Skanska's DBE compliance officer says federal certification overhaul opens new doors for small contractors at LAX

Teresa Maxwell, DBE compliance officer for Skanska Civil's West region, says the sweeping federal overhaul of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program that took effect on 3 October 2025 is not a setback for small contractors - it is a chance for project owners to look harder at the communities they build in.^[1] Her comments follow Skanska's completion of the $380 million Los Angeles World Airports Roadways, Utilities and Enabling (LAWA RUE) project, a job on which the firm says it surpassed every small and local business participation target it had set.

How Skanska hit its goals at LAX

The LAWA RUE project, completed in May 2026 as part of LAWA's broader capital programme, required Skanska to run an intensive outreach effort across the Los Angeles, California market. The firm's own case study attributes the results to 368 events and trainings, with 1,790 firms invited to bid on work, backed by partnerships with trade groups including the National Association of Women in Construction and the National Association of Minority Contractors.^[1]

The final numbers exceeded every contractual threshold:

• $91 million, or 24%, of contract awards went to 139 small business enterprises, above the 20% goal
• $18.8 million, or 5%, went to 19 disabled veteran business enterprises, above the 3% goal
• In total, Skanska contracted 152 certified suppliers and subcontractors across 170 contracts worth more than $160.5 million

Maxwell credits the firm's in-house diverse business enterprise program - distinct from the federal DBE designation - for making that volume of outreach manageable.^[1] She notes that digital plan rooms and broader internet access have transformed what was once a paper-and-snail-mail process into something far more accessible for small subcontractors trying to find and price work on large public jobs.^[1]

What the federal rule change means for contractors

On 3 October 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an Interim Final Rule that eliminated race- and sex-based presumptions of social and economic disadvantage from the federal DBE program, replacing them with a requirement for individualized proof of disadvantage. Every currently certified DBE must now undergo full recertification under the new standard, submitting personal narratives and documentation to establish eligibility. Until a certifying agency completes its reevaluation of all firms, federal funding recipients may not set DBE contract goals or count DBE participation toward existing goals.

Maxwell's read is cautiously optimistic. She argues the disruption is an opening for owners to reassess which small firms operate in their project footprints and to set goals that reflect actual market conditions - rather than applying a percentage that may be unattainable in areas with few certified firms.^[1] Attainability, she says, is the point: a goal worth pursuing should require real effort, not be impossible from the start.^[1]

What to watch

The pace of state-level recertification will determine how quickly DBE contract goals can be reinstated on federally funded transportation work. California's Caltrans has already announced a statewide reevaluation process under the October 2025 rule. For general contractors like Skanska that run parallel in-house outreach programs, the transition period may matter less than it does for owners who relied entirely on the federal certification framework to identify eligible firms - a gap Maxwell's LAX playbook is now being held up as a model for closing.