"Indianapolis airport clears way for minority contractors"

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Airport clears way for minority contractors
By John Ketzenberger
The Indianapolis (IN) Star
 

Twenty-two percent of nearly $750 million is a big number: $165 million.
  
That's how much businesses owned by minorities and women have reaped so far
as contractors in the midfield terminal project at Indianapolis
International Airport.

Behind that number is Gary Gibson, who leads the airport's diversity
program. He wrote the state's first minority contractor participation
guidelines in 1993. He also was commissioner of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles
from 1997 to 2002.

The airport is exceeding its overall goal of contracting 14 percent of its
work with female- or minority-owned businesses, but Gibson dismisses the
notion that there's a quota system in place. He's not looking to defend
himself against lawsuits alleging he is steering the contracts.

Instead, Gibson is summoning the Statehouse diplomacy he learned at the BMV.
He points to the Contractors Assistance Program Seminars, a six-month series
of brown-bag lunches that put big contractors in touch with the subs.

"That program is evidence that being inclusive is not what they say, it's
what they do," said Turae Dabney, executive director of the Indianapolis
Black Chamber of Commerce.

Here's another number: 189. That's the number of minority- or female-owned
businesses with contracts for airport work.

Cheryl Cunningham has one of them. Her 20-year-old engineering firm has
added five employees since getting its first airport contract three years
ago. Now 17 people work in a new building in Avon that can hold 30.
Cunningham plans to fill it.

Gibson likes to hear such talk, though he admits to hearing from critics who
doubt the program's sincerity.

Gibson offers two thoughts. The program's top goal is to help build viable
businesses. The other thing is this: "There is not one person who became
successful without help from somebody along the way."

Worth remembering.

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