{
 "source": "Maryland Department of Social and Economic Mobility (formerly MDOT OMBE) Directory of Certified Firms, marylandmdbe.gob2g.com, queried by HSG 2026-08-17",
 "method": "Each of the 55 named private firms in the award reconstruction was searched by name. The directory matches on substring, so every returned row was verified by hand against the firm name and, where the name was ambiguous, against the award's own source passage. Three passes were run: a first pass on distinctive tokens, a second on alternate tokens for firms whose first token was generic and hit the 50-row result cap, and a third using exact normalized-name comparison for short firm names, which is where the first two passes had produced a false negative (HWA Corp.).",
 "firms_searched": 55,
 "firms_matched": 7,
 "awards_matched": 11,
 "value_matched": 3886798,
 "denominators": {
  "named_private_value": 57797728,
  "total_award_value": 92288701,
  "share_of_named_private_pct": 6.72,
  "share_of_total_pct": 4.21
 },
 "by_group": {
  "Female": {
   "value": 3080588,
   "firms": 4,
   "share_of_named_private_pct": 5.33
  },
  "Hispanic American / Female": {
   "value": 716670,
   "firms": 2,
   "share_of_named_private_pct": 1.24
  },
  "African American": {
   "value": 89540,
   "firms": 1,
   "share_of_named_private_pct": 0.15
  }
 },
 "matches": [
  {
   "awarded_as": "ATC Corp",
   "directory_name": "ATC CORP, DBA American Tennis Courts, Inc.",
   "location": "Baltimore, MD",
   "minority_status": "Female",
   "cert_no": "97-232",
   "certified_since": "1997-06-25",
   "value": 1415841,
   "awards": 5,
   "confirmation": "All five awards are tennis, basketball, and pickleball court work, matching the firm's certified trade."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "DSM Properties, LLC",
   "directory_name": "DSM PROPERTIES, LLC, DBA DSM Contracting",
   "location": "Baltimore, MD",
   "minority_status": "Female",
   "cert_no": "18-343",
   "certified_since": "2018-06-05",
   "value": 899848,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "Exact legal-name match."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "A&S Construction",
   "directory_name": "A&S Construction LLC",
   "location": "Frederick, MD",
   "minority_status": "Hispanic American / Female",
   "cert_no": "24-107",
   "certified_since": "2024-03-13",
   "value": 598926,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "AMBIGUOUS. Two certified firms carry this name: A&S Construction LLC (Frederick, Hispanic American / Female, certified 2024-03-13) and A & S CONSTRUCTION, INC. (Swanton, Female, certified 2001-06-21). The minutes say only 'A&S Construction'. Attributed to the Frederick firm as the likelier awardee on a City of Frederick contract; the award date (2025-06-05) postdates its certification either way. The aggregate is unaffected by the ambiguity, only the group attribution."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "Empire Landscape, LLC",
   "directory_name": "Empire Landscape, LLC",
   "location": "Silver Spring, MD",
   "minority_status": "Female",
   "cert_no": "08-351",
   "certified_since": "re-evaluated 2026-08-17",
   "value": 494350,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "Exact legal-name match. Certification number indicates original certification in 2008; the 'certified since' date reflects re-evaluation under the October 2025 USDOT interim final rule."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "Daft, McCune and Walker, Inc",
   "directory_name": "Daft-McCune-Walker, Inc.",
   "location": "Towson, MD",
   "minority_status": "Female",
   "cert_no": "12-372",
   "certified_since": "2012-06-06",
   "value": 270549,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "Same firm, hyphenated in the directory and comma-separated in the minutes."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "Absolute Service Industries, LLC",
   "directory_name": "ABSOLUTE SERVICE INDUSTRIES, LLC",
   "location": "Baltimore, MD",
   "minority_status": "Hispanic American / Female",
   "cert_no": "13-222",
   "certified_since": "2013-05-02",
   "value": 117744,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "Exact legal-name match."
  },
  {
   "awarded_as": "HWA Corp",
   "directory_name": "HWA Corp.",
   "location": "Frederick, MD",
   "minority_status": "African American",
   "cert_no": "25-331",
   "certified_since": "2025-06-20",
   "value": 89540,
   "awards": 1,
   "confirmation": "Exact legal-name match. NOTE: the award was approved 2025-06-05, fifteen days BEFORE the certification date, so the firm was not certified at the time of award. It is counted here because the question asked is what the current directory shows, not what was true at award."
  }
 ],
 "local_availability": {
  "certified_firms_based_in_frederick_md": 114,
  "of_those_receiving_a_council_award_fy22_fy26": 2,
  "firms": [
   "A&S Construction LLC",
   "HWA Corp."
  ],
  "value": 688466,
  "note": "Pulled from the same directory by city. Not all 114 are in trades the City buys, and Council-threshold awards are large, so this is a bound on visible participation rather than a participation rate."
 },
 "limits": [
  "State certification is not City certification. The Small Business Reserve is the City's own program with its own criteria; a firm can qualify for one and not the other.",
  "The directory is a snapshot as of 2026-08-17, not certification status at the time of each award. HWA Corp. is a concrete example: certified fifteen days after the award counted here.",
  "Firms that are minority- or woman-owned but never sought certification are invisible to this method. It measures certification, not ownership.",
  "Fifty-two awards worth $32.2 million name no firm at all in the adopted minutes, so the true numerator could be higher. The percentages below are shares of NAMED private-firm value, not of all award value, unless stated.",
  "Matching is substring search plus manual verification. Two passes produced a false negative that a third pass caught, so further false negatives cannot be ruled out. Every figure here is a floor, not a ceiling.",
  "The USDOT interim final rule of 2025-10-03 placed all DBE and ACDBE certifications under re-evaluation, so certification status is itself in flux and the directory says these entries may not currently be used to meet contract goals."
 ]
}