Contract Compliance FAQs

Below is a helpful chart with participation goal information. 

Qualifying Groups:

• African-American
• Hispanic
• Asian
• Native American
• Women
• Veterans
• Persons with Disabilities

Local Business: the business’ principal office (where the business entity directs, controls, and coordinates its activities) and the majority of its regular, full-time work force is in the counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry or Will.

What does your company do and how?

• What evidence do you have to support 
• Your Knowledge
• Your Expertise
• Your Control
• Your Management
• Your Independence
• Your Viability
• Your Location

As the Majority Owner(s), this information must be described in detail (in addition to applicable and supporting documentation) as it pertains to the Industry for which Certification is being requested.

MBE/WBE/PDBE/VBE/SDVBE:

Must be a small business as defined by the Small Business Administration (“SBA”) - gross receipts must not exceed the Small Business Administration revenue standards (13 CFR Part 121) averaged over 5 years for both construction and non-construction firms.

Economically Disadvantaged owners must meet Personal Net Worth criteria

Personal Net Worth (“PNW”) – an individual with a Personal Net Worth less than $2,000,000.00 indexed annually for the Chicago Metro Area Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Standards, beginning January 2008.

Event and training information is available at www.cookcountyil.gov/service/contract-compliance-events.

All Contract Compliance forms are available at www.cookcountyil.gov/service/contract-compliance-form-library.

Yes, please visit our Youtube channel which has the various videos we produce.

Click to register with Vizient, Cook County Health’s Group Purchasing Organization

More information on FOIA is available on the County's FOIA page.

Contract Compliance's policies and procedures are available for download here.

You can search by:

• Business name or DBA
• Business Description
• Commodity Code
• Contact Person
• Location
• Certification Type

Click here to view the Cook County Procurement Code.

All definitions may be found here in Divisions 6 and 8 of the Cook County Procurement Code.

County Marketplace means the six-county region, currently the counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will.

Disability or Disabled means, with respect to an individual, a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual, a record of physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual, or being regarded as an individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual.

Eligible Veteran means a person who (i) has been either a member of the armed forces of the United States or, while a citizen of the United States, was a member of the armed forces of allies of the United States in time of hostilities with a foreign country and (ii) has served under one or more of the following conditions: (a) the veteran served a total of at least six months; (b) the veteran served for the duration of hostilities regardless of the length of the engagement; (c) the veteran was discharged on the basis of hardship; or (d) the veteran was released from active duty because of a service connected disability and was discharged under honorable conditions.

Minority Individual means an individual in one of the following groups:

African-Americans or Blacks, which includes persons having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa; Hispanic-Americans, which includes persons who are Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Caribbean, Dominican, Central or South American, regardless of race;  Native-Americans, which includes persons who are American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians; Asian-Americans (persons whose origins are in any of the original peoples of the Far East Asia, Southeast Asia, the islands of the Pacific or the Northern Marianas, or the Indian Subcontinent); or Other groups, including, but not limited to, Arab-Americans, found by the County to be socially disadvantaged by having suffered racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society, without regard to individual qualities, resulting in decreased opportunities to compete in the County's Marketplace.

Service-Disabled Veteran means an Eligible Veteran who has been found to have ten percent or more service-connected disability by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Department of Defense.

Small Business means a small business as defined by the U.S. Small Business Administration, pursuant to the business size standards found in 13 CFR Part 121, as related to the nature of the work the Person seeks to perform on Contracts. A Person is not an eligible small business enterprise in any calendar fiscal year in which its gross receipts, averaged over the Peron's previous five fiscal years, exceed the size standards of 13 CFR Part 121.

Woman means a person of the female gender.