The Intercounty Connector project won the Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award last week, presented by the Women’s Transportation Seminar, an international professional organization.
The 18-mile, $2.5 billion highway project connecting Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland won the award for meeting and exceeding its goals for how many women and minorities were hired as contractors on the project.
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Federal law required the project to hire a certain percentage of companies owned by women or minorities. The ICC team exceeded those goals, the project’s civil rights manager, Karen Williford, said.
“We could never have experienced this level of success without the hawkish scrutiny of our [Disadvantaged Business Enterprise] compliance monitoring team, our ‘On-The-Job-Training’ and public outreach coordinators, and top-down commitment from the ICC project leadership, including our resident engineers,” she said.
The first part of the highway set a goal of 15 percent of contracts to minorities or women and ended up hitting the 23.9 percent mark. The second section set a goal of 20 percent and made 25 percent. The third section set a goal of 20 percent and so far has signed 20.3 percent of contracts with businesses owned by minorities or women, according to the Maryland State Highway Administration.
