Blog #5 - Interview with Parsons - Eileen Ryder
Alex
Thank you for joining us today on G Line 2.0, the podcast for small and disabled veteran businesses seeking opportunities on the LA Metro G Line Bus Rapid Transit Improvement project. I along with many others are a part of a joint venture known as Valley Transit Partners or VTP for short, which includes Stacy Witbeck, Flatiron West, and Modern Railway Systems. For those who are unfamiliar with the San Fernando Valley, the G Line is an existing bus route with a dedicated corridor that extends from the North Hollywood B Line to the Chatsworth station in the northwest of the valley. The G Line BRT Improvements Project will improve the existing bus rapid transit system by reducing travel times and increasing safety. The project is being delivered by a progressive design build and is currently in the first phase, which means that the most significant subcontracting opportunities are still to come. You can visit our website at www.vtpjv.com. For more information about staying up to date with the LA Metro G Line Bus Rapid Transit Improvement Project.
Yoana
Joining us today is Eileen Ryder from Parsons who will be giving us some insight into the mentor protégé program. Hello Eileen, it is a pleasure to have you here today, thank you for taking the time to join us.
Eileen
Thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here.
Yoana
So, to get started, could you please introduce yourself.
Eileen
Sure. I am Eileen Ryder, a business development director for Parsons. I cover the Southern California Transportation Market. So just to describe a little bit about what I do, you know mainly I'm identifying leads, contract leads, and project opportunities that are that are a match for Parson's capabilities; so it involves researching funding clients, capital programs, industry trends, talking to clients, understanding their objectives, their needs, timing for contracts and expectations; and talking to teaming partners, competitors, and small businesses. So, it's a lot of research and development, making connections with clients and team. Me and my team members win work for Parsons. So, I just want to mention too on top of that, a big part of what I do is I’m actively engaged in some of our industry associations. So, for West Los Angeles, I've been involved with them since about 2012. I'm on the board as a vice president, supporting our scholarship student outreach mentorship and professional development committees.
Yoana
That's a great resume, I'm sure your work and efforts are greatly appreciated. Would you mind expanding some more on Parsons and the role it has in supporting the Valley Transit Partners Joint Venture on the G Line project?
Eileen
Sure, so just to take a step back, we are actually celebrating our 80th anniversary this year. We were founded right here in Pasadena, California. We're a large firm right now, we have about 18,500 people worldwide. In California, we have about over a thousand people. We're providing multi-disciplinary engineering, everything from civil to structures to rail systems, environmental engineering, environmental planning, and then all sorts of program and construction management, and then some technology related solutions as well; such as intelligent transportation systems and transportation demand management among many other things. For Parson's transportation sector, we work on rail roadway, street work, bike paths, highways, bridges, and other structures such as sound walls. We also work for airports and ports, so kind of the wide spectrum of anything related to moving people, goods, vehicles, you have it. So, Parson's also works in the water, wastewater, environmental, and energy sectors. For the G Line project, we are working under Valley Transit Partners. We are the lead designer, our team is responsible for designing new grade separations over two busy intersections: Van Nuys Boulevard and Sepulveda Boulevard. We're also tasked with relocating one bus rapid transit station, as well as designing bike and pedestrian accommodations to the new elevated structures. The ultimate goal of the project is to improve the capacity efficiency of this 18-mile existing bus rapid transit corridor that runs from North Hollywood to Chatsworth. Carson plays a crucial role in achieving our goal of enhancing the G Line.
Yoanna
We are eagerly anticipating the project's construction phase, but as mentioned Eileen helps with the mentor protégé program. For those who don't know, can you tell us what the program is? Who is eligible? And what requirements what might need to meet to be a part of the program?
Eileen
Sure, the G Line mentor protégé program, well all mentor protégé programs are you know, they're based on growth specifically helping our small businesses grow. This can be direct, such as including our small businesses, or protégé firms on additional teaming, or additional contracts to obtain additional work. This can be indirect related to providing guidance on pricing streamlining processes helping marketing helping our firms kind of you know develop or refine some of their marketing materials, and respond to requests for information from prime contractors, essentially sharing best practices to our to our small businesses. The program related to the G Line Improvement project, our protégé firms are part of the design team, so they're under Parson's scope of work essentially. For the group of firms that l'm working with as part of the VTP team, we have a small business enterprise goals and disabled veteran business enterprise goals. Utilization commitments are part of our overall design delivery. So eligibility for the mentor protégé program is based on certification fundamentally, so the firms must be certified as either a small or disabled veteran business, enterprise, an SBE or a DVBE. And to be part of this project program, Parsons is also just peripherally also involved in other mentor protégé programs regionally. SoCal has a mentor program that we've been involved in and then in San Diego, we also have some mentor protégé agreements. And then also you know some of our newer some of our existing clients are also starting up some mentor protégé agreements such as Los Angeles World Airports. So, each program is tailored to the contract, the client, and the situations.
Often, our clients such as LA Metro, they’ve requested for certain elements to be involved, you know given us some sort of a structure for our protégé program that we are tailoring, but also at the same time, their guidance. So, for the G Line project, we have a mentor protégé agreements for four small businesses that are apart of our design team. So, Conaway Geomatics, they are a DVBE and they’re also and SBE firm. They provide geospatial services such as surveying and GPS. Fryman Management is another of our protégés. They are also a DVBE and SBE firm. They provide kind of anything related to traffic, traffic engineering, traffic management. So, anything along those lines. We’re also with the Alliance Group, an SBE and DBE civil engineering PMCM firm. They are providing bike, I think some of the lighting for the bike structure as part of the G Line. So, lighting and street lighting at the grade separation and then Suenram Associates is our fourth protégé, and they are a civil engineering firm, an SBE, and DBE firm. And they are providing utilities design coordination, they’re part of our utilities team.
Yoana
Thank you for that. You may reach out to VTP directly through our website www.vtpjv.com, and fill out the sections located under the contact tab if you are interested in working on the G Line project. Many of our listeners may be current to future protégés. From a mentors perspective, we have successful protégés done in the past to help create a successful program, and what can a mentee do to stand out?
Eileen
I’d say the main factors for success are the desire to participate and the willingness to spend some time to engage in the program time, to engage in the program time, time is always the challenge. Most small businesses, most the owners and staff members at small businesses wear many hats. They’re really busy, and so I think sort of carving out the time to be involved as well. Being involved, It’s just one of the challenges. Each firm on the G Line program has shown great commitment to me, to collaborating on identifying needs, ideas for activities to provide guidance and you know, responding quickly to RFI’s (official Requests For Information), when inviting them to other contract opportunities for us. So, we’ve been really pleased with our relationships that we’ve been forming with these four protégé firms. We also communicate regularly through check-ins. And also, at the start of activities that we’ve set up, I’ve invited some other guests essentially to provide some guidance. So, we’re probably kind of talking on a monthly basis. I often see our protégé firms at Industry Association networking programs as well. So you know, that’s always a good place to kind of catch up to. Informally, Parsons likes to invite our protégés to events at some of these association programs. If we buy a table at a sponsor event, then we’ll invite some of our protégé firms to join us and so that way they don’t need to buy a ticket of their own to attend. But you know in terms, creating a successful program, it’s small business owners that are really in the best position to identify any areas of help that they need. So, it’s just most effective if that firm can share candidly about their challenges and areas where they could use or want to hear some help or guidance, And two, it’s not just the actual owner of the small business we’re talking to or the owners that can benefit, we are also talking to and engaging with the staff members at the owner’s discretion obviously, but the more people we can talk to and involve in the process, the better.
Yoana
Good. Okay so for the protégés working with Parsons, how have you seen these companies grow as a result of being part of the mentor protégé program? How does it make a company more competitive.
Eileen
Well, I’d say the mentor protégé agreements encompass various activities that are tailored to each firm. The priority behind it all is growth. We’re providing, like I said, additional teaming opportunities across market sectors. So, not only are we inviting them to different transportation contracts, I’m also introducing the to members of Parson’s water, wastewater, aviation, rail, environmental, energy sectors, and just trying to broaden that exposure within Parsons. At lease for these firms, we ‘re also sharing best practices for recruiting, so these firms can maybe streamline their processes on recruiting and using different methods, onboarding new employees as well. Contract review is something that we’ve talked about with them about how to communicate comments on contracts, and what sort of language to look at. We also had a session on labor compliance, pricing their work is a really big area as well, in terms of growing. Providing oversight for when these smaller firms get the audited overhead rate and ensuring they are pricing their work competitively. Also, we also assist in creating marketing materials. We share information about what we are seeing in terms of trends, upcoming projects, identifying leads and networking opportunities with other contractors as well.
The initial conversations that we have with each firm in the very beginning of the program really lays the foundation. It’s really important to develop a mentor protégé agreement that's really effective measurable and sustainable. We want to make a difference. Each firm is different, so it just depends on the small business needs. Regarding the impact of the program, we actually just completed the first year and so far, we have been able to bring them on to additional teaming opportunities and helped some of the firms in terms of their processes and either helped them to save money or grow money
Yoanna
Well, I'm glad to hear that and I'm certain that the program will continue to grow and succeed in helping small businesses. Well, thank you so much for all the wonderful information, Eileen. I hope our listeners will be able to learn a lot from it. Thank you again for joining us.
Eileen
It was a pleasure to be here thanks so much I appreciate it.
Yoanna
I want to thank you so much for joining us on G Line 2.0 podcast. For small and disabled veteran businesses wanting to stay in the know about the opportunities happening on the Metro G Line Bus Rapid Transit Improvement Project. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe to stay up to date with project updates and interviews with guests on the Valley Transit Partners team.