The Miami-Dade Aviation Department has been honored for his work supporting disadvantaged business at Miami International (MIA).
Milton Collins, associate director of minority affairs for MDAD, accepted the Minority Enterprise Development Week Advocate of the Year award during the 30th annual MEDWeek awards presentation Oct. 19, which attracted more than 400 attendees from throughout the state.
The division is charged with increasing small, minority and women’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprises at the airport, and it raised participation to 31.8 percent of the airport’s gross revenue in fiscal year 2011; the Federal Aviation Administration’s three-year goal is 20% for fiscal years 2011 to 2013. Gross revenues by concessions at MIA totaled more than $360M, with $114.5M generated by 61 Airport Concessionaire Disadvantaged Business Enterprise firms.
To reach its goals, the division hosts monthly outreach meetings with the business community to provide six-month bid forecasts and pro bono legal, financial and human resources assistance; it also organizes industry output conferences and pre-bid and pre-construction meetings with bidders and the community.
The MEDWeek Conference attracts minority entrepreneurs and small business owners at the national, regional and local levels. The MEDWeek in Florida is observed and hosted under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency’s Business Center
It is not the first award of this type this year for the airport. In June, it received the FAA’s 2012 DBE Advocate and Partner Award and the Airport Minority Advisory Council’s 2012 Airport Concessions Award.
“We are extremely proud to be recognized by the MBDA, the FAA and the AMAC as a national leader in the DBE industry,” says Collins. “Our goal is to level the playing field between small and large businesses at MIA, and these awards certainly help show we are achieving that goal.”
