Access and Opportunity Committees (AOCs) are multi-stakeholder monitoring groups that meet regularly to enforce workforce diversity compliance. These committees are generally convened by the project owners, and involve close collaboration of project GCs/CMs, unions, community groups and other stakeholders in tracking workforce participation for women and people of color, to ensure that workforce goals are met or exceeded.
MODEL LANGUAGE: Access And Opportunity Committee from the UMass Boston Project Labor Agreement
The parties have agreed to various provisions of the PLA to achieve the inclusion of minority business enterprises and women business enterprises in the contracting opportunities and minority and women individuals in the employment opportunities created by the covered work. In order to implement and monitor the progress of these anti-discrimination and equal contracting and employment opportunity provisions, the parties, in recognition of their mutual commitment and the partnership they have established to achieve those goals, shall form an Access and Opportunity Committee. The Access and Opportunity Committee will serve as the central forum for representatives of all interested or affected individuals to exchange information and ideas and to advise the parties concerning the operation and results of the Program Requirements contained in Appendix C and the ongoing role of this PLA as an integral component of the Program. As part of these responsibilities, the Access and Opportunity Committee will assess the obstacles to success of achieving inclusion of minority and women workers in the construction opportunities and shall make recommendations for additional programmatic efforts to overcome some of those obstacles. Section 1. Membership and organization
(a) The Owner shall appoint representatives of all interested segments of the community to an Access and Opportunity Committee, which will include local, minority and women business organizations, community-based organizations, the Unions and Contractors, and the Owner. The Owner shall seek the advice of the Access and Opportunity Committee in considering the appointment of subsequent members.
(b) The Access and Opportunity Committee will establish its rules of procedure.
(c) A representative of the Construction Manager, or some other person or entity selected by the Owner, will chair the Access and Opportunity Committee.
Section 2. Meetings
(a) The Access and Opportunity Committee will meet monthly or, more frequently at the call of the Chair.
(b) A representative of the Owner, preferably the staff member or contracted individual to lead monitoring and compliance efforts on behalf of the Owner, shall chair the Access and Opportunity Committee. The chair will establish agenda topics with input from the committee members and send notices of meetings with the agenda in advance of the meetings.
(c) The meetings will receive reports and consider work progress and practices, minority business enterprise and women business enterprise utilization, minority and women participation as labor, apprentice development and utilization, pre-apprentice recruitment (if any), training and referral, and other issues of concern to the Access and Opportunity Committee.
(d) Each Contractor shall report on monthly progress on these issues and provide ongoing workforce projections for their work.