“There needs to be a fundamental shift in supplier diversity programs that will now have companies implementing programs that will monitor economic inclusion and its overall impact to the company as well as to the local economies” – Florence Amate
Situation: MGM Resorts was interested in building a Destination Casino Resort at National Harbor, creating thousands of new, local jobs, providing enormous economic benefits to the region, and specifically to Prince George’s County, MD.
Whiting-Turner needed regulatory compliance diversity reporting services in support of the economic inclusion and workforce utilization analysis and reporting for the construction of MGM National Harbor.
Challenge: The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, as the General Contractor on the MGM National Harbor project, needed to engage with a firm that understood the regulatory requirements, could define a process for the collection of payment data from vendors in the various classifications, and provide analysis and develop meaningful reports.
WT engaged Laisar to provide technical support because of its extensive expertise in supplier diversity compliance monitoring services for large-scale public/private projects.
Approach: Laisar worked closely with both MGM National Harbor and the General Contractor, The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company to analyze resource allocation and alignment.
Laisar’s deliverables included:
- Identifying contributing constituencies, internal and external
- Considering intra-organizational lines of authority
- Identifying the technology that would support operations
- Identifying symptoms of potential trouble areas.
Laisar designed an MBE toolkit for the WT Diversity team to use in the onboarding process of all new companies for MBE and Workforce reporting. This included:
- Generating monthly and quarterly reports designed to present the information and data collected to enable stakeholders to make an informed decision
- Delivered quality management process to ensure tracking and submissions were done correctly
Outcome: Following each technical assistance project, Laisar submitted a final progress report to OCE staff The Assistance Project Report detailed Laisar’s findings, including recommendations for follow-up actions with the jurisdiction.
The highlights of outcomes included:
- Supplier diversity compliance reporting
- A streamlined workflow ensured that over 85% of all active vendors reported their payment information and workforce labor hours on time
- Design and implementation of workflow for data collection, analysis, and reporting
- Laisar developed algorithms to check for accuracy, data integrity, and a 24-hour turnaround for thousands of payments from data collection to reporting preparation
- Development and implementation of a system of records to process high volumes of data including Workforce Utilization
