By Jay Pepper, Senior Project Manager, Utilities Division

This year, as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our company, we recognize that a crucial reason for our success lies in all the ways that the Tampa Bay community has provided us opportunities to grow and excel. In return, we try to give back regularly to our community. In this blog post, we would like to look at one of these ways that we’ve been privileged to offer, our Minority Contractor Boot Camp Program.

Starting in 2018, we’ve hosted this in-house training program to help dozens of business owners looking to grow their contracting businesses. It emerged from one of our deliverables for our Tampa Bay Water Street project in 2017. For that project, we were required to create a community mentoring program, and to do this, we ended up creating a “contractor boot camp,” which our project owners fully supported and which directly aligned with several areas of our expertise.

To add to our commitment, though, we opted to expand the program and do something that benefits an even larger slice of the community, not just a contractor boot camp for tradespeople. To do this, we created a program to include anyone looking to start a contracting-related business.

Minority Contractor Boot Camp: How to Apply

The first step we developed involves the completion a Minority Boot Camp Application.

After candidates complete that step, Kimmins leaders evaluate their applications and determine whether to approve them or not for the program.

Each boot camp is limited to four to five companies, and each company can send up to two representatives to a class. The small class size allows the mentors to spend quality one-on-one time with each student and address their particular business management questions.

Since the launch of the program five years ago, Kimmins has conducted eight Minority Contractor Boot Camps and helped people from a variety of industries and backgrounds, including janitorial services, landscape services, hospital support services, and construction, take the next step with their business plans.

Minority Contractor Boot Camp: Course Curriculum

The two-hour classes are held every two weeks and cover these areas:

Launch of a business.
Employee safety.
Accounting.
Project management.
Hiring and firing.
Insurance.
Bidding and pricing.

Every class starts with a brief recap of the last lesson and a quick Q-and-A session that covers real-world issues before instructors move on to that session’s topic.

In addition to Kimmins leaders and instructors, city and county representatives attend regularly to add perspective to the lessons and build rapport with the new business owners. In particular, these city and county representatives address changing business requirements and opportunities for working with their municipal and county offices.

Each boot camp ends with an informal graduation ceremony that previous graduates are also invited to, in order to allow both groups to meet each other and build business connections.

After graduation, Kimmins leaders and instructors continue to make themselves available to answer questions on topics such as billing, late payments, or profit margins.

Minority Contractor Boot Camp: Results

We don’t expect every student to build a multi-million-dollar business, but we do aim to give minorities and underserved populations a solid understanding of business fundamentals so they’re well-prepared to launch a successful business that will benefit the community.

To that end, here are two success stories from our Minority Contractor Boot Camp that show our progress so far:

A personal protection equipment vendor was struggling to keep its doors open. With new boot camp skills gained through the Kimmins program, the owner was able to reorganize her business model and manage her operating costs more effectively. At our latest check-in, she said she has been able to take her business to the next level.
A concrete contractor attended the boot camp so he "could finally start making a profit." It’s been two years since he attended, and in 2022 his company successfully completed a lucrative $1 million project as a subcontractor on one of our local Kimmins projects.