Portland Community College
OP-9: Sustainable Procurement System

We created a spreadsheet marking how contracting language is used and scored in the evaluation rubric for each of the Requests for Proposal RFPS in the requests for proposals between April of 2022 and July of 2024 from the college in our closed proposals in Bid Locker. These RFPS included a variety of contract types including trade service agreements, public works contracts, personal services and general goods and services contracts. The majority of the contract types were some form of goods and services contracts. 

In general, the projects  contain an evaluation rubric. Many projects embed sustainability through scoring of “approach and operations”. These are items that must be addressed in the proposal’s scope of work and range from from the above sustainability commitment to very specific requests such as workplace practices or green building specification. They may remind the bidder that they must adhere to the college’s design standards (although all vendors should be doing so). They may also ask for draft plans as to how the contractor might participate in one of our more specific sustainability or workforce equity programs: the Clean Air Construction initiative or the Workforce Equity and Mentorship program.

100% of the goods and services contracts included references to the college’s design standards which have specifications for meeting the college’s sustainability goals including green building certification standards, waste diversion rates and fixtures and or the college’s climate action plan. 100% of the contracts also contained language referencing the college’s sustainability procurement goals.

Sustainability Commitment - “Portland Community College is committed to the use and purchase of environmentally and socially responsible materials and products, which are fiscally responsible, reduce resource consumption and waste, perform adequately, and promote human health and well-being. Recognizing its regional economic role, the College will seek opportunities to educate, encourage, and influence their respective markets by utilizing, where feasible, products and services, including new environmentally preferable products, reusable products, recycled content, and recycled products.” Contractors should be prompted by this language to provide details about how they will be using environmentally preferable products such as fair trade, LEED, etc where it is in materials they are purchasing for business use, product supply, or construction.

Some will also contain a section marked “social responsibility” or “sustainability” for the college can additional weight for these categories. This tends to score 5-10 100-130 for that section. This may be in addition to the approach or apart from it, depending on the structure of the contract. Both the approach and the social/sustainability sections may be scored simultaneously. 

Much of the language around social responsibility and workforce equity in PCC’s contracts focuses on business and workforce equity. Here are some examples of the boilerplate language around workforce equity and business and workforce equity we tend to use.

“Portland Community College is committed to a procurement strategy that achieves College wide race and gender contracting equity while providing small business opportunity and regional economic growth. We value trade partners that are equally committed to shared prosperity for our neighbors by demonstrating strong relationships COBID / OMWBE certified firms and prioritizing their utilization in contracting/subcontracting opportunities. Portland Community College promotes economic mobility for the craftworkers on our projects through attention to workforce utilization that reflect the demographics of the community we serve.”

Business and Workforce Equity Goals - These  include provisions for the hiring of a diverse set of subtractors, e.g. “20% of the contract value to be awarded to subcontractors registered with either the State of Oregon Certification Office for Business Inclusion and Diversity (COBID) or the Washington State Office of Minority & Women’s Business Enterprises. At least 12% of the subcontract value should be awarded to Minority (MBE) or Disadvantaged (DBE) firms. General Contractor is required to include the goal in all subcontracts over $100,000.”  The college’s business and workforce equity goals are substantially monitored through a workforce and contracting tool (see innovation credit D), while the sustainability goals are chiefly enforced through the college’s design and construction standards.

Workforce Equity goals  - “The Workforce Equity goals listed below apply to all public improvement construction contracts over $200,000 and all subcontracts with more than $50,000 in labor costs. These objectives are derived from the Metro Regional Construction Workforce Market Study and enacted by PCC as signatories to the Construction Careers Pathways Regional Framework. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Journey hours by trade 25% Women Journey hours by trade 9% BIPOC Apprentice hours by trade 22% Women Apprentice hours by trade 20% Total Apprentice hours by trade 20%.” 

Here’s an example of additional questions in the statement of work requirements might include something like:

Social Responsibility - “Describe how your firm actively promotes the skills-development of historically excluded populations such as women and people of color. What mentorship does your firm provide for workers to advance? How are historically excluded populations benefited by your firm's contracts? “

Here is how a sample rubric might look

Given the approach used in section 9.2, we divided the weight evenly between the two categories.

https://www.pcc.edu/about/business-opportunities/purchasing/

Attached is a sample contract: District Wide IT Tenant Improvements which contains much of the sample language described in section 9.3 and evaluated in section 9.4. All of the bids evaluated should be in our bidlocker. A spreadsheet detailing our methodology is available upon request.

PCC’s Workforce Equity program is extensive and so is the monitoring for that program. PCC looks at workforce equity by project, rather than by year and so was unable to apply for section 9.4, but you can learn more about our innovative workforce equity and assessment program through Innovation Credit-D.