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WelcomeThank you for visiting our website. We are Field's Fire Protection, Inc. your full service fire protection provider serving Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. We welcome you to browse this site for information, and to call our experienced professionals with any questions you might have about sales, service, codes, fire marshal concerns, insurance issues, etc. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
In April 2009 Field's Fire Protection, Inc. became a certified Woman Business Enterprise. The National Women Business Owners Corporation (NWBOC) has led the way for women business owners to obtain WBE Certification. Created in 1995, NWBOC was established to increase competition for corporate and government contracts through implementation of a national certification program for women business owners. http://www.nwboc.org/section_index NWBOC was created in response to needs identified by the Procurement Special Interest Group of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO.) The investigation revealed that to a large degree corporate America and government agencies had not received, nor recognized, the benefits of contracting with women suppliers. Only a small fraction of corporate and government contracts were with women-owned firms. This mindset prevented purchasers from obtaining the best value in their procurements, and it limited women business owners from penetrating these markets, which has stymied their business growth. Research has shown that after developing supplier partnerships with women-owned firms, many companies and government agencies have enhanced their bottom line for their shareholders, and taxpayers, respectively. Certification is the tool by which WBO participation is tracked, and once the tracking provided hard evidence that the federal procurement dollars were virtually bypassing women-owned businesses, remedies were sought in the form of affirmative action programs. Attempts to level the playing field have been enacted over the years in the form of legislation, which began in the1960s with the Commission on the Status of Women, the Civil Rights Act. Three Presidents, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, signed executive orders in the 1960s to increase women and minority participation. In the 1970s women-owned businesses were added to the Economic Census, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed and The President's Interagency Task Force on Women's Business Ownership was organized. The 1980s and 1990s brought 7 policy actions affecting small business, some with a focus on women, including the White House Conference and the Women's Business Ownership Act (HR5050) (NWBC, 2004). Currently, the 5% federal goal was established in 2000 with the Women's Equity in Contracting Act that gave the contracting office the ability to restrict competition for women-owned firms, up to 5% of all contracts. The Small Business Administration confirms that it is possible for this to have the effect of being a set-aside, but is not expressly one. The intent of this program is to encourage procurement officers to utilize women-owned firms at a higher level in both the number of firms awarded contracts and the dollar amounts awarded to them. Many large corporations now understand that it makes good business sense to spend dollars with women-owned vendor firms. Corporate management knows it is good for the public relations and for their local communities, but most importantly for the value they get from the dollars spent with women-owned companies. ___________________________________________________________________________________________
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Field's
