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Las Vegas Raiders stadium contractors exceeding minority hiring goals

Mortenson Construction and McCarthy Building Cos., contractors for the $1.8 billion Las Vegas stadium project, have blasted through workforce diversity performance goals.

Las Vegas Stadium Authority member Ken Evans, who chairs the project’s Benefits Oversight Committee, said Thursday he is delighted by the contractors’ efforts to have a higher percentage of women and minorities working on the project than required by Senate Bill 1, the legislation signed into law in 2016 to finance stadium construction.

The committee met after the authority’s bimonthly meeting.

Don Webb, chief operating officer of the Raiders’ stadium construction company subsidiary, said Small Business Enterprise participation was at 19 percent, exceeding the goal of 15 percent, with $159 million of the $843 million in awarded subcontracts went to firms that qualify as small businesses. Webb said 66 different firms were awarded work with 30 having multiple contracts. He also said 14 women-owned firms received contracts and 72 percent — far more than he had expected — are Nevada based.

While the small-business goals were exceeded, Webb said workforce diversity is even more impressive.

With a goal of 38 percent of work hours required to be undertaken by women and minorities, as of the end of November, 69 percent of the 940,753 hours went to them.

The companies also tracked that 2 percent of the work was done by U.S. military veterans, although legislation had no set performance goals for veterans.

Webb said with the type of work being sequenced later in the project schedule it’s possible that the percentages could decline by the end of construction.

Webb said even though hiring veterans is not an established goal, he would like to hire more veterans on the project.

Evans — himself a veteran — concurred.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.

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