The St. Louis American: “City’s inclusion goals set for NGA”

Posted on Jan 16, 2020

ST. LOUIS – Dec 19, 2019.

“More than 1,000 workers could be employed daily in 2022 during peak construction of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s new $1.75 billion facility project, which broke ground on November 26.

This is a tremendous opportunity to implement the City of St. Louis’ law for employing local residents, minorities, women and apprentices, according to advocates and union leaders.

The city’s inclusion goals require that a minimum of 25 percent of the contract’s labor hours go to minorities, 7 percent go to women, 23 percent to city residents and 20 percent to apprentices.

In 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) officials, which is overseeing design and construction, told The St. Louis American that the agency can only adopt federal workforce goals of 14.7 percent minority and 6.9 percent women on the N.G.A. project.

However, members of the McCarthy-HITT joint venture team leading the project’s construction said that they have taken it upon themselves to implement the city’s goals.

“We have our contractual goals and our internal goals, but those are just numbers,” Heather Cirre, small business manager for the McCarthy-HITT team. “We are really interested in maximizing the participation of the community around us, based on what the marketplace will support.”

For them, the project is also an opportunity to build a pipeline of apprentices and address the issue of attrition in the trades, Cirre said.”

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