Shelby County MWBE committee approves MWBE goals for AEDs and Whitehaven clinic, removes auto-body item

The Shelby County MWBE Goal Setting Committee on Jan. 28, 2025, took action on several procurement items, approving MWBE participation targets for hospital clinic construction and automated external defibrillator (AED) maintenance, recommending a local small-business (LOSB) approach for county lawn care and realtor services, and removing an auto-body repairs item from the agenda.

The committee approved a 27.6% MWBE participation goal for the Whitehaven clinic construction project and set a 49% MWBE subcontracting goal for county AED maintenance and monitoring services. The committee also approved a 0% MWBE goal for a county grass-cutting and lawn-care contract while recommending the work be procured through the county's LOSB (local small-business) sheltered market. Members voted to remove the auto-body repairs item from the agenda after staff said there were no MWBE firms in the county database that perform the full range of required services.

The Whitehaven clinic project is a sealed-bid construction procurement for a county health clinic on a parcel in Whitehaven near Southland Mall. Jeff Goodman, Shelby County Health Department, said the county reviewed two size options — a roughly 28,000-square-foot, two-story option and a roughly 41,000-square-foot, three-story option — and that the same set of MWBE firms and dollar categories produced a recommended goal of 27.6%. EOC staff presented the project’s MBE dollars as $4,105,177 of a $14,898,627 project and recommended the 27.6% goal; the committee approved that recommendation.

On AEDs, Jeff Goodman and Ernestine Small, the health department’s AED coordinator, described the county’s needs as a twofold service: monthly in-person inspections of AED units distributed across county buildings and a remote monitoring…