Hire Houston First Keeps Contracting Opportunities Local

KEEPING JOBS LOCAL: Hire Houston First (HHF) requires that a business must operate and have 20 percent of its workforce based within Houston’s 10 counties.

By: Enzo Mungu

With billions of dollars spent by the City of Houston (COH) on improving and maintaining city infrastructures and other services, local businesses have a unique opportunity and preference when competing for City contracts through the Hire Houston First program (HHF). Implemented in the fall of 2011, as defined in the Hire Houston First Ordinance, Chapter 15 Article XI, HHF is a preference procurement program that provides local businesses an advantage in the contracting arena.

A business participating in the program, upon application and approval, must satisfy at least one of two requirements to be awarded either city/local business (CB/LB) or local business (LB) designations. First, the business must be headquartered within the 10 counties of Harris, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Liberty, Montgomery, Waller, Austin, and San Jacinto or Houston’s incorporated city limits. Secondly, the business must have an established place or places of business in the incorporated city limits or the local area from which 20% or more of its workforce are regularly based, and from which a substantial role in the entity’s performance of a commercially useful function or a considerable part of its operations is conducted. Currently, there are 3,918 businesses designated as either CB/LB (60%) or LB (40%).

As a general rule, the City of Houston utilizes HHF in its procurement process as follows: contracts of $100,000 and more dealing with the purchase of any personal property not affixed to real property, if the City receives one or more bids from a bidder that is designated a CB and whose bid is within 3% of the lowest bid price received by the City from a non-designated CB bidder, COH subject to HHF provisions, shall enter into a contract with the lowest bidder or the bidder that has the CB designation.

$100,000 in purchasing any personal property not affixed to real property, HHF allows preference to be given to a designated CB whose bid is within 5% of the lowest bid price received by the City from a bidder that is not a CB. COH, subject to HHF provisions, shall enter into a contract for an expenditure of less than $100,000 with the lowest bidder or the bidder with the CB designation.

Nearly 400 HHF businesses are designated annually, with 35-60 applications received monthly. The average processing time of a completed application is 3-4 weeks and the designation, once awarded, is valid for three years. To ensure only eligible vendors participate in HHF, the Office of Business Opportunity now requires companies wishing to retain their designation to submit renewal applications before the end of their three-year period, demonstrating their continued ability to meet Principal Place of Business HHF eligibility guidelines.

In FY2020, 239 contracts were awarded and 843 purchase orders were issued to 426 HHF companies, which resulted in 21,749 jobs provided in Houston and surrounding areas.

For more about the HHF program, visit www.houstontx.gov/obo/.