The employee in this new position will be responsible for ensuring that the County and certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE’s) participating in transportation projects and programs financed through federal grants meet the administrative and compliance requirements of the grant. This may require visits to construction sites, offices or workplace location of contractors and vendors and investigations. The County recently secured Federal Transit Authority (FTA) Grantee status, which enables the County to obtain funds for transportation projects directly, rather than through other agencies.  As a condition of the grant, the County is required to establish a DBE Program, to ensure that a certain percentage of the work performed on FTA grant-funded projects is appropriately performed by DBE-certified contractors and sub-contractors.

Specific duties of this part-time position will include:

• Providing DBE program oversight to ensure compliance with regulations and to monitor the County’s progress toward attainment of program goals and ways to improve the DBE participation in procurement and contracts;
• Participates with the Purchasing Department and the Contract Specialist in the Transit Section in the identification of barriers within procurement procedures or specific RFPs or other solicitations that might impede DBE’s receiving fair consideration;
• Investigating and/or addressing issues and complaints of discrimination from DBEs before contract is adjudicated and finalized; Intake and processing of complaints.
• Participating in the review of third party contracts and purchase requisitions to ensure compliance with the DBE program requirements;
• Participating in pre-bid meetings;
• Ensuring that reputed DBE companies are on the Unified Certification Program Directory of certified DBEs;
• Conducting site inspections and extensive investigative research to ensure that staff performing the work are employees of the DBE and are performing work as specified under the grant requirements;
• Identifying violations, documenting findings and recommending appropriate actions for review by the supervisor and/or the County Manager;
• Provides grant functions support to the Transportation and DBE Procurements Specialist.
• Implements the complaint process to allow expedient investigation and adjudication of complaints of discrimination, program participation refusals, contract issues and other denial of benefits;
• Advising and reporting from observations, knowledge or discovery of any practice, rule, procedure, criteria or method in the administration of the program that might impact achievement of DBE program objectives with respect of individuals of a particular race, color, sex or national origin; and
• Preparing annual goal and semi-annual goal reports and other reports, as needed.

Located in the Compliance Unit, Office of Human Rights, Office of the County Manager, the employee will report to the Diversity Coordinator, who leads the Compliance Unit.  This employee will also monitor contractors/projects to ensure compliance with Title VI (LEP) standards and Title II (ADA), providing regular updates, noting non-compliance areas and documenting observations to be reviewed by the Compliance Unit supervisor.