California High-Speed Rail Authority launches online dashboard for disadvantaged businesses

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has launched a new online dashboard that tracks the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) – which include women- and minority-owned small businesses – that are participating on the California high-speed rail project.

“We designed the new dashboard to highlight minority-owned small businesses’ participation in building high-speed rail and to transparently display the contracting dollars awarded,” said Catrina Blair, CHSRA’s Chief of Process and Program Delivery. “The small-business community, prime contractors and the public can now see the progress that we’re making on our aggressive small-business goals.”

In addition to programme goals and small-business participation displays, the dashboard also features an array of new user-friendly visual and graphical data, including breakdowns of minority-owned small businesses working on the high-speed rail programme and total dollars expended to date. CHSRA will regularly update the dashboard to reflect the latest publicly available information.

As of 30 November 2020, there were 574 small businesses working on the high-speed rail programme, including 62 Disabled Veteran Business Enterprises and 185 DBEs. That includes 53 Hispanic-owned firms, 27 black-owned businesses, 16 Asian Pacific-owned firms, 27 Asian subcontinent-owned companies, and 10 companies owned by Native Americans.

CHSRA’s aggressive 30 per cent participation goal for small businesses includes a 10 per cent participation goal for DBEs. Business owners interested in partnering with the Authority can find information on small-business certification, contracting opportunities and vendor registration on the CHSRA website.

The high-speed rail project is currently under construction on 119 miles in the Central Valley, with more than 5,000 construction workers dispatched since the start of construction.