§15‑A reporting at scale — a portfolio playbook.

Why meeting §15‑A goals is the work — not a paperwork exercise.

Executive Law Article 15‑A requires every New York State agency, authority, and contracting entity above the threshold to set participation goals for certified Minority‑ and Women‑owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) on procurement and construction contracts, and to either meet those goals or substantiate good faith efforts to do so. The statute exists because contracting decisions distribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually — the goals direct a share of that economic activity to firms that have historically been excluded from public procurement.

For a portfolio owner — an authority, university, or municipal program — meeting goals is not optional. Falling short without a defensible record of effort exposes the organization to disallowed payments, reporting findings, and political risk. Falling short across a portfolio compounds those risks: the more contracts you manage, the more variance you absorb, and the harder it becomes to point to consistent practice when a reviewer asks. The discipline this whitepaper describes is what turns §15‑A from a quarterly fire drill into a managed program.

The good news is that the underlying market supports the goals. New York has one of the deepest pools of certified firms in the country. Most missed goals are not supply problems — they are process problems, and process problems are fixable.

There is no shortage of certified MWBE firms in New York.

A common misconception — particularly on specialized scopes — is that certified availability is too thin to meet goals. The Empire State Development (ESD) Division of MWBE certifies firms across the full range of trades and professional services that public procurement actually buys. The directory is large, geographically broad, and refreshed continuously as firms certify, recertify, or expire.

The practical implication is that on almost any scope, a properly run search returns enough certified firms to seriously compete the work. When a search comes back thin, the cause is usually one of three things: the scope was bundled too large for a small or mid‑sized firm to bid, the search terms did not cover the right NAICS / NIGP / CSI codes, or the geographic sourcing area was drawn too narrowly. Each of those is correctable inside the procurement, before solicitations go out.

Eight phases, in order, from goal setting through close‑out.

§15‑A is a lifecycle, not a moment. Every contract above the threshold travels the same path — and the file that supports compliance is built phase by phase along the way. The cards below describe each phase, the work that has to happen in it, and the operational discipline that keeps it auditable.

One process, every contract — that is what makes the program defensible.

The reason §15‑A is hard at scale is not that any single contract is hard. It is that every contract has to be run the same way, with the same evidence captured, against the same source data (the certified directory at the time the search was run). When each contract is run a little differently — different spreadsheets, different outreach tools, different reporting cadences — the program loses the ability to roll up, to benchmark, and to defend itself when a finding lands.

Standardization across the portfolio is what separates a program that can answer questions in a meeting from one that needs three weeks to assemble a response. Practically, that means:

• One source of truth for the certified directory. Same import, same refresh cadence, same archiving — so any search done on any contract is anchored in the same data.
• One template for utilization plans. Identical schema across contracts, so a portfolio‑level rollup is a sum, not a translation exercise.
• One outreach pipeline. Every contact attempt, on every contract, logged the same way, so GFE packets are produced — not assembled — when they are needed.
• One reporting calendar. Quarterly reporting on the same cycle, with the same data flowing from the same place, so the program can be reviewed against itself over time.

Commercially Useful Function — verified on every utilization plan.

A certified firm only counts toward §15‑A goals if it performs a Commercially Useful Function on the contract. The standard, simply put, is that the firm has to be doing real work that contributes to the project — not acting as a pass‑through or a paper participant for a non‑certified firm. ESD and contracting entities evaluate CUF by looking at whether the certified firm is responsible for managing and supervising its scope, performing or supplying a distinct element of the work, providing or installing the materials, and bearing the commercial risks of the work it claims.

CUF is most often where fraud and pass‑through arrangements get caught. It is also, deliberately, a control point: every utilization plan submitted should be CUF‑evaluated, and every quarterly utilization figure should be tied to a firm whose CUF has been confirmed on the scope they are credited for.

• CUF is checked at plan submission. Every firm named in the utilization plan has its scope evaluated against CUF criteria before the plan is approved.
• CUF is re‑checked at any plan revision. Substitutions, scope changes, and tier‑down arrangements all trigger a fresh evaluation.
• CUF concerns surface in performance. If a quarterly report shows a firm credited for scope outside its certification or with no evidence of on‑site activity, the credit is held until CUF is re‑verified.

The controls that prevent the patterns regulators look for.

Most §15‑A fraud is not exotic. It follows a small number of patterns, and each one has a corresponding control that — if applied consistently — makes the pattern visible early enough to address. The goal is not to assume bad faith, but to design the program so that the data exposes anomalies before they become findings.

Where the official process is defined.

This whitepaper is a working synthesis of the program. The governing process and the standard contract language are published by Empire State Development, which is the principal regulator of New York's MWBE program. The two primary references are linked below.

For implementation against an existing portfolio, the companion AXI Field Manual on Good Faith Efforts walks through the GFE rating factors and the PROC‑3 waiver package item by item.