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Diversity creates value at
Black & Veatch
To serve its clients’ business needs and complex challenges, the global contractor seeks out diverse suppliers. ECCO Select is a lively one
 Brian Britton, head of supplier diversity, says that Black & Veatch (Overland Park, KS) began its supplier diversity program in 2005 “to further our efforts in meeting the needs of our clients, and the communities where we work and live.”
The first step was to “create a sustainable process to identify and pre-qualify suppliers that meet our specific needs.” Then, the company wanted to create a message “that would resonate with the business community and encourage potential suppliers to register on our Website.
“We have increased the number of suppliers and also their utilization level each year since the start of the program,”
Britton notes.
Global footprint
Founded in 1915, Black & Veatch is an employee-owned engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company. It specializes in infrastructure development in energy, water, telecom, management consulting, federal and environmental markets. Nearly 10,000 professionals, in more than a hundred offices worldwide, work on projects in seventy countries on six continents.
The company takes in more than $2 billion in revenue and delivers solutions that result in “sustainable improvements to communities worldwide,” Britton reports with pride.
Working closely
To find appropriate minority suppliers, Black & Veatch works with local chapters of the NMSDC as well as the national organization. The goal, Britton explains, is to become the “contractor of choice” for small and diverse business enterprises in its industry.
“To meet our goal, we want to use products and services from these suppliers, work closely with them to ensure excellence in project execution, and treat them fairly during all phases of the qualification and award process.”
Black & Veatch purchases or contracts for services that include design and engineering, procurement, construction, ops and maintenance, logistics and transport.
Online registration
M/WBEs and other diverse businesses are asked to register through the Black & Veatch supplier inclusion website, www.bv.com/diversity. The company requires third-party certification, preferably by NMSDC or WBENC.
Black & Veatch’s supply-chain managers are available for both formal and informal mentoring of its small and diverse suppliers, Britton adds.
ECCO Select is a second-tier supplier
 Jeanette Hernandez Prenger is president, owner and founder of Elite Computer Consultants Corp (ECCO Select, Kansas City, MO). Her high-level consulting service has access to hundreds of qualified consultants specializing in technology from IT to total business solutions.
ECCO does its work for Black & Veatch on a second-tier basis. “Our contractors are placed there through EDS,” the large Plano, TX outsourcing and technical services firm, Prenger explains. “But we are working on getting into a direct relationship,” she adds.
Brian Britton, now head of supplier diversity at Black & Veatch, used to work at Sprint, where Prenger had also worked, in IT management, before going out on her own. “In the early years, Brian was one of the first people in the supply chain community who knew my company,” Prenger recalls. “He knew I had quality people, so that gave me credibility.”
Britton also encouraged Prenger to get her NMSDC certification. “It turned out to be very good advice,” she admits. “It has been a deciding criterion over other companies that did not have the qualification, and also for government projects.”
In addition to NMSDC, Prenger has her SBA 8(a) and is MBE- and WBE-certified through the 8(a) program. She’s waiting for a final on-site visit to complete the WBENC certification process.
ECCO at work
As a subcontractor to EDS, ECCO provides Black & Veatch with technical resources like programmers and DBAs. “We also place developers who are experienced on Unix platforms at B&V. Their skill sets include .Net, C scripting, SQL, MS, and C,” Prenger says.
Although it’s a sub to Black & Veatch, ECCO is in a prime-contractor relationship with a number of other large companies: Creative Information Technology, SRA, Accenture, and “others that are familiar in the Beltway and other federal government integration projects.” Prenger notes that she has clients nationwide: in California, the Midwest, New York, Washington and Atlanta. Her business is about 80 percent commercial and 20 percent government-related.
Two sides to mentoring
So far ECCO hasn’t had any formal mentoring relationships with larger companies, but one is in the talking stage, Prenger discloses. The prospective mentor is a major integrator in the Washington, DC area. The integrator is interested in beginning a mentor/protégée arrangement with ECCO because the connection might help it develop business for itself with Fortune 1000 companies where ECCO has good relationships.
ECCO has a diversity program of its own. “It’s not a formal program, but the vendors we do business with include a very good ratio of MBEs and WBEs, and of course there’s a lot of diversity on our staff. We keep metrics for our own use, which we are sometimes asked to supply.”
Growing up
Prenger is Hispanic. Her father was born in the U.S. of Mexican descent and her mother is from Portugal. Prenger herself spoke Spanish and Portuguese before learning English.
“We lived in Portugal and Spain until I was five, then came back to the States. My dad worked for GE in R&D and I grew up in a diverse culture in New York and New Jersey.”
Kansas City, her current base, “is not quite as diverse, but it’s getting there,” she adds with a smile.
Seeing that her dad “made good money as an engineer,” Prenger decided to take up technology. “I was seventeen years old and starting college. Who knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life?” she says.
She majored in data processing at Central Missouri State University (now the University of Missouri-Warrensburg). “It was a very good data-processing school,” she reflects. “In 1982 a lot of major companies from all over the country were hiring from Central Missouri.”
Starting and flourishing
Beginning with a college internship, Prenger launched an intensive technology career, gaining management experience at several major companies. In 1995, when she was a technology manager at Sprint, an old college friend who was in her group started to talk to her about launching a staffing business.
“It was interesting to me because of my technical background in addition to my people skills. The need was for technical people who understood the technology of the developing Internet. I was working on Internet projects for Sprint at the time, so it was very appropriate.”
She started out, “thinking the worst that could happen is I go back to corporate.
“I started with myself, brought another person on, then another and another. I had twelve people working for me by the end of my first year. After three years I had saved up enough money to buy out a staffing agency. That gave me the infrastructure for better staff support and also enabled me to get a diversified book of business.”
The increased clientele and broadened operational technology led to the thriving, multi-million dollar consulting agency ECCO is today.
At one point a fellow MBE alerted Prenger that EDS was looking for supplemental staffing. “Through that contact I got on a vendor list to help support EDS, and my relationship with B&V followed.”
Networking
Prenger is doing a lot of networking these days. She’s been chair of the Greater Kansas City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and serves on a variety of boards and commissions: the Missouri Commission on Hispanic Affairs, Fairness in Contracts Kansas City, and congressman Sam Graves’ Women’s Advisory Council. She sits on the boards of organizations from the National Latino Coalition to Friends of the Kansas City Zoo.
“I’ve identified other minority- and woman-owned businesses through these activities,” she says. “Some of them now subcontract for me. I’ve met great people in the Kansas City area who got me opportunities with major companies and their diversity organizations.”
She enjoys going to the annual NMSDC meeting, and sends staffers if she can’t make it. “I know my own clients like to see us there and we get introductions to other companies. It’s been a very valuable networking tool.”
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