When Ken Capps took on the helm of the public affairs office at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport in September 2001 one of the first items he planned to address was the D/FW Airport's
Minority and Women Owned Businesses Enterprise (M/WBE) program, which, after more than a decade, had yet to really take off. A study commissioned by the D/FW Airport found that
minority- and women-owned businesses got less than their share of contracts at the airport from 1993 through 1999.
Then the September 11 attacks happened.
Capps was forced to shelve development plans for the next year so he and his staff could deal with the damage to the airlines wrought by the terrorist attacks.
After a year of dealing strictly with the fallout from 9/11 Capps was eager to work on the M/WBE plan -- a critical building block in the airport's $2.7 billion, five-year
expansion that will be fully completed in 2005 and feature a new international terminal, the world's largest and fastest airport train and a Grand Hyatt hotel. When Don O'Bannon
came aboard in the summer of 2002 to head D/FW Airport's small & emerging business department, the duo started to finally put the PR elements in place to raise awareness
about the program and make a better buy-in to women - and minority-owned businesses.
Part of the problem was that women- and minority-owned businesses were not fully informed of the bidding process. "If you're not invited to the ball you can't dance," O'Bannon
says.
The airport revitalized its PR efforts by reaching out to female - and minority-owned businesses via chambers of commerce, minority groups, contracting associations and
minority - and community-owned media.
"We needed to find out who the real influential people out there in the community were who can help us carry the message," Capps says. Once M/WBE contracts started to flow he
was careful to find "success stories" in the program that he could pitch to minority-owned media products such as Al Dia, Black Economic Times, Telemundo and Univision.
O'Bannon stressed that the airport conducted a "targeted outreach" to address the program's constituents. "We didn't just say, 'Give me your contractors.' We told them we
needed plumping contractors and roofing contractors. We targeted market areas so we didn't have a diluted message of 'We want to do business with you' without the companies
knowing our needs and opportunities."
Capps says being proactive -- and not waiting for the telephone to ring -- has been pivotal to the program's success.
"We go speak directly to the [aforementioned] organizations or we invite all of the contactors to the airport for all-day sessions about how to do business at D/FW," he says.
"A lof of these businesses are small and don't know know how to do business with the airport, so you have to aggressively reach out to them, which takes a lot of time and
money."
Capps adds: "Among most of these businesses there's a perception that you're hard to do business with and are constantly giving them the runaround. We have tried to eliminate a
lot of that."
Perhaps most important, starting in 2002 the Public Affairs office inserted language into the RFPs to encourage partnerships with minority- and women-owned businesses.
The various PR efforts paid immediate dividends. In 2002, the board raised M/WBE construction contracts to 30% (from 26%) and raised M/WBE professional services contracts to
26% (from 20%). That translates to $452 million in construction projects and nearly $40 million in planning, consulting and other professional services. And that doesn't account
for about $55 million more in projects that do not yet appear in the books.
Contacts: Ken Capps, 972.574.8080, [email protected]; Don O'Bannon, 972.574.8002, [email protected].