Disadvantages Business Enterprise Lessons Learned on Design-Build Contracts

The purpose of this paper is to share lessons learned from administering the disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) program on the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) State Route 99 tunnel design-build contract. This $1.09 billion contract contained an 8% DBE goal. When the design-build contractor announced that STP would not attain the goal, the DBE community contacted state and federal authorities to protest. An investigation by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) found that WSDOT was in noncompliance with its oversight duties of the DBE program. WSDOT entered into a conciliation agreement with FHWA to implement corrective actions and ensure that the contractor would achieve the goal or demonstrate a good-faith effort to do so. After working closely with FHWA and the contractor, the project was able to not only achieve the goal, but also to become a model for other projects and programs. As a result of these efforts, many lessons were learned, including that the owner needs to be proactive in its oversight of large megaprojects and the DBE goal needs to be carefully established to ensure attainability.