CPPI and Ducere Construction Services Join The Inclusive Gainesville Initiative

Gainesville, Fla. – Charles Perry Partners, Inc. (CPPI) is pleased to announce a new partnership with Inclusive Gainesville, a new initiative launched with the Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce to take a community-wide approach to equitable economic development and inclusion.

Operating through a partnership between several local businesses and the Chamber, this initiative will focus on two main areas: Workforce Development and Supplier Diversity.

According to a news release from the Chamber, key strategies of Inclusive Gainesville will include:

• “Support for stakeholder businesses looking for guidance, focusing on following diversity best practices, adopting equitable practices and processes and building a more equitable workforce.
• A signature initiative called the Inclusive Gainesville Minority Business Accelerator (IGMBA), a comprehensive program designed to help minority businesses gain more traction doing business with other Gainesville businesses and stakeholders.
• Matchmaking activities that connect graduates of the IGMBA program with stakeholder companies.”

On April 15, Project Director Eric Drummond and Markesia Akinbami, CEO of Ducere Construction Services (DCS), joined together with the Chamber and other local partners to kick off the initiative.

“As an entrepreneur, I understand what it takes to not only start a business, but to sustain a business—which is most important. And what you need is opportunity and the opportunity to grow to that next level,” Akinbami told the group, according to the news release.

“It’s not about having just one opportunity,” confirms Drummond. “It’s about providing that one opportunity and then leveraging that to create more opportunities. And the biggest success will not be from any particular project, but from the relationships that are created. There is no secret sauce to this. It’s the commitment and drive to create access and opportunity for minority-owned businesses to be part of the system,” Drummond said at the event, according to the news release.

The CPPI and DCS relationship began in 2016 when the firms were paired together in the University of Florida’s mentor-protégé program, which CPPI participates in annually. DCS, led by Akinbami, worked closely with CPPI throughout the program on a variety of projects. Upon their graduation from the program, DCS continued to work with CPPI to offer consulting services as part of a long-term plan to develop and implement a program that will facilitate inclusion of diverse businesses on all of CPPI’s projects. CPPI has long been an advocate for participation by MBE, SBE, WBE, and VBE firms and has been actively involved in a wide variety of mentor-protégé and community advocacy programs throughout the Southeast since the inception of the company in 1968. CPPI and DCS have also continued to participate in the mentor-protégé program together at the University of Florida as co-mentors to protégé firms.

For more information, visit the Greater Gainesville Chamber online here: https://gainesvillechamber.com/

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Ranked one of Engineering News-Record’s 2020 “Top Contractors,” Charles Perry Partners, Inc. (CPPI) is one of the Southeast’s largest privately held construction firms. Recognized as a powerhouse of innovation, sustainability, craftsmanship and expertise, CPPI performs a wide range of design-build, construction management and general contracting services, including project planning and modeling, budget estimating and cost management, project scheduling and construction.