Seeing a lack of advancement opportunities, Lueve Morlee left his job working in corporate aviation. He started working at TransGen Energy, a Black-owned wholesale fuel distributor. In time, Morlee found out the owners felt they had done all they could do with the business and wanted out, he said. Morlee, an immigrant from Liberia, Africa, saw big potential as the owner of a company that provides fuel transportation services to construction companies, governments and municipalities. He bought the company.
It’s been about four years since Morlee became the owner of TransGen Energy, and it hasn’t worked out as he had hoped. Instead of transporting fuel to job sites, he’s had to take on construction trade work like hanging drywall to help keep his business afloat.
He said due to historic practices, diverse businesses like his, a certified Black-owned business, are shut out of most opportunities to contract with the state of Delaware. “They’re impossible for us to get in. Impossible for us to get any work,” Morlee said.
Traditionally, the challenges keeping many minority and women-owned construction firms from winning state contracts were twofold: lack of experience and access to capital. Without either, these businesses are not able to grow or outbid better-financed construction companies with larger workforces.
Later this month, certified diverse business enterprises, or DBEs, will have the opportunity to bid on a state-financed construction project — the $204 million demolition and rebuild of Hodgson Vocational Technical High School.
The terms that primary contractors would have to accept to be involved in this Hodgson construction project are unprecedented. Administered by the Delaware Office of Management and Budget, the project will require the hiring of DBE-certified businesses — a pilot study intended to lay the groundwork for a revamping of how the state awards contracts and who gets to participate.
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Trevor Blyden is the director of L.E.E.P.’s Pathways to Business, a contractor development training program. Supported by Gov. Carney with ARPA funding, Pathways to Business is a pilot program designed to educate and groom minority and women contractors to become construction developers.
“Whatever they need to scale their business, we have a class for that,” Blyden said.
As the organization plans to graduate its first cohort later in June, some of its participants also plan to bid on the Hodgson construction project. “We have multiple contractors now gearing up for this opportunity,” Blyden said.
Trevor and his brother John, the co-founder of L.E.E.P., said that the businesses they work with have been systemically held back from economic development opportunities. They didn’t have access to financing to take on big projects, therefore they couldn’t hire workers. They don’t have the capacity to bid on pricey contracts.
The Blydens said L.E.E.P. is working closely with the Hodgson project manager, EDiS, to develop project scopes to fit the specific capacity of contractors who wouldn’t ordinarily be in a position to bid. For example, instead of soliciting a $2 million bid package, the scopes have been scaled for companies who can present $100,000 bid packages.
“That wouldn’t have happened [outside of this pilot],” said Trevor Blyden, also a contractor. He anticipates that the success of the pilot will be a catalyst for more opportunities for participating DBEs. “Now they [will] have the track record of past practice, of being on a commercial job,” Blyden said.
A state of Delaware-commissioned disparity study showed that in the last five years, 0.26% of state construction contracts went to Native American or Black-owned firms. Latino companies received 2% of the state’s business in the same time frame, and Asian American firms accounted for just .02% of the state’s construction business. The lion’s share — 87% — was awarded to white-owned companies.
Delaware spends billions of dollars on commodities, services and construction and John Blyden is optimistic that “this project will inspire hope in DBEs to believe that now they can get a piece of the pie,” he said. “They can be a part of the American dream.”
As the owner of TransGen Energy, Morlee is one of the many business owners looking forward to being one of the DBEs to win a bid on the Hodgson project. He too is hopeful the pilot will be “a total game-changer for the DBE community” and put his business on the path to success.
Contact reporter Anitra Johnson at ajohnson@delawareonline.com. Join her on the Facebook group Delaware Voices Uplifted. Support her work and become a subscriber.
