Beck School of Construction Celebrates Inaugural Graduation
- Nov 6, 2019
The inaugural class of the Beck School of Construction graduated Tuesday, Nov. 5, during the City Council meeting and a private networking event with local vendors, prime contractors, and project managers.
The Beck School of Construction is The Beck Group’s three-year educational partnership with the City of Fort Worth to expand the capacity of Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs) to secure contracts and achieve success.
“Our mission consists of much more than designing and delivering buildings – we’re in the business of building communities and growing the people and companies within those communities,” said Scot Bennett, Fort Worth regional director of The Beck Group.
Representatives from 14 MBE businesses and one City of Fort Worth employee spent the past eight months growing their industry knowledge and gaining valuable insight into elements of construction law, finance, on-the-job safety, bonding and insurance, negotiation and estimating and how to prepare and submit bids – all with the ultimate goal of preparing them to successfully bid on larger projects and grow their experience throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area:
- Petrina Bonnick-Higgins of ACARI Management Group, Inc.
- Tracy Newby of C. Green Scaping, LP
- Phillip Gant III of Customized Technicians, Inc.
- Lynell Bland of Ellison Construction Cleaning Services, LLC
- Todd Rodriguez of Endur Contractors, LLC
- Debera Sturns of Kemp 7 Sons General Services, Inc.
- Rey Morales of Morales Construction Services, Inc.
- Erick Cortez of Mountain Top Concrete
- Osie Carroll of Post L Group, LLC
- Rosa Moreno of Veloz City Trucking, Inc.
- Victor Jones of VIP Construction, LLC
- Roylins Wesson of Wesson Construction Services, LLC
- Regina Whitlock of Whitlock Building Services, LLC
- Mark Gentry of Gentry Carpentry Construction
- Tasha Kilgore, Contract Compliance Specialist with the City of Fort Worth’s Office of Business Diversity
Graduates benefited from courses focused on real business experience and putting the newfound skills into practice immediately:
“The Beck School of Construction program showed me that small businesses share similar struggles. As a group, we learned from our instructors and each other based on real business experiences… Overall, it was very comforting to be around strong, like-minded individuals with the same goal; to gain knowledge and better grow their business.”
– Tracy Newby, project manager at C. Green Scaping, LP
“Overall, I found the classes to be very insightful and action-oriented. I was able to take the lessons learned from each class and implement those into our business processes. We are now better prepared to scale our business and take it to the next level!”
– Regina Whitlock, CEO of Whitlock Building Services.
During this year’s program, Roylins Wesson of Wesson Construction Services, LLC, won a scope of work for one of The Beck Group’s AT&T projects. “This has been an exciting first year for the School of Construction, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with the City of Fort Worth and all of the program participants,” said Bennett.
The Beck School of Construction will begin accepting online applications for its next round of classes in December.
Learn more about the program at http://fortworthtexas.gov/beck-school/.