Portland Community College
IL-68: Innovation D

The Portland Community College Office of Planning & Capital Construction has built a workforce and contracting data tool, a real-time transparency and accountability tool used to understand contractor performance, address deficiencies and support contractors in meeting their equity and workforce objectives in order to help change workforce culture in the construction industry. The tool is made up of four different dashboards that track both ownership and workforce in construction and design. As PCC requires LEED Silver Certification or higher for all new construction projects over 15,000 square feet, this dashboard has significant implications for green design.

The dashboards help us to:

• Keep us accountable for our equity goals around design and construction;

• Allows us to hold our contractors accountable for the equity goals they set during the bidding process;

• Helps us to set appropriate goals and objectives for around historically excluded populations of workers in the construction industry;

• Lets us track the workforce of our subcontractors in real time; and

• Helps us to support those in the construction industry to achieve those goals.

On larger projects, contractors are chosen [scored] in part based upon the robustness of their contracting and workforce equity performance plan. For contracts over $100,000, PCC aspires to meet the following workforce and contracting equity objectives – 25% and 22% journeyworker and apprentice hours worked by people of color; 20% and 9% apprentice and journeyworker hours worked by women; and 20% total apprentice hours by a minority-owned contractor, respectively.

The dashboard tracks their subcontractors and enforces bid provisions that award contracts based on creating equitable opportunities for Disadvantaged Business, Emerging Small Business, Minority Business Enterprise, Service Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise and Women Owned Business.

This tool was unique upon creation four  years ago and has inspired others in the region to display data in a similar fashion, including a dashboard being created by Metro to show aggregate workforce performance across all public owners signatory to the Construction Career Pathways framework.

What has made PCC’s program stand out is that Planning and Capital Construction works closely with contractors and subs to achieve success through our robust relationships with pre-apprenticeship programs, organized labor, merit shops and community based organizations that promote workforce development, particularly with historically excluded populations of workers. Our workforce equity achievements are some of the highest in the region, particularly without the benefit of a project labor agreement in place. The demographics of the workforce is assessed with our partner contractors every month to identify opportunities to expand worker access and promote skills development.

For example, PCC offers a respectful workplace program to create a worksite that is “is appropriate, productive, safe, and free from behaviors that may undermine workers’ job performance, physical safety, psychological safety, productivity, inclusion, retention, the equitable access to meaningful work, and/or efficiency”  to help change construction culture and build a more inclusive workforce.

The college’s leadership in public spaces such as chairing the Regional Collaborative Committee and representing Public Owners on the Safe From Hate Alliance, demonstrates a firm commitment to promoting a regional approach through the sharing of best practices that has created better alignment across public owners in achieving success for workers and contractors that tend to travel from project to project. In 2025, PCC won the Public Agency Excellence Award by the Business Diversity Institute (BDI).

For more about PCC’s contract goal setting go to: https://www.contractgoalsetting.com/

Attached is information on the respectful workplace program.