Baltimore Gas & Electric increased spending with diverse suppliers by 42 percent last year

Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) increased its spending with diversity-certified suppliers last year by 42 percent, the company reported.

Overall, BGE purchased $497 million in goods and services from diversity-certified suppliers last year, with $174 million going to Maryland suppliers and $26 million going to Baltimore suppliers. It brings BGE’s total diverse supplier spend to more than $1.5 billion over the last three years.

“Diverse companies are a vital source of economic growth and opportunity for communities in our region, and we have a responsibility to grow their key role in our work to enhance the reliability, safety, and resiliency of the electric and natural gas systems serving our customers,” Carim Khouzami, BGE’s president and CEO, said. “An equitable approach to helping other businesses prosper continues to benefit BGE and our customers—and it’s the right thing to do. We’re looking forward to diversity-certified businesses making more exciting contributions to our proposed investments of more than $2 billion annually over the next several years to strengthen Maryland’s foundation for a net zero-emission future.”

BGE’s Diverse Business Empowerment (DBE) team works closely with the company’s supply organization to explore opportunities to grow diverse supplier spend. This results in the supply organization actively sharing bid opportunities with DBE, which in turn researches and pre-qualifies diversity certified suppliers to participate in sourcing events. Further, it helps ensure that DBE information is communicated to internal clients and to external, non-diverse suppliers for utilization of diversity certified subcontractors. In addition, the DBE reviews current contracts to ensure maximized diverse supplier opportunities.

In 2009, BGE created the Focus Forward supplier diversity academy, which is now called the Exelon Empowerment Academies, the company is owned by Exelon. It is designed to educate and coach diversity-certified businesses on how to compete for contract opportunities and provide those businesses with direct access to BGE leaders. Also, BGE established a diverse business empowerment process dedicated to developing relationships with Maryland’s minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, and LGBT-owned business communities.

Also, the company encourages prime contractors to increase their own diverse supplier spend. Prime contractors working on BGE’s energy delivery systems spent $181 million with diverse subcontractors last year.