Dear Small and Underutilized Business Enterprise,

    As a member of the SDCCD database of certified Small, Disadvantaged, Minority-owned, Women-owned and Service/Disabled Veteran-owned Business Enterprises (S/D/M/W/DVBE’s) I am pleased to invite you to attend the San Diego Community College District’s 4th Annual Contractor Networking & Outreach Event, designed to bring together some of San Diego’s largest and most prominent builders with small and historically underutilized businesses ready to  provide subcontracted trades, professional services or supplies or materials.

    This year’s event will be held on Friday, July 29, 2011, at our beautiful San Diego Miramar College, located at 10440 Black Mountain Rd., San Diego, 92126.  Registration will begin onsite at 7:00 a.m. with a hot breakfast buffet starting at 7:15 a.m. and continuing through 9 a.m. This is a no-cost event but is very much geared to firms with one of our targeted business certifications, not large firms.

    During the breakfast service, we’ll have a short program to provide you an update on the District’s $1.555 billion Propositions S and N Construction Bond Program, along with information about the Design/Build delivery method we’ll be using for the majority of our future projects.  As part of our Design/Build Requests for Proposal, we require submittal of a Subcontracting Participation Plan, worth 10% of the overall RFP score. As part of this plan, proposal teams are asked to identify the following:

    • Subcontracting goals, including the figure for planned subcontracting dollars that will go to subcontractors, suppliers or professional service providers with S/D/M/W/DVBE certifications.

    • Trades, professional services or products planned for subcontracting to each of these five groups.

    Following the brief speaking program, you’ll be invited to visit the approximately 30 large builders and MEPs to market yourselves and provide information about your products or services and your business certification(s).  We hope this will be an unprecedented opportunity for you to introduce yourselves to the firms we expect to pursue our future Design/Build RFPs and to be considered for inclusion in their required subcontracting plans.

    What do you need to do?  Please register yourself here or call the San Diego Contracting Opportunities Center at (619) 285-7020.