send it out to the buyers. So we have all of that sort of saved in a spreadsheet. It's important that you do your due diligence. And make sure that you're registered and you come to us and let us know what you have what do you have what can you do for us. So that's all I have. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thank you again for providing that great information. And we're going to now turn over to our Q&A portion and I think there's some information that has been entered in the chat. A couple things and I use it has just shared our. I think this is we just added our virtual directory. So the directory is, I think this is the directory is that the directory I sure that's been added. I can't really tell. Yes, it is. And if anyone has any trouble opening it, we can add it to an email with a survey after the call as well but it is added as a PDF in the chat. Okay. And the directory is also going to be available on our website, which is www.columbiasc.gov or slash OBL. We'll have that on our website as well. So now we're going to turn it over to the Q&A portion of the conference. So I'm going to go to the chat first. So Aisha, were there any questions in the chat for any of our presenters? Yes, we've had quite a few. Unfortunately, some of our presenters have responded to them. I think one person asked about the system that Dallas uses to register. And I think he explained that. I don't know if there were any additional questions that they had related to that system. If that caller or that participant had any questions related to that system, just let us know. Okay, and I just saw one that just came up and this question is, well, let me do this first. This one is for Beth. Does the city contract with artists? We do. There have been times that we've had to commission artists. If you're talking about painting or things like that. We've had to commission artists for certain paintings. But that's one that I'll have to look into because we don't do that a whole lot. But if you'd like to send me your information, I'll see what, you know, I'll take a look into it. And Beth, we also do entertainment parts and rec as concerts. So we do utilize entertainers, local artists to do events for us to around the city for parts and rec. And also people that do ceramics and things like that. When the city is accepting children into programs, we have those programs. Okay. There's another question that came up in the chat. This question is for Alex, Alex. This, Jill Rose wanted to know for staffing, do the people need to have security clearance? Okay, so the answer to that question, which I'm sure you all can anticipate is it depends, right? If the scope is, and I know you can probably speak to this very well, Collina. But if the scope is one that requires you to be around, we'll say limited areas, areas where there might be material or information that we would consider. If you're classified will say confidential, then you might need a clearance to do that but a fair number of our staffing opportunities don't necessarily have that requirement. And so it would be very likely you could provide staffing services for us without needing that clearance. Now here's the caveat. The other thing works is we solicit early for what we call basic ordering agreements. We award those basic ordering agreements, and then the individual task orders are completed among the boa holders. We do not currently have, or we have not awarded the new round of boas. So there still is opportunity there. We're not an active solicitation at this point. So I would encourage you continue to look at our website when that opportunity moves above the line because it is on the forecast. It's just in an area where it says we're not currently soliciting this, but it will be coming when it moves above the line. You can certainly send me an email, and I'll reach out to the staffing team. I've provided their email address so you could reach out to them directly. I would encourage you in most communications. It helps if you include me. It's not necessary but it helps if you include me, because buyers get so much information in a day that it's very likely it will fall through the cracks, or they may not respond to you directly but if you include me that I can certainly reach out to them and say hey, did you see this and we have the opportunity to respond. I hope that answers the question. Okay, and just to add that, and that's something that I used to remember what I do in nuclear is that you have to have a background check. And depending on where you, what your position is, I think from what I remember is they go back depending on the company your third party vendor go back seven years or 10 years. So, the people that you hire, they got to have a clean background because the company in this case Savannah River, they may do another background check to make sure there's nothing on their record and that's criminal, and I believe civil as well. So, pretty much whoever the people that you hire that you want to come out to the site to work, make sure they're going to have to do another background check not just with you but with Savannah River as well. Did I get that right Alex. That's clear. That's exactly right so I want to make sure you understand whatever the requirement is, it will flow through that RFP. We do require background checks. We have a third party that does it for us. She was speaking more to the clearances. So the seven years and 10 years kind of matches with the secret and the top secret clearances. But yeah, because of what we do. We do have a force protection service that that kind of provide security at the site, you're, I just put it to you this way if you're concerned about being hired, this may not be the right opportunity for you. Thank you, Alex. I should have any other questions. Yeah, there were questions about applying for DBE and any certification requirements. Okay, I see one that says how does one get certifications for minority veteran disabled veteran. Information is going to be provided in our directory. We will have contact information from the US Small Business Administration. Actually, I'm sorry. No worries. Angela Brewer is on the phone from SBA. She is prepared to discuss the program if necessary. Angela, are you still there. No, ma'am, no ma'am, do you mind sharing with us the certification, the a day certification, but also anything regarding veteran disabled veterans as well. And the women's certification, women's business certification. Yes ma'am, good morning everyone. I thought I had gotten away in law at mercy. But in order to work with the federal government, work with SBAs, VA anything, you have to be registered in SAM first system for award management. And in order to register in SAM, you need a DINES number, DINES and Brass Street, and a tax ID number from the IRS. Once you get that, then you can register in SAM for award management. And in order to register in SAM, the SIRS-DVM veteran is a SEF certified. So the only thing you have to do is check that you are a veteran for a SIRS-DVM veteran. But if you want to work with the VA, you have to go through the DINES in order to register with the VA to work with the VA. But the VA program is a nine year business development program. You can only be in the program nine years. If you get in and opt out, you cannot come back in. It's a one shot opportunity. The first four years of the program is considered developmental. So, you know, the first five years development. The last four years is transitional. So you have to be in business for at least two years. You have to be economic and socially disadvantaged. The rules just changed over the summer. Not the social. You still have to be a minority with anyone can apply and let the federal government tell you that you are not eligible. I am not the one to say you're not eligible because you don't meet the criteria and socially disadvantaged. And as I stated, the economic portion changed from 350 to 750, which means your personal net worth has to be less than $750,000. And everything including your business has to be less than 6.5 million. And then we have a woman on small business program. Well, backtrack in order to register for the program, you have to go through certify.sda.gov. And you have to remember if you plan on doing that to take your my pin to MPN from Sam, because you need that to get it certified. If you don't have that or remember that, you have to go back to it and get it. And for the woman on small business program, you have to do the same thing. You have to register in Sam, of course, then you have to go through certify.sda.gov or do that. Before July, it was a self certified process. Now you have to do it in certified before it updates in Sam, or you can use a third party certifier to certify. But you can do it yourself. Just have to make sure you have all the documentation, everything that they asked for, in order to register for the woman on small business. And that's the certification process now that goes through our headquarters. And lastly, we have a HUBZone program. I think Alex or Mr. Simmons talked about, spoke about that earlier. You have to go through general login services, GLF in order to register as a HUBZone. I'm sorry, somebody's speaking fast. That's because I have a lot of information to get out and I wouldn't prepare for this. But I'll slow down. I will slow down. The HUBZone, you have to go through GLS. And my information is on the handout that Alicia put in, that you should put in, or Kalina spoke about. So you can always reach out to me. I only have a limited amount of time and I have a lot of information to get out. But if there are any more questions about the SCA program that we have, please reach out to me. Thank you. Pam Green, would you like to discuss the MBE certification through the state as well? Thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Angela. Sure. Thanks for having me. At the office, I'm the director with the office of small minority business contracting and certification. And basically what we do is to offer certification for minority owned businesses and women owned businesses. Our website is smbcc.sc.gov. And I think you all have that information, but I'll also put it in the chat. Our checklist of information that we require is out there on our website. We require some financial documentation. And then some other pertinent information, but I think in terms of the number of people who are doing this, the number of people that are doing this is about 1,000,000. And that's about 1,000,000. And we do have a list of people that are pretty much, you have a business in the state of South Carolina and we can make sure that your personal net worth is below the 1.32 million threshold. Those are probably two main criteria. We add you to a database, which is used by roughly about 140 or so state agencies that we work the two main pieces to what we do. Usually the process takes us about 30 to 60 days of process to certifications for minority businesses, but due to COVID, we have a number of packages here. So it's taken us about 90 days to get through the actual certification process. A lot of times people are asking why the certification through our office. Yes, state agencies actually use our database and when they're given certain thresholds they're able to go direct to small businesses such as yourself. We also have a number of prime contractors that will reach out to us to provide a list of minority businesses to fit certain scopes for projects for contracts that they have won. So the biggest piece is just making sure you get all the documentation into us and follow the checklist of information that we do require for the state. And if we have any questions or if we're able to help you in any way, please let us know. The other thing I'll add is that we do have a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Transportation where if you do your certification through them it's kind of a two for one. We can automatically certify you through our office as long as you have been in business for at least a year and have an office here in South Carolina. The caveat is that you can't do ours and then go to subcontinent DOT. So if you do theirs first then they will send us a summary to be able to certify you through our office. But any questions that you may have, our coordinator, Johnny Birch and I are more than willing to help you work your process and answer any questions that you may have. Thanks so much. Thank you, Pam. Thanks, Pam. Is there anyone from the Department of Transportation on the call? Kalina? I think no. Saris Gillins Oliver, she was trying to get on. I think she did get on. Saris, are you there? Saris? Okay, she is not there. But we do have someone from Richland County, the Richland County Office of Small Business Opportunity. Ms. Cheryl Cook-Sherrill, are you on the call? Yes, ma'am. Kalina, I am on the call. How are you guys doing? Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. Richland County has a small local business enterprise certification program. We certify businesses, small businesses that's located in Richland County to do business with Richland County. Our website and contact information, I think, will be in the directory that the city is gonna be handing out at the end of the conference. So we're there to help small businesses that's located in Richland County. Or if you have employees that lives in Richland County, your business located in Lexington or one of the other surrounding counties, but you have employees that live in Richland County and also be certified to do business in Richland County as well. We advocate for our small local business enterprises and we provide information on all procurement opportunities that Richland County has available. As I said, I'll put my contact information and website address in the chat as well as it'll be in the directory. Thank you, Melissa and Kalina for inviting us and having us tell about our certification program. Thank you, Sherry. Is Erica on the phone still? I would like for her to say something. She had to leave. She did, okay, all right. Kalina, we do have some more questions. Someone asked Alice about hazardous and chemical transport. I was just about to get that. Okay. But yeah, Ashley, you have two questions. The first question is, how do we find out your engineering and surveying opportunities and do you advertise in a certain place? Yes, we advertise on our websites, savannahrivernuclearsolutions.com. We also do, for some opportunities, you'd fed a biz-ops. That's how we do our source of sort and request for information. But you could probably get, I'd say, 85% of the opportunities from our website. In terms of engineering, that's another one of those areas where we do base scoring agreements. We just had a round of those maybe two years ago. A lot of our periods of performance are usually three years base with two one-year options. So still in an area where there may not be as much opportunity today, but keep an eye on that forecast, it will certainly pop up there when it's time. For the person that was in hazardous waste transport, I put my information into the chat, reach out to me. Those opportunities typically won't be posted on the forecast, but if I know you do it, I can certainly get you in touch with the right people to make sure you've got the right certifications and licenses and all that permits. And then we can start that discussion and you can talk more discreetly about opportunity. Okay, did I cover it all? Yes, and we have another question for you. And that question is on... So should I have dropped off 10 minutes ago or not? No, you got to stay on. Please go ahead, that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here. This next question is, how would I find out more about your hazardous or chemical transport? Yeah, I think I just covered that one. So have them reach out to me directly. And I think that one is one where we probably need to set up a conversation for the folks who have the stuff that needs to be transported. So some opportunities, it's important that you talk directly to the tech folks because when the solicitation comes out, it'll have a state of work, it'll have the specifications. And you kind of need to know those things ahead of time as well as help them understand that you exist. So we can certainly facilitate that conversation. I know the gentleman personally. Okay, thank you, Alex. And just to quickly reiterate, I think I see some things in the chat. We are recording this on our city's YouTube page. So if there's anyone that may have missed some portions of the presentation, you can go back to the city of Columbia's YouTube page and you can look at certain portion or you can look at the conference again in its entirety. And also a lot of our community partners left their contact information in the chat. They do have their information provided in the directory. So if you missed it in the chat, don't worry, we will have their information in the directory if you have any questions or concerns that didn't get addressed today during the conference. Are issues there anybody else that had any questions? Allen Brown added an eight day fact sheet in the chat. So you can click on that. There's a PDF in the chat of that with some different information. Also, Linda Harvey, thank you for this pointer. If anyone wants to save the chat, there's three dots in the chat box and you can save the chat for future resources if you need that as well. Okay. All right. And just real quickly, is there anyone, any city of Columbia departments? I know we recognized our ACMs earlier, but do we have any division directors on the call that would like to speak, say a few words? I guess not. Okay. Good morning everyone. Oh, Linda, yes I would. Okay. This has been awesome. I just want to say I'm Sandra Wright and I am the director of procurement and contracts, also known as the purchasing agent here at the city. And I just want everybody to know that here at the city, we definitely work towards maintaining diversity and inclusion and all of our procurement and contracting opportunities. But as anything else, we can always do better. So I just want you all to please reach out to us, send us your suggestions, register. I know Beth already covered this, but please go out to our city of Columbia website. That's columbiasc.net. And if you would click on services, right up underneath services, you will see a link to procurement and contracts. And then you will see a little tab over to the right that will say supply or registration. So if you would click there and get registered, you'll be able to bid on opportunities. Most of the opportunities that are currently on eBid, that's our bidding portal, they are over $25,000 in value. We're under that, we're getting ready to start using it for any items. So we're trying to come up with samples of different items that we're putting out. And we're requesting that those bids come in within a day to two to three days max. So the best thing that you all could do is plan, ensure that you are ready to bid, make sure that if there are any type deadlines within our solicitations, that you actually meet those deadlines. But again, this has been awesome. I've learned a lot myself today and I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks everyone. Thank you, Sandra. And again, that was Sandra Wright, the Director of Procurement and Contrast with the City of Columbia. Melissa Luna just added the link that Sandra was referring in the chat, and that again is www.columbiasc.net, or slash purchasing, or slash register. So if you have the opportunity to, and if you wanna register as a potential vendor with the City of Columbia, please go on that eBid website. We will also have Procurement and Contrast, their contact information. Bev is the point of contact for Procurement and Contract. So if you have any questions for Bev, her contact information will be available in the directory. And also Cheryl Cook with Richland County offers a small business opportunity. She also provided their address as well. Their address is www.richlandcountiasc.gov, or slash OSBO. And they too will also be in the directory as well for any additional information or questions you may have. Aisha, anyone else have any questions? I wanted to introduce Alan Brown. Alan, are you still on the call? I am, Aisha, how are you today? Good, if you could just introduce yourself to the group. Hi everyone, my name is Alan Brown, and I am the Midlands Coordinator and Business Consultant for the Columbia Area SPDC. I wanna thank Aisha for giving me an opportunity to share that with you. One question I had specifically for Dallas and Alex was around the timing of your forecast. Alex specifically mentioned that they looked through their forecast to find minority vendors for the opportunities that are coming through their forecast. And so wanted to get an idea of when that process starts to make sure that minority businesses are aware of that so that they know that they need to be in the database for upcoming opportunities. And Dallas, if that's your process as well, if you could speak to that. Thank you, Aisha. Alex, I'll take this first from Dominion's perspective. For us, opportunities arise every day. So on big major projects that we may have a little bit of runway several months where the sourcing specialist category manager is preparing the bid and researching for suppliers to participate in the bid. We have an internal policy that two diverse suppliers are included on all of our RFPs. So if they don't know of any diverse suppliers that provide the service they're looking for, then they'll definitely contact me and I'll do my research with our advocacy organizations and looking at Dunn and Bradstreet and the individuals and corporations and suppliers that I've met over time. So that may be a little bit of runway. And then there are other times when I get an email or a phone call from a sourcing specialist, hey, we have a bid going out in two days and I need suppliers that can provide this type of service. So for us, it really runs the gamut. We set our internal diversity spend goals towards the end of each year for the upcoming year and we try to work with our sourcing team and business units to have an understanding of what the opportunities are, but that always doesn't occur. And again, we get the last minute calls and emails looking for diverse suppliers. So unfortunately for us we can have a long runway or we can have a short runway. So it's really important that as far as registered in our portal as quickly as they can, definitely contact me, get me their information so that I'm aware about them and their services. And when opportunities arise, we can introduce them to our sourcing team. A follow-up question, Aisha. Do you find that your historical spend is a good measure of your forecast to spend? For us, it is. Fortunately, we have, to be honest with you, blown our numbers out of the water over the last three or four years. And so each year we sort of have a stretch goal that we give to our leaders. Our diversity spend goal or spend is a part of our leadership's annual incentive package. So everybody has skin in the game, which is very important, is very visible starting with our CEO down. We meet monthly with the CEO and share our spend numbers and our forecast for the year-end and where we think we're going to land. And so it's definitely a highly visible area. So hopefully that answered your question. So we got off track a little bit. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. We also want to introduce Cheryl Salley with the Benedict College Women's Business Center. Cheryl, could you just give an introduction and then talk about some of our technical assistance that you provide? Well, good morning, still. Good morning. And this has been an awesome, awesome event and a lot of great information. I am Cheryl Salley, serving as the director for the newly designated and federally funded Women's Business Center at Benedict College. And what we do primarily is to help our focuses on women, particularly women of color, but we have all small businesses and minority business, but our focus is also on helping them to plan and position their business to do business with the entities that you see here today, private industry and public, whether it's the city, the county, the state, the federal government and the major corporation. So we want to give our day-to-day activity and focus is on providing that management and technical assistance, positioning and helping businesses to strengthen their infrastructure. And Alan, we've worked side by side for a couple of years and he'll tell you, I'm always about the business systems and making sure that you're ready before you get that certification, before you register and build that business profile. So we just want to make sure you're ready to do business for the short term, but more so for the long term and experience a healthy business life with sustainable positive net profits. So we do one-on-one business consulting. We do a lot of training and a lot of workshops. Matter of fact, this week, tomorrow actually at 11 o'clock, we'll have one of three Money Smart series that just talks about money, financial management and so on and so forth, having that accountability system in place. And I won't get, but we're gonna do a lot of workshops and a lot of training to help make sure that the businesses have the information, the education and the tools that they need to be healthy, healthy businesses and successful businesses. So thank you all so much for inviting me and having me here today. If you need any help with your business development and I implore you to continue to do your research, continue to plan and continue to strategize, but do your research. All the information is on the website. So see what it takes to become eligible for a certification or for doing business with any entity that you wanna sell your products and services to. Thank you, Cheryl. And I have a couple of more introductions, but before that, Allen mentioned that maybe Alex didn't get to respond to the same question that Dallas did regarding the spend. Okay, so I was just gonna say, I understand the question he asked, but I've been doing this a little while. The question he was really asking is I've got constituents who would love to have that information. So one of the things that we do for CDM SDC is we actually provide them a copy of our forecast. If you send me your information, Allen, make sure you have the same. And then more than welcome to partner and work with you also so that you understand what's happening at the site and can engage your constituents before, we reached a point where it's out and everybody else is competing. So be happy to forge that until they chase it. Say that. My main man, Allen, is cutting to the chase, most definitely. I've been doing this a little while. But no, I mean, happy to partner with you. At the end of the day, all of your organizations helped me do my job. So I'm more than happy to work with you to get you what you need so you can help me get what I need. Thank you, I appreciate your time, Allen. Oh, no worries. Thank you, Alex. And so do we have a representative from the Columbia Airport on the call? Maybe not. Okay, what about MBDA? I think, Camille, I saw you on the call. If you just want to speak about the technical assistance you provide to our business community. Good morning, everyone. And thank you all for this wonderful conference today. It's been very informative. I am Camille Shaw. I work for DISA and we manage the South Carolina Minority Business Development Center here in Columbia, South Carolina. And we serve minority owned firms throughout the state of South Carolina. And we basically focus on strategic planning and business development and growth of existing firms. We're funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency. If you're interested in our service, if you're interested in growing your business or strategically planning, please contact us. You may, I'll put my contact information in the chat box. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce our center. Okay. Oh, Tammy is here from Columbia Airport. Morning, everyone. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Yes. And my name is Tammy Head. I'm with Columbia Metropolitan Airport. I oversee all of our janitorial supply purchasing and our DBE and ACDBE program. Our biggest needs and what we like to express is for all of our federally funded projects. It's very important for you to be certified with SCDOT. Although it's not a requirement for your participation to be counted as a DBE by the PROM contractor, you do have to have that certification. On our in-house projects, we do not require a certification, but we currently do not have any upcoming projects as everybody is aware with our numbers and COVID. We have kind of slowed down on in-house projects. But if there's any questions, please let me know. I can put my information in the group chat as well. Thank you, Tammy. I also want to acknowledge Jeff Padlin. He's our Assistant City Manager. Also, he's one of our Assistant City Managers. I didn't realize he was on the call. I do apologize. Jeff, can you say something to the group, please? Hey, I guess he doesn't hear me. But Jeff is very active. He's actually our Senior Assistant City Manager. Missy Gentry is our City Manager for OBO. She's due to a conflict. She wasn't able to join the call. And of course, the City Manager, Teresa Wilson, also had a conflict. They actually have counsel today. So they're prepping for that. But I just wanted to make sure I acknowledged everybody on the call. I do want to ask if there are any other city departments that would like to introduce themselves or say anything, please do so. Missy, thank you. This is Denise Davis. How is everybody this morning? Great, Denise, thank you. I'm sorry, Kalina. I was trying to find my mute button to unmute and Sandra beat me to it. And then it got kind of busy again. But I just want to say, as a fairly new employee to the city, this has been so important to me as an HR Director, as well as just learning what the processes are across the state. I often get calls from businesses inquiring about the very topics that were covered today. So I am better equipped to answer those questions now. And I just want to thank all the presenters. Everybody did a wonderful job. And thank you for the invitation, Melissa. And as with everything that your department does, this was a great, great conference. Thank you, Denise. We appreciate you and your department as well. Kalina and Melissa. Yes. Hey, this is Missy Kaufman. Hey, Missy. Denise stole my comments to you, Sandra, Sandra beat us to the punch. We couldn't get off mute quick enough. So I do want to say kudos to this group for a great conference. Then the network and connections are definitely important. I'm sorry, this is Missy Kaufman, Budget and Primary Management Director here at the city. And great to see this participation and activity. And certainly the networking and opportunities and the opportunities to hear how other organizations are carrying out this important work so that we can learn from each other and continue to grow in this area. Thank you, Missy. And before we go, because we're about, we got about a couple of minutes left before we end, two things I wanted to share with you guys. First off, we do have our virtual directory that I wanted to go ahead and share it with you all. So this is our virtual, this is the city of Columbia, majority business opportunities directory. And this is directory that we've been referring to throughout the conference. This directory is consistent of our city departments, our community partners, and those are with technical training and assistance or certification entities as well. So this will be going out to those who have registered for the conference. And I think Aisha, you're gonna send out a survey as well. And then we'll receive this once they complete the survey. I'll send it out at the same time today. And also, we'll also have this available on our website. Again, our website is columbiasc.gov forward slash OBL. It will be on the homepage, right there front and center for you to see it. And all the, and if you miss any of the individuals who gave their contact information, don't worry. Their contact information is in the directory. And also very quickly, we're going to, I'm going to kind of promote our next event that we have coming up, which is gonna be on Thursday. So Melissa or Aisha, if you guys wanna discuss about, talk about that a little bit. Yes, on Thursday, we have our resilient Columbia CARES Act application webinar. Some of the processes have been streamlined for those individuals applying for loans of $50,000 or less. And we really wanna take the time to go step by step with the application process with anyone that's interested. I've added the link to Eventbrite and the Zoom link so you can register for that. All the information regarding the application and the requirements are on our website, columbiasc.gov forward slash OBO. Melissa, do you wanna add to that? I think that was great. We have gotten a lot of applications in this is for our new Resilient Columbia CARES Act Revolving Loan Fund that was recently awarded by EDA to EDA Economic Development Administration to the city of Columbia. And it's 2.7 million that we're actually putting out into the community. To date, we have probably awarded about 800,000. So there's a lot of changes that we're making just to make sure that our small businesses have an opportunity to participate. The Community Revolving Loan Fund actually set aside a portion of those funds to make sure that there are funds available for those smaller entities that are trying to get their information together. Working with the Women's Business Center at Benedict, working with Alan Brown at the South Carolina Department of South Carolina Small Business Development Center as well. So we thank them for all of their work. Brett, I'm not sure if he's still on the call. Brett Whiting, he's doing a great job at handling those applications. But again, if any of our businesses on the call today you have a need for these funds, or you think that you may need to pivot at this moment due to the environment that we're currently living in, this is a great opportunity for you to get some capital to reinvest into your business, to somehow make sure that you survive through this pandemic. The funds are available. The guidelines are not as stringent as they have been in the past. Economic Development wants us to get this money out into our community. And we definitely want to make sure that our more distressed areas are also represented and have access to these funds, especially those small businesses that were not able to take advantage of PPP or the EIDL funding that was available earlier this summer. But yeah, this is a great opportunity. Again, zero interest rate for the first year, locked in at 2.5% for the remaining of the long term. So if you know of a small business or if you're a small business and you're trying to expand or you're trying to adapt or pivot your business in response to COVID and the economic injury has caused you, please contact us. The information is in the directory. I don't know if Kalina can pull that directory back up again and just flip through some of the pages is in your chat box, but just so you can see it there as well. We're gonna, this is a living document, so it's not a final document. As our city departments send us information, we're gonna add to that as we work with our partners and we identify new partners, we're gonna keep adding to this directory. We think that is important, especially at this moment that you have access to everybody and that you have this information in hand because of COVID and not the ability. We don't have the ability to meet one-on-one right now, but this is a living document. So check back on our website as we update this, but right now this is what we have and we hope this will be a resource for you to use as you try to develop and as our speaker said today, increase your relationships, your partnerships and make sure that you're diversifying your revenue streams as Mr. Brown said earlier to me, don't just depend on one pot, don't just depend on public funding, state, federal, or local, but look at private sources too. So everybody, we're all in this together, but we definitely want to make sure that you're broadening your horizon in terms of revenue streams and that you're not just depending on one source at this moment in time, it's very important that you diversify. Kalina, you have anything else before we close it out? Thank you again to everybody for joining us. No, well, I was going to add that again, thank you to everybody who has participated, great speakers, Beth Ruffin, Jay Alex, I don't know, I'm gonna get his last name wrong again, Agni Yang with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and Dallas Simmons with Dominion Energy. We hope that this information was useful to you that we provide you with a wealth of information within two hours. So again, on behalf of myself, I direct the Melissa Lindler and all of us at the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities, thank you again for participating in our virtual, minority opportunity conference. Wait, Kalina, I did also want to say thank again all of our partners that are on the call, all of our city team, because we are a team, no department works by itself, we all are interconnected, but I also wanted to give a special thanks to all three of them, all four of them, really, Dallas, Alex, Beth Ruffin and Beth Marsh, thank you so, so very much for all the great information that you shared. We'll be calling on you again, but thank you for making your opportunities there at your different entities, Beth, you're with us, but the other three, making it accessible and also understanding that some pieces that you brought out that were just, I mean, it remained current and consecutive throughout the whole, all the presentations and that was the importance of understanding your value, understanding your value, but also being able to articulate it to anyone that you are, you come across, but be deliberating your efforts, build relationships, make sure you're keeping your certifications current, understand the paperwork, again, understand the paperwork, but one of the, I think the most important piece of information that I heard today was follow-up, follow-up. So with that, again, thank you, please let us know if we can be of any service to you. Kalina, you did an amazing job with this event, thank you for your hard work, great job, great job. Aisha also, great, great job. I have the best team, we are the best team, I know some of you on the call, other teams in the city may think you have the best team, but I know we are a great team and this team, we work very well with everyone else and we consider ourselves to be a family, an OBO family. So thank you for all the great work that the team has done, OBO team, but thank you city departments, our community partners for all that you do to make sure that opportunities are accessible to everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Melissa, and again, as Melissa stated, thank you to everyone, our speakers, our city Columbia departments that were on the call today and everybody who was a part of this conference. If there's anything that we can do for you in the future, please reach out to us, let us know. We're not in the office right now, but we are available by phone, by email. And if there's anything we can do for you in the future to help you and your small business, please reach out to us and let us know. Again, on behalf of the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities, I thank you for attending our 2020 virtual Minority Business Opportunities Conference and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.