8/17/2012 New WCOE member introduced and White House invitations

Please join us in welcoming our newest member

Brandy McCombs is the President of International Builders & Consultants Inc. in Grain Valley, MO. and a friend of active WCOE Member Mary McNamara. Mary told Brandy how valuable her WCOE membership was to her business, and a membership application soon followed. Brandy’s company is a union shop commercial carpentry contractor with a dozen years of experience in the construction industry. She has a great website with lots of creatively displayed project photos and a string of accolades from very satisfied clients. We are delighted to have you as a new member of WCOE, Brandy!

You can send a welcome message to Brandy at brandy@ibcinc.biz, or calling 816.220.0812.

WCOE member receives White House invitation

Stellar WCOE member Vickie Francovich, President of Building Solutions, Inc., in Reno, NV has received a personal invitation from SBA’s Marie Johns, Deputy Administrator of the SBA, to attend a roundtable discussion with fellow business leaders in the White House. The meeting will take place next Tuesday (8/21) from 5:30 to 7:00 pm in the Roosevelt Room of – yes – the infamous West Wing of the White House. Congratulations, Vickie. Please send us photos and a critique.

KCMO Women enjoy breakfast briefing

On Tuesday local members and guests of WCOE gathered at President Rosie Privitera Biondo's offices at Mark One Electric for an action-packed breakfast meeting. Besides a whole lot of networking, the attendees learned about pending state and federal legislative issues from Allen Dillingham, Government Relations Director at the KC Builders Association as well as reviewing national issues currently being discussed in the nation's capitol. Rosie explained about the history and mission of WCOE and encouraged those who were not yet members to join. With nearly two dozen members and guests in attendance, this was truly a successful event.

ConsensusDocs announces 2 free webinars

As a member of the construction industry consortium, WCOE encourages our members to use ConsensusDocs for all of their projects. These contracts are industry tested and can be a great help on protecting yourself on contracts as well when you sub to a prime contractor. The new online software also now provides an opportunity for you to save the changes that you typically make to contracts so you don’t have to work with the original boiler-plate model every time. These contracts are formulated by a group of construction professionals, including WCOE members, and are a resource provided to you. You can learn more about ConsensusDocs on our website. The webinar on September 19th will cover the new Joint Venture Agreement and the webinar on September 26th will review the new Owner & Geotechnical Consultant Agreement.

Are you going to be at the RNC or DNC Conventions?

If you are, we want to see you. WCOE is partnering with WIPP and the SBE Council to sponsor a luncheon during each convention that is provided free of charge to WCOE members. You can view the invitations to the Republican and Democratic luncheons on our website, so if you have plans to be in Tampa, FL at the end of this month or in Charlotte NC right after Labor Day, please join us for a stellar luncheon.

There is no charge to attend and you do not have to be a registered delegate.

Exclusive White House briefing for WCOE members and coalition partners

The White House office of Public Engagement would like to invite WCOE members to join SBA Deputy Administrator Marie Johns for a discussion of the upcoming tax and budgetary changes and how they will affect your business. Two major fiscal changes are set to be implemented in January, 2013; the expiration of several tax credits and provisions, many of which uniquely affect small firms; and the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. You can register online to participate.

New bonding program announced by SBA

On July 16th SBA published its Final Rule allowing for quick bonds.
Under this new streamlined process involving contracts not exceeding $250,000, the Surety will use the new Quick Bond Guarantee Application and Agreement, SBA Form 990A, which consolidates two of the forms currently used in the SBG Program—SBA Form 990, Surety Bond Agreement and SBA Form 994, Application for Surety Bond Guarantee Assistance. The new process offers streamlined bond application for smaller contract amounts.

WCOE Member Karen Barbour is making waves on Capitol Hill

Karen, a WCOE Council of 200 Member, owns an independent surety bonding company that stays on top of bonding issues and does not hesitate to point out legislative and regulatory problems with programs that are in her area of expertise. This week she reached out to Congressman Mulvaney’s office (R-SC) who is on the House Small Business Committee to educate the congressman and the committee about the impact credit inquiries have on decreasing credit scores. As Karen points out, business owners often have their credit reports pulled on behalf of themselves and their businesses more than normal because of the many hats they wear and the many suppliers/vendors they deal with. Especially when shopping for a surety bond, every surety company will request a credit report. The amount of the ding to the credit score is arbitrary with some credit bureaus deduct 4 points for an inquiry while others charge up to 15 points. Karen’s position is that credit reporting companies need to stop deducting points if personal credit was pulled on behalf of the small business. Higher credit scores will result in better access to capital. In addition, in accordance with the Privacy Act, the entity making the inquiry should only be disclosed to the applicant or owner of the credit report. It breeds unnecessary suspicion when another credit company (i.e., bank or surety company) sees one of its competitors on the report.

Karen also weighed in on the Congressman’s efforts to raise the SBA bonding cap to $6.5 million for single projects. Raising the cap for SBA bond program to 6.5 million will not help the fact that the federal agencies require a 10 million bond capacity letter from all contractors who desire to bid on IDIQ (Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity) contracts, MATOC (Multiple Award Task Order Contracts, SATOCs (Single Awards), etc. The federal agencies don’t define capacity the same as sureties. Federal agencies define capacity as what a contractor can complete or cash flow within a year; sureties view it as what contractors can cash flow on a cost to complete basis. The federal agencies either need to scale down the capacity letter requirement to $5 million, eliminate it, or have the SBA be able to provide such letters as they did under ARRA. The 6.5 million is not bad but it precludes small business from securing procurement models set aside just for them. Inadvertently another inaccessible gold carrot gets dangled.

Women Construction Owners and Executives
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