July 17, 2018

Dear Entrepreneur:

Sound Transit encourages eligible firms to become certified as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs). If you are a small business and are owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individual(s), your firm may qualify as a DBE. We encourage you to join us Friday, September 21, 2018 9AM – 12PM for our Get Certified Workshop.  Staff from the Washington State Office of Minority & Women’s Business Enterprises (OWMBE) and Sound Transit will be on hand to assist you with the application and answer any questions, registration is required Click Here.

In the next twenty years, Sound Transit will be making significant investments in our transit infrastructure with projects all over the Puget Sound region. As a recipient of Federal funds, we operate a DBE program. For Federally funded contracts, Sound Transit may set a DBE goal for a certain percentage of that work. That means that only DBE certified firms that are certified in the state of Washington may compete for that portion of the work. The prime contract who wins the award works directly with the DBE community to meet that goal.

Sound Transit has a three year DBE goal, measured annually, and sets specific contract goals to ensure we make the overall annual goal. Sound Transit’s current DBE goal is 16.1% for our federally funded projects. Certification opens up that dedicated percentage of work to you as well as offering other benefits. When you are certified, you are listed on OMWBE’s website and it helps other businesses find out about you. It also can open up additional training opportunities, events, and technical assistance programs that you may be interested in participating in.

We hope you will be a part of this work! We encourage you to assess your qualifications and see whether you are eligible to be certified as a DBE. If you are not eligible, we also encourage certification as a Small Business Enterprise with OMWBE or through King County’s Small Contractor and Supplier certification. Of course, you do not need to be a certified small business to do work with Sound Transit, however, we encourage certification when possible.

If you have any questions about certification, please contact OMWBE at 360.664.9750 or visit their website at www.omwbe.wa.gov.

Sincerely,

Leslie D. Jones

Director, Office of Small Business Development & Labor Compliance