PHOENIX— Small and disadvantaged businesses could secure more federal funding from the Department of Energy’s $8-billion nuclear cleanup office, according to procurement representatives who addressed the Waste Management Symposia here last week.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is raising its small and disadvantaged business awards goal for fiscal 2023 to 7% from 5% “at the prime level,” Aaron Deckard told attendees during a Tuesday panel. Deckard is director of the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center in Cincinnati
The goal will then rise to 15% in fiscal year 2024, said Anne Marie Bird, the small business program manager for the Office of Environmental Management. “That’s a significant increase,” Bird said.
There is also a push for greater utilization of traditionally “underserved” and woman-owned businesses, said Deckard.
“Procurement equity” has long been a focus of the DOE contracting office, Deckard said.
But now the White House is making it a high priority for DOE and other federal agencies, said Bird. On Feb. 16, President Joe Biden signed an executive order titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”
The executive order and supporting document call upon federal agencies such as DOE and the Department of Defense to establish equity teams to make federal contracting opportunities more widely available to small or disadvantaged enterprises.
DOE’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization will be very involved in this effort, Bird said. The Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization will hold a clean energy forum and expo July 11-12 in New Orleans, said the office’s director, Ron Pierce.
