When the Rules Change Midstream: What the Latest DBE Updates Mean for Design-Build Teams

Changes to the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program are already shaping how teams approach projects and raising questions about what comes next.

In the latest episode of The Design-Build Delivers Podcast, brought to you by ARKANCE, an Autodesk Platinum Partner, host Erin Looney speaks with two industry professionals working through those changes in real time.

The conversation focuses on the recent Interim Final Rule (IFR), which removes long-standing presumptions of disadvantage and shifts the burden of proof onto individual firms. As a result, DBE certification, procurement timelines and team formation are all being affected, often in ways that are still evolving.

Rather than debating the policy itself, this episode looks at what’s happening on the ground, including how project teams are adjusting, where uncertainty is creating friction and what it means for small businesses trying to stay engaged in design-build.  

Resources from the episode: 

• Design-Build Done Right® Universal Best Practices
• DBIA Project/Team Awards
• BOGO DBIA Membership Offer

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time. 

Transcript

Erin Looney  00:05

If you've been following federal infrastructure conversations at all, you've probably heard DBE requirements have changed, and depending on who you ask, that either means everything is about to get a lot harder, or not much has changed at all. The reality it seems isn't quite so clean. So a little background over the past couple years, starting with some updates in 2024 and then continuing through the interim final rule in October 2025 the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise programs changed in some pretty fundamental ways. At a high level, the IFR removes the long standing presumption that certain groups are automatically considered socially and economically disadvantaged. Instead, every firm now has to prove that status individually. So that means all DBE firms must go through recertification. The burden of proof shifts completely onto the applicant. Firms have to submit detailed personal narratives and documentation that show specific instances of disadvantage, and in the meantime, agencies may not be able to set or count DBIA participation toward project goals until that process is complete. The intent is to align the program with recent constitutional challenges and court rulings, but in practice, it's created a lot of open questions like, what qualifies as sufficient proof, how long will recertification take across 1000s of firms, and what happens to procurement timelines when agencies are trying to sort this out, and maybe most importantly, what does all of this actually look like inside a project team that still has to deliver? Because while all of this is happening. Projects are moving, teams are forming, and small businesses still need a path to actually do their work. I am Aaron Looney, and this is the design build delivers podcast. Brought to you by Arcon, an Autodesk Platinum Partner, as smart Hulk said, these are confusing times. So joining me are two people who are right in the middle of it, trying to figure it out and make it less confusing. Rachel Pease is director of business development and strategy at kewitt building group, where she leads strategic growth and client engagement across the Western US. She also chairs dbias national and Northwest region small business engagement and growth committees. Freddie Streeter operates at the intersection of construction, delivery and participation frameworks at Veterans, pre construction and visual solutions focusing on early phase planning, risk discipline and integrating partners into complex design build teams. Now you'll hear a reference here and there to our panel in this conversation that is from last month's DBIA specialty conferences in Dallas, where this topic came up in a live session. If you were there, you already have a bit of a background, if not, shame on you. I'm just kidding. If you weren't there, it's fine. You can still see clearly from our chat today how changes to the DB program might impact you or someone you work with. So between those updates in spring 2024 and then the IFR in October 2025 there's been a lot of movement on DBIA requirements. And when this kind of thing happens, there's a tendency to go a little chicken. Little updates like this always make the conversation jump to worst case scenario. But you also want to think about what's potentially an opportunity. And so we're all really just trying to understand what's actually happening here, what's changing, what it means in practice. So let's start there. Help us separate what actually changed and what people thought changed, and then talk about how the certification process looks different today for firms that are trying to get or even maintain that DBIA status.

Speaker 2  03:40

In a nutshell, there's a lot to unpack here. I don't think we could do it here in this podcast, so we're gonna, I'm just gonna kind of get to the meat and potatoes of it. But it really started from being presumed to prove it now. So now, as of that October 3, certifications are on hold. Everybody has to recertify, even if you had just gone through certification or had filled out your documentation before, like your your financials, everything starts over fresh. So it's kind of like everybody's starting at the same level. And so like I said, instead of presuming that all of the identifying minority groups, women, sex and race are all off the table now, so now you individually have to prove that you qualify. Like me and Freddie have talked about this on our panel and before, how it's really invasive, because you really have to prove that you have been a disadvantaged business, and you have to show that maybe you were financially, you were denied loans, and then you have to show backup of maybe those loans that weren't approved, you don't have capital. Maybe you are not from this country, and so you maybe you have language barriers might be a thing, right? So you have to really prove your individual process. For instance, I had a story about a woman that came to me, and she had said that she was working with apex to get her certification, and she had to go and tell this woman about how she was sexually harassed, and she had never told anybody this story before. But. She had to in order to get her certification. So you can understand how this can be really invasive, and it's probably really intimidating for people to want to go through the process. But like we said in our panel, it's really important these small businesses do this certification, because the cause still doesn't change, like we still need to push forward with this, but with that too, I will say that the one good thing is that the financial threshold has been raised from 1.3 to 2.4 million, which is great. Also it doesn't count your home and your personal assets, like retirement and things like that. So that is the one advantage that I have seen with that. The other thing about this too, that I want to mention is that nobody knows what's going on. Like we're all figuring it out. It feels like every week we're finding out something new. The organizations, the certifying organizations, aren't even sure how they're going to do this.

Speaker 3  05:49

Just to kind of drill into that a little bit more when you getting, like, when you brought it out to some of the smaller DBS that's coming up in here, there is a very stringent way you can explain things the way that you have to just kind of pull out information from the past, right? It could be 10 years 15, whatever the case is. It could be further down the line that requires you to have either the education level to build out a full recertification packet. But even when you build it to you can't just say this particular thing happened. You have to actually back it up with information. You have to back it up with documentation. You have to back it up with dates, times, people, for example, in my case, when I submitted mines and we talked about this on the panel as well. I had to submit things from my bonding company. I had to submit stuff from my original contracting team when I was an eight day company. And it wasn't enough for me to say something like, I exited the eight day program a little early because my mentor exit the program. I had to explain the reasoning behind my mentor exiting the program, and how that affected me moving forward. So if you're a larger and I always use the term more mature company, maybe you have that documentation, or you have the money to hire somebody to come in and build that documentation out for you, but as a smaller company, it's going to be kind of hard to weather that storm, and you're going to submit your package, and it's going to get kicked back several times. And I think what I'm hearing now is so many companies, especially your smaller and I'm defined smaller as your two to 10 million type companies, they're, you know, just electing to not recertify in some cases. So I've heard that quite a bit, because it's just a whole thing for them to do. So so it's going to be pretty interesting how this whole thing unfolds, and it's going to take some time.

Erin Looney  07:53

A lot of what you're talking about just sounds like, not just extra work, but we're talking about digging into places people have potentially put behind them. Who you are today may not be who you were as a business, as a person, as a team before, it just doesn't seem like there's going to be a neat and tidy way to make this work. So let's talk a little bit now on projects, obviously we see these changes affect the firms. They affect how you can function in terms of being a business. And you know, they're affecting all project delivery methods. So we can talk specifically about design build, but let's first look at what you're seeing as the biggest impacts of these changes on project delivery broadly, and then take it to design build. So I

Speaker 2  08:40

think for me, what I'm seeing, and Freddie is going to have a DBIA, to have a different perspective as as a small veteran on business, so I really want to lean in more into what he's experiencing. But what I'm seeing on my end as a general contractor is for us, it's really an opportunity for us to prove that we are really aligned culturally and what we say we're going to do, and it's not a check the box for us. So you're really going to be able to see able to see these GCS right now that are really about to work. Are they hiring? Are they leaning into these DBS and these small firms on their projects, or now, because they don't have to, they're choosing not to, right? So I think it really separates the two. Which path are you really on for me? And so I think for keyword right now, we're leaning into it. No matter what. It's something that we are about. It's about our culture, and we're not leaning and moving away from it in any way. We've had to change some of our contracts with the language because of the DEI rule, so that came in. So we had to change some things, but we chose to change those things legally. But our cause does not change. So I think this is a really good time for small businesses to really lean into those general contractors, and it's a time to really build those relationships, to see what they're really about. So that's what I'm seeing on our end, is we are seeing some general contractors that are choosing to use this as an opportunity to not have to work that hard, to use small businesses. And like on our panel, we had Turner Construction there, we had Anderson and. Know, you're seeing these larger firms that are saying, We don't care, we're going to move forward with this cause, and they're still using the dbias and the small businesses,

Speaker 3  10:07

from our perspective, from a small business standpoint, the major changes kind of downstream, if you will, has just been the prolonged project procurement process, and we we've had several projects either delayed, or we've had projects that the submittal dates have just moved and moved and moved, and that's went on for several months. I've even had a couple of projects, even as a small company, I didn't think this would happen, but I had a couple of projects that was pulled back for the lead Galilee, pieces of the IFR and the DB and the whole part in terms of the government won't move without guidelines. It's their procurement process. So they're not going to award projects. They're not going to run you through the procurement process unless they have a guideline for it. And so when you don't have a guideline, the dates just keep moving. They won't put the funds into the project, so we're stuck just kind of running around looking at that. But also the way we approach larger companies is definitely going to change, because now we have to move from downstream companies, from small business, to more upstream companies dealing in the pre construction phases and design assist type work and stuff like that. For some of the smaller companies. Now, for me, I've been able to make that pivot into moving more upstream, because I've always been, like, kind of locked into the pre construction side of it, anyway. But for many smaller companies, it's not the same type of pivot, and then as owners of small companies, you know, we may not think about that from a business development standpoint, so that's just going to be a whole mental shift from a small business standpoint, because now I can't just be the sub that can deliver downstream work, concrete or whatever have you. I have to think more now about the project life cycle and how I fit, and how I can bring value to those much larger partners, and to Rachel's point, when she kind of brought in how the team dynamics will work, I'm not sure how that's going to work progressively throughout the entire Small Business chain, so I'm waiting to see how that works out.

Erin Looney  12:21

This is far more complicated than it sounds when you just read about it on the surface. So I'm, as you're talking, thinking this. This is exactly what we needed in this conversation. So we're going to talk to you a little bit here. Rachel, how are these changes reinforcing that need for earlier engagement, stronger partner alignment, specifically in design build? Yeah. I

Speaker 1  12:40

mean, I

Speaker 2  12:40

think that's just what design build is, their best practices anyway, right? It's collaboration, it's early engagement, it's all these things that design build really offers, and that's why I love this delivery method so much. And for design build projects, there is no excuse that's just, that's me, kind of, my personal my heartbeat right here, is with small businesses. So for me, it's business as usual, what I've always done, but I think as advice for other GCS in this time, right now that we're going through, is lean in even more. If you're thinking you're doing other engagement on a project, and you're doing an outreach event six weeks before vid, we're looking maybe two months now, do more early better. And I think for me, what I always say is, it's not just an outreach, it's we're always outreaching. We should always be reaching out to these small businesses. I always give an example of when covid hit and we were all home and people weren't working. Luckily, construction was still working. But you know, I called over 400 of my small businesses and how are you doing? How are you feeling? What's going on? How can I help to support you? So I think it's that mindset of we're always should be leaning in to these small businesses, and so it's never too early, and we have our meetings and we're talking about things. And this is what was so great about collaboration. We're not all at the same place, right? So this is a good time to you know, are they having hardship? Are they having a hard time getting certified? How can we lean in to help them and support them, how can we keep them working while they're trying to get their certification? This is just a blip, and it's just something we collaborate and we do as design build teams. We think outside the box, and we get things done. So let's think of it the same way. When we're working the small businesses, like they may be through the process or going through the process, but let's keep them working.

Erin Looney  14:18

What does this actually look like for a small firm in real time. Take us through a situation where potentially delays in DBIA certification or uncertainty over that status either affected or came close to affecting your ability to work on a project

Speaker 3  14:33

from a delay standpoint. Just I just kind of kick back to what we talked about a few minutes ago, where we're submitting proposals, right? In fact, I had one project where the contracting officer told us we had the best proposal, but we ended up losing out based on past performance and cost to a slightly larger company. So we kind of see that coming, because as a small company now, since you're. Talking about moving from an opportunity based relationships to risk based relationships. You know, everything kind of changed when it comes to past performance, how you approach projects, how you submit your proposals. Our struggle in that area has just been the relationship part of the procurement process, so getting now into relationships with larger companies, kiwi, your turners and things like that, we as a small company look a little less attractive to them, unless they're really and this is nothing on kiwi, but just looking at it from a size standard for larger companies, they have to police us. We have to police our contractors and subcontractors and whoever comes underneath them. So when you look at the whole landscape, larger companies don't want to say, well, I want to police you. I want to police the sub. I want to police the sub, under the sub. And so now we want to get into a situation to where me as a smaller company, how do I lean on a larger company to be able to grow, to be able to build capacity, to be able to build past performance in the relationship? So I think that's going to be the biggest impact for us.

Erin Looney  16:10

So this can go to either of you, what about a time where DBE firm availability or certification timing led to a change of course for a project, or hit a wall that made things a lot more complicated than they should have been.

Speaker 2  16:24

I have plenty. I'm trying to choose which one. What I have seen is me, personally, as a person on a team I'm going to advocating for small businesses. And so what I've seen is, if the owner doesn't have goals and doesn't really drive that message downward from the GC to the or the design build teams that this is something that's really important to them. A lot of times the project teams don't feel the importance of it. So if there is a blip with the small business, for instance, that maybe, maybe they came in a little higher, their numbers aren't penciling, right? So instead of going back to them and saying, Hey, can you sharpen your pencil a little bit, can we work around getting this bid where it needs to be? A lot of times, they want to move on to their favorite subs that they work with and subs that they work with in the past that aren't small businesses, right? So what I see is my sometimes my project teams get in my way, and that tends to be the problem. I know everybody listening to this podcast has been on a team where, especially if you're an advocate for small businesses, it's a lot of work for the team sometimes to work with that small business and engage with them, and like to Freddie's point, you know, sometimes they don't have that capacity to work with all those multi tiers that are underneath them, of their suppliers that they're working under, so or it could be their administrative so takes a lot of work from the project teams to really lean in and to support not every one of them, but they're all coming at different points, but some of them you really have to work with. It takes more than just a one person to do all that. It takes my admin team, it takes my payroll team, maybe my CFO, to help them with some different things. So we try to mentor them from the project teams. All that being said, that was the first thing that came to my mind, is a lot of times our project teams get in our way of really helping the small business.

Speaker 3  17:56

So I was at a panel with bradsfield and gory and Turner was at that panel, and they were talking about how they deal with small teams and small project teams, and most of their scopes tend to be very large, so they have to deal with the more mature DB ease or, you know, whatever the company certification is, and they have to rely On that company to be able to pull the projects down into the smaller companies and let them break that stuff off. But when you do that, you still have the struggle, like you said, of dealing with that team in the work standpoint, and you create silos, because those DBS that's larger, that's, you know, maybe a 50 million, $30 million dollar dB, they're just going to splinter off a couple of their people and put them in that scope work, and then that's how it's going to go. So your project team is just going to get very big and bloated, and who polices that that's

Erin Looney  18:53

fair. And I did like hearing from both you. I was going to ask you, Freddie, what do you think? And I'm glad there was something for you to jump off there from Rachel's point, the design build delivers podcast is brought to you by Archons, your technology optimization partner, helping design build teams streamline workflows with Autodesk solutions, expert support and real world training ready to work smarter and faster, get Tools insights and schedule your AI readiness check at our cons.us/dbia. So both of you, where are you seeing the biggest risks emerge from this so far? And also, can you point to a situation where one of these risks actually happened and made things change a little bit.

Speaker 3  19:41

From my perspective, most of the risk is going to come in a schedule. You're going to have these larger projects that's going to move forward. In the smaller procurement process, those projects can stall. But in the larger procurement process, in your projects, 50 million, you know, 100 million and up. Those projects are going to move forward, and I think what you're going to have happen is because we are going through this whole recertification process, and as we talked about in the panel, there's 55,000 plus companies that have to go through that process. So when you get a project started, and all of a sudden you get audited, and somebody in that chain doesn't have their recertification, or fail recertification, or however that works out, then that's going to start a project, and then that's going to get into your liquidated damages, that's going to get into profit drain and all of these things. So I think that's going to be the, probably the largest risk to this whole recertification process, because it's going to take time. And like I said, those large projects, those are not going to stop, but they will stall.

Speaker 2  20:49

I think the biggest risk is that dbias just aren't going to get the work that they deserve to get. And this whole program was designed originally for them to be able to get work, because within our industry, we tend to work in silos, to Freddie's point, and we, we do go to our bigger subcontractors. It's easier for us, right? We, they know us. We work with them for years, and this was such a great program for that purpose, to make sure that we're getting that work out there. So my thing right now is, my risk is that companies aren't going to be diligent to what they say they're going to do, and they're not going to utilize these DBS. And I feel like to Freddy's point earlier in the conversation that some of these dBs, they probably won't get recertified if they're not getting work, if there's no benefit for them, if they're not getting the work anyway, it's a lot of work to get the certification. And it's unfortunate that we're here. I'm hoping, like I said, it's ever changing. I mean, I don't even know the federal government knows what they're doing. I'll be honest. Maybe I should put that out there, but

Speaker 3  21:45

like shots out and just like, let's see what sticks. That's going to be interesting. And to that point, from the government standpoint, you have right now, and we talked about this definitely in a panel right now, you have this massive amount of funding going out where DB ease, and this is to your point, Rachel, the DBS can build capacity now. They can build capabilities. They can build teaming agreements and great relationships. But at the very time all the money is actually being put in the system is when you put the most amount of friction in the system for the smaller companies that all of the certifications and the policies were supposed to protect. Well, what do you do in that case, like because you basically just cut the legs out of the small business world.

Erin Looney  22:33

So let's move on to a little more about the changes and how they're impacting design, build, specifically with all of this stuff happening, all of the change, all of the chaos and calamity, the confusion, the two and a half month permitting process. How should dbias approach design, build teams and what do you think tends to resonate to get in that door?

Speaker 2  22:57

For me, I'm a little bit I'm not so nice about saying that what needs to be said. Design Build gives them no excuse, regardless of what is happening with the certification. They're still a small business. They're still on this journey. They're still on this road, and design build, especially progressive. Design Build gives them an opportunity to they have time. They have design window of a year or two years at their until construction, right? So there is no excuse in design build to never meet your DB goal there. I mean, there's just not you literally have to try not to do it if you don't make your goal. And that's just my personal opinion, or you don't want to do it, because you have the opportunity to negotiate, you have the opportunity to collaborate. You have time to bring these firms in and say, Hey, how can we help you? Where's your need at like I said before, outreach never stops. If you are just starting and you're just trying to figure this out, you're on a progressive design build project, and you know you're going to have this you already won the project, or you're chasing a project, lean in and bring them in. And my only advice is, there's just no excuse, and it can be done, and it's proven to be done for me, I've been able to meet goals on a GCC on project, but it's really difficult because it is till the end of the day. It's a low bid process, right? So with design build, you have all of the tools in your tool belt to work with these small businesses and meet that goal and be inclusive of these CBEs. I

Speaker 3  24:18

like it just a short piggyback on that. So from a small perspective, I've created a system called a project lifecycle toolkit. And what that does, it helps the smaller companies just understand the project lifecycle as a whole, where they fit, how they fit, and it also identifies risk early. And identifies project status early. And so it allows us to kind of build a pipeline, if you will, to be able to go to larger companies and market to larger companies and build those relationships from a design build process. And as you said, that process may start two years ahead of construction, but it. If I build the pipeline, and I'm in that procurement process with you, then I can come and say, look, here's our real cost, here's what we're looking here's escalation and all this risk that we've already looked at, which makes it a lot more comfortable for a larger company to deal with a smaller company. I'm trying to implement that because so many of the smaller companies that's here in Texas, and you talking about what you need to start a business. You just need a truck in Texas, that's the rule. So just for us to be able to understand the process a little bit better, in my experience, the smaller companies tend to stay away from design build. I love design build, and I try to pull more companies into design build, especially your specialty contractor. So just being able to facilitate that is going to be a big thing for me moving forward.

Speaker 2  25:45

As advice to small businesses, what I've seen in my 17 years working with small businesses is it's always been they show up with their certification first, and then all their strengths and all their abilities and everything that they've done their resume last. And now what's changed is now you have to come your certification doesn't mean anything, right now, right? So don't show up with your certification. Show up with but your capability statements, and show up with those relationships and your skills and things that you have accomplished over your career, right? And so it's just this mind shift for the small businesses you put on your card. The first thing I would ask is like, are you certified? What are you cert? Which is certification? What do you type of certification Do you have? Right? And so those questions now have shifted to, well, tell me about your capabilities. Tell me about the last projects you were on. And so for small business, I think that's just really important. Like Freddie and me have had conversations. He's using this time to really lean in. You know? He's getting involved in organizations. He's getting involved in, like, design, build, right? He joined our SP, E and G committee. So use this time right now, this downtime, if you are not working to really create those relationships and lean in more, not with the certifications, but with what you have done, because that's what's going to get you in the door right now.

Erin Looney  26:53

Putting it that way is is incredibly important right now, because this doesn't eliminate the what do we do now that this is bug nuts question, but it does give businesses who might be struggling with the recertification or even deciding if it's worth it, it gives them an avenue to still stay involved and to hear from you, Rachel at this larger company, that yes, we still want to hear from you. Yes, we still want to work with you. So a company like Freddy's isn't sitting there saying, Well, I mean, I used to be a certified dB, but that kind of time right now, but I really need to work that minimizes that, and I'm really happy you guys said it that way, so that we can give people listening a sort of how do I continue to approach this while everything is like being thrown up into the air and not Landing yet? So anyone who has consulted the DBIA universal best practices primer should be able to tell you, and I assume you both fit this description, Rachel, you proved that earlier, because you called it out by name, and I just trust Freddy, just implicitly. I trust Freddy. Design Build gets associated with early engagement and flexibility. We aim for design, build done right? And anyone who hasn't consulted that primer, it is free. You can download it@store.dbia.org I will link it in the show notes. Let's move from a lot of this. What do I do now, theory and this idealism, and look at it in practice. Where are that early engagement and that flexibility actually helping teams navigate beyond what you just said, Rachel, because that's a really good example. How are you using design, build done right to navigate DBIA requirements? And are there any gaps?

Speaker 2  28:30

The best teams are integrated early. I think I kind of touched on it before, but I think as far as best practices, I don't know that there's any gaps. I think the only maybe the gap would be, in my opinion, would be that maybe we're not talking enough about it. So I'm really glad to see that we're doing a podcast. I'm really happy that they are selecting conversations like this for the conferences. I think it's important that we're talking about it more. I don't know that everybody and memberships at DBIA know that we talk about it, and it's important to us. So I think that's probably the only gap I can see in my world. I'm always pushing for it, so it's never enough. So sorry. Lisa Washington, I think the best practices, it gives us everything that we need. I mean, like I said, it talks about early engagement, talks about collaboration, like I said earlier, I think it's a perfect model for how we need to do business right now, and there's absolutely no excuse why we can't still do business as usual that we've been doing to bring dbias and meet these goals, and not just own our goals, set your own personal goals for your companies. What is it important to you? If it's just 5% but you were doing nothing before, that is a win. So I think just challenging ourselves as teams or as companies, when we're chasing these projects or we're teaming, it's very important to me, when we team with a partner, where do you sit with utilizing small businesses? I know you're a design firm and you have a smaller scope of the work, but it's important that we as a team are ingrained all so also on the design side. It can't just be the GC that carries us. It has to also be on the design side. So just really having those conversations. And I think if you are using design build best. Practices. It's, I mean, it's early engagement, it's trust, collaboration, it's all those things that we talked about. And that's exactly the tools that you need in order to make this work and to utilize the dbias.

Speaker 3  30:10

I'll add one thing to Aaron, from a gap standpoint, DBIA is really focused on Ube as well, and we talked about that a lot, Rachel, when you matter of fact, when you brought me in, we talked about the Ube. So I think closing the gap is also going to be about the education as it reflects to design build done right, and the DBIA process, when you start bringing in companies that's trying to be more in the process of design build, a design build done right. Because I'm actually in the process of getting ready to start my professional certifications. Thanks to Rachel

Erin Looney  30:46

all over social media. When you

Speaker 3  30:49

get it, there you go. So just closing the gap of the knowledge and the learning of what that system design build done right actually looks like, and then where a Ube fits in that process, and how they can continue to grow closing, that is just, you know, to add on to what Rachel was just saying.

Speaker 2  31:09

And if I could pile on just one more thing our committee, this is part of our long term goal. And when I say long term, I'm hoping next year, I'm always trying to recruit members from the DB community, the Ube community. And so I think with design build, we really need to think about, how can we keep and retain these memberships, like, what is the benefit for them? And so if we can add resources for them, if we could do a monthly broadcast Freddy's business, or do something for exposure, and our committee, we're working on those things, but I think it's really important that we make it worth their time and their effort and their membership, where's the value added for them? Right? Is it just that they want to come and network? We need to do better than that, because not every chapter and region has a monthly breakfast. You know? Maybe there's only two or three networking opportunities a year. So how can we as an organization do a better job of utilizing our resources to make that membership more valuable, and we want to keep them

Erin Looney  32:06

now. This doesn't solve the problem, but it certainly helps a little bit. Our awards program, our project and team awards honors, good DB engagement, good UB engagement, we've had some who have tripled their goal, and they've won awards for tripling that goal, because you can watch the narrative of that project work out completely differently than it would have otherwise. So if anybody has worked on a project that would meet the criteria of DBIA, potential project team award winner. Awards are open through June 1. Another thing I'll link in the show notes. And then through June 30, we are doing a buy one, get one membership. We're going to look ahead. Final question, I've often called this segment, speculating wildly. So what does it look like? What's it going to feel like, rather, for teams over the next year or two, based on everything we've talked about, how is all of this going to shape partnerships and project delivery?

Speaker 2  32:58

It goes back to that proven and presumption, I think that the dbias really are going to have the upper hand, in a sense, because we all see it change. We always see that. We've seen it happen before, where we can't get anybody to bid our projects. Everyone's swamped. Everyone's busy. We're hoping and praying for that, right? Freddie, we want that time again. You guys are just swamped. We know we think as a team, as a design, build team, and as a GC, that we have the upper hand, and they want to work for us, but I have seen it where we literally are scrambling to get people to bid our jobs, and we had goals, and small businesses are like, hey, so and so. They treat me well. They pay me on time. I'm not taking a chance. I'm working for them. So I'm hoping that that time comes again where the small businesses are so busy, I forecast that the GCS that really like Kiewit and Anderson and the Turners that are doing the work that they maintain those relationships and keep building that relationships with those dbias Because they will get certified, the landscape will change. We have a good memory, right? And small businesses talk there. It's a very small community, so make sure that you're treating them fairly, and you're treating them right, and don't just show up when you need them. Show up when you don't need them, because you will need them.

Speaker 3  34:06

I think it's going to be a bit of a double edged sword. In the near term. It's going to be very chaotic, because you're going to have to go through the process, right? You have to understand the process. Rachel mentioned way back that the government don't even understand their process. So how do we understand their process? That's the one side of it. On the other side, I think it's going to build stronger companies, especially your smaller in the 10 million range that's on their way up. Because once you hit that 10 million, you're starting to cross over a little bit. I think for those companies, you're going to build a much stronger company, and you're going to build much stronger relationships, as long as you have the larger companies that's willing to say, Okay, we see where you are, what do you need, and how do we build you up? Because you're going to perform for us. So we're going to perform for you. So the same thing you just said. Terms of showing up, whether we're building together or we're not building together. So I think once we get through all of that part of the process, I think you're going to see much better companies. You're going to see fewer companies that's going to be leaning on their certifications and more on their capacity, which I agree with the system change. We do need to do that, because I've seen many companies walk in and say, I'm eight a you need me on the team, but they suck in performance. Seen it a lot, but weeding all of that stuff out, I think you're going to build much stronger companies. I think when my company matures a little bit more, it's going to be a great company. The companies that I'm helping through my pipeline, they're going to build much stronger companies, and I think because of that, we're going to have a much stronger market, and we can just build great projects. That's my goal.

Erin Looney  35:53

So if there's one thing to take from this conversation, it's that while the rules may be changing, the work itself hasn't stopped, projects and teams are both still coming to life and doing the best they can to navigate weirdness, build relationships and get work done in the middle of this. So today, on the last day of April 2026 The answer is it's less about waiting for perfect clarity and more about what you do in the meantime. And if you're a small or underutilized business trying to stay engaged in design, build while everything is still settling, DBIA is currently offering a buy one get one membership opportunity through June 30. You buy a year of membership, you get a year free. This is a great chance to stay connected, start building those relationships and keep moving even when the process isn't completely settled. For DB certification, you can find out more at dbia.org/membership Thanks, as always, for listening. Thanks to Rachel and Freddie for coming on the show, and thanks, once again, to our cons and Autodesk Platinum Partner for sponsoring the design build delivers podcast. You can learn more at arkons.us/dbia.