Opinion ID: 163083
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Specialization

Text: 113 The district court also faulted Denver's disparity studies because they do not control for firm specialization. See Concrete Works III, 86 F.Supp.2d at 1068 (Aggregating all of the MBEs and WBEs in estimating availability without regard for... the particular services or type of work in which they specialize is a serious flaw in the methodology and impairs the value of the results.). The court's criticism would be appropriate only if there was evidence that M/WBEs are more likely to specialize in certain construction fields. CWC has failed to marshal any such evidence. Its appellate brief contains only the conclusory statement that M/WBEs tend to be... congregated in certain construction specialities. This assertion is unsupported by any citation to the record and CWC does not direct this court to any corroborative study or other evidence. Further, there is no identified evidence showing that certain construction specializations require skills less likely to be possessed by M/WBEs. In fact, CWC's statement appears to contradict the testimony of the City's expert, Dr. Evans, that the data he reviewed showed that MBEs were represented widely across the different [construction] specializations. 15 114 In his expert report, Lunn criticizes Denver's disparity studies because they aggregate construction firms without regard to specialization or size. Although Lunn's report contains an example that illustrates his criticism, he conceded during cross-examination that the example was purely hypothetical and was not based on any data from the Denver MSA construction industry even though he had access to that data. Lunn also testified that he had not done any investigation into whether aggregation bias caused the disparities shown in Denver's studies. 115 Not only does CWC offer no support for its position that M/WBEs are clustered in certain construction specialities, but it has failed to demonstrate that the disparities shown in Denver's studies are eliminated when there is control for firm specialization. In contrast, the NERA Study, which controlled for SIC-code subspecialty yet still showed disparities, provides support for Denver's argument that firm specialization does not explain the disparities. 116